Simple explanation
Think of nameservers as the directory desk for your domain. When someone visits your domain, the browser first checks which nameservers are responsible for answering where the website, email and other services should go.
When do you change nameservers?
- When moving DNS to Cloudflare or another DNS provider.
- When your hosting company asks you to point the domain to their nameservers.
- When you want one place to manage website and email records.
Important: Changing nameservers can affect your website, email and subdomains if the new DNS zone does not contain all required records.
Before changing nameservers
- Copy existing DNS records.
- Confirm website A/CNAME records.
- Confirm email MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records.
- Change nameservers only after the new DNS zone is ready.