Guides for moving DNS safely.

The steps, the order and the gotchas, written for the person doing the move. For a specific pair of providers, see the migration guides.

• How to migrate DNS without downtimeA step-by-step method for moving a DNS zone to a new provider with no outage: inventory, verify the new nameservers, lower TTLs, handle DNSSEC, switch, and keep a way back.
• DNS cutover checklistA printable checklist for switching a domain to a new DNS provider: what to do a week before, the day before, at the switch, and in the week after.
• How to migrate DNS with DNSSEC enabledMove a DNSSEC-signed domain to a new DNS provider without breaking resolution: the safe order for removing the DS record, switching nameservers and re-signing.
• Lower TTLs before a DNS migrationWhen to lower DNS TTLs before switching providers, how low to go, which TTLs you can't change, and when to raise them again.
• Move DNS without losing emailThe records your email depends on (MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MTA-STS and more), why they get lost in DNS migrations, and how to check them before and after the switch.
• Apex CNAME, ALIAS and flattening explainedWhy you can't put a CNAME at the root of a domain, how providers work around it with ALIAS records and CNAME flattening, and what happens to these records when you migrate.
• Multi-provider (secondary) DNSHow to serve one domain from two DNS providers for resilience: primary/secondary transfers versus two synced primaries, what you give up, and how to keep records identical.