Pointing your domain at Hostbrid without losing email

Almost every migration that goes wrong goes wrong the same way: someone changes the name servers before copying the zone. The website keeps working — it is one A record, after all — and the email vanishes, because the MX records were never created on the new side.

This is the order we follow.

1. Copy the zone before touching anything

Ask your current provider for the record list, or look it up yourself:

dig +noall +answer yourdomain.com ANY @8.8.8.8
dig +short yourdomain.com MX
dig +short yourdomain.com TXT

The ones people forget: verification TXT records (Google, Microsoft, Facebook), the SPF record, the DKIM key — usually a TXT on a subdomain like selector._domainkey — and CNAMEs pointing at third-party services.

2. Create the zone in the panel with those records

In the panel, DNS → New zone. We create the web and mail records we serve automatically, but third-party ones are yours to add. Check them twice against the list from step 1.

3. Lower the TTL before the switch

A day or two ahead, lower the record TTL to 300 seconds at the old provider. That way, when you switch, resolver caches expire in five minutes instead of a day.

This only works if you do it in advance: lowering the TTL at the same moment you change name servers achieves nothing, because resolvers already hold the old value.

4. Now change the name servers

At your registrar, replace the current ones with:

ns1.hostbrid.com
ns2.hostbrid.com

5. Check from outside

Do not trust your own machine, which has a cache. Ask our servers and a public resolver directly:

dig +short yourdomain.com MX @ns1.hostbrid.com
dig +short yourdomain.com MX @1.1.1.1

When both return the same answer, propagation is done.

A note about the certificate

If your site was already on HTTPS, the new certificate is issued once the domain points here. Between the DNS change and issuance there can be a few minutes of browser warnings. To avoid that, tell us beforehand: we issue the certificate by DNS validation and the gap disappears.

If you would rather not do any of this, say so and we will do it. Migration is included.