I changed my nameservers and my email quietly died

This one goes back to my early days as a freelance designer, when I’d started to build WordPress sites for people but still knew very little about what sat underneath them. I run a tiny design practice. It’s mostly me, a lot of coffee mugs and a very patient laptop. When I decided to move my own portfolio site to a better host, I felt confident. I’d moved a couple of client sites already. I had a plan.

The plan was straightforward. Build the new site, then point my domain at the new host by changing something called the nameservers. I made the change on a Thursday afternoon, refreshed my homepage, and there it was, the new site, loading nicely and looking sharp.

I closed my laptop feeling very pleased with myself.

The message I didn’t see coming

Friday morning, a client phoned. Politely, in the careful voice people use when they don’t want to embarrass you, she said she had emailed me twice since Thursday afternoon and got automatic bounce messages both times.

I checked my inbox. Nothing since Thursday afternoon. Not a single email. For someone who lives on briefs and feedback, a whole day of silence is not normal.

The difference I hadn’t respected

My stomach went cold, then I made myself think. What had I changed? Only the nameservers.

Here’s what I’d overlooked. Your domain has a set of settings, called DNS records, that say where things live. One record says where the website is. Another set, called MX records, says where the email goes. When you change your nameservers, you’re telling the whole internet, “Stop asking my old DNS provider. Ask this new one instead.”

That’s fine, as long as the new place has all the same records. But my new host’s DNS held only what the website needed. It had no mail records at all. So anyone trying to email me was asking a place that had no idea where my mail lived. Bounce.

My website had moved. My email, quietly, had been left behind.

I remember how unfair it felt. I’d spent years learning to hand-code layouts that look right on every screen, and a couple of invisible text records had beaten me. That’s the thing about hosting. The parts you can see and polish are only half of it, and the other half doesn’t send you a warning.

Getting it back

The fix was simple, once I knew what it was. I opened the old DNS provider’s records, which were still there, and copied every mail record, the MX ones along with the SPF and other text records, into the new DNS zone exactly as they were. I wasn’t confident enough to trust myself, so I rang a developer friend, read the list out loud, and she confirmed I hadn’t missed anything.

Within a short while, test emails in both directions started working.

Then came the clean up. I emailed the client who’d phoned and apologised, and wrote to a handful of others to ask whether they’d tried to reach me. A couple had. Everything I could recover, I did. Some messages, I’m sure, went unseen, and that was the cost of my confidence.

What I do now, and tell every client

I’ve seen this exact slip a hundred times since, mostly from people who did the website move perfectly and forgot the mail. Whenever I move a client’s domain now, I treat the DNS records like the contents of a house. Before anyone leaves, I list everything: the website record, the mail records, the verification records for any service they use, the lot. Then I rebuild that list at the new place before I touch the nameservers.

It adds about twenty minutes to a move. It has saved me from that Friday morning phone call every single time.

Another small habit is just as useful. After any DNS change I send a test email from my own address to a different provider and back again, and I ask someone to try the contact form. It’s boring, and it works.

If you’re ever unsure what’s in your DNS, that’s no cause for embarrassment. Almost nobody looks until something breaks. Take a screenshot of the whole screen before you change a thing, and you’ll always have a way back.

That Friday also taught me to be kinder to clients who make the same slip. Nobody is born knowing that a website and a mailbox are different things. It’s invisible until it breaks, and the explanation takes about a minute once someone is calm enough to hear it.

A few things I’d tell you

• Before changing nameservers, list every DNS record at the old provider. Website, mail, verification records, all of it.
• Recreate them all at the new provider first, then switch.
• Remember the website and email are separate things that share a domain.
• Send tests both ways immediately afterwards, in and out.
• Keep the old DNS records until you’re sure everything works.

Move your DNS records first, then flip the switch. In that order.