A Name Server (NS) record decides one thing: which company holds and manages all of your domain's DNS records. If DNS is the internet's phone book, the NS record is the entry that says which phone-book company is in charge of your listing, so anyone looking up your website or email knows who to ask. Understand this and a question that confuses many owners makes sense: why some DNS changes are made at your domain registrar while others are made in your DNS panel. It also saves you wasted effort the next time you move a website or switch email providers.
Who should read this? ❓
If your business has a website or company email and you have run into any of these, this is worth a few minutes: someone tells you to "change the name servers" and you have no idea what that means or where to do it; you moved a website or your email and the change did not take effect; or you deal with a registrar, a host, and an email provider at once and keep getting lost over which one to ask. If your business does not rely on a website or email, feel free to skip this one.
First, a common confusion: what the registrar and the host each look after
Most owners are dealing with three parties without realising the roles are separate:
- The domain registrar is the company you pay your annual "domain fee" to, such as GoDaddy or Namecheap. It registers, with the global naming system, that this domain belongs to you. To understand the domain itself first, see our companion article on what a domain is.
- The DNS provider is the company that holds your individual DNS records, the ones saying which server your website points to, where your email is delivered, and so on. It can be the registrar itself, or a different company.
- The host is the company that stores your website files and runs your website software.
These can be one company, or three different ones. That is where the trouble starts: when they are different companies, "who actually holds the DNS records" has to be stated clearly, and stating it is the job of the NS record.
What an NS record actually looks like
The NS records list the handful of "authoritative name servers" responsible for your domain, written out as hostnames. A domain on GoDaddy's built-in DNS, for instance, often shows a pair like ns01.domaincontrol.com and ns02.domaincontrol.com; one on Cloudflare shows two names along the lines of xxx.ns.cloudflare.com (the exact names differ from one account to the next). They usually come in pairs or more, as backups for one another.
One thing sets these name servers apart from your other records: they are set at your domain registrar, the company you bought the domain from, usually under a setting called "Nameservers", not in the everyday DNS panel where you edit the A, CNAME, MX and TXT records. What they do, in a sentence: they delegate the authority over this domain's DNS to one specific provider, so that every lookup anywhere in the world follows the same trail to the same place for its answer.
Before you edit a record, check where your name servers point
Whichever provider your NS records point to is the one that is authoritative for your domain's DNS. Put into everyday terms, that becomes a rule that saves a great many people a great deal of wasted effort: all of your other records (A, CNAME, MX, TXT) must be edited in the control panel of the provider your name servers actually point to. Here is the most common trap: you edit an A record at your domain registrar, but your name servers in fact point to Cloudflare. The change does nothing, because you edited the wrong place, and the spot that is genuinely authoritative (Cloudflare) was never touched.
So whenever a DNS change "won't take effect", the first question is not "did I fill the record in correctly" but: where do this domain's name servers actually point? Settle that first, then make the change in that provider's panel, and the knot usually comes undone straight away.
A related note: using a CDN such as Cloudflare works the same way
Many businesses use a CDN like Cloudflare to speed up a website and absorb attacks. The usual way to connect one is exactly this: go back to your domain registrar and change the name servers to the CDN's name servers. Once that switch is made, your DNS is managed inside the CDN's dashboard, and from then on you edit records in the CDN's console. It is another instance of the delegation above, only this time the new keeper is the CDN.
Back to the question that confuses everyone: registrar or DNS panel?
Now the question has a clear answer, and the key is keeping the two levels apart.
Changing the name servers (who keeps your records) happens at the registrar
The name servers are part of the domain's own registration details, which the registrar controls. So when you switch DNS providers (for example, from the registrar's built-in DNS to your host, a standalone provider, or a CDN), that step is done by logging into the domain registrar. In GoDaddy, roughly what it looks like is: open the domain's settings, find Nameservers, choose Change, enter the name servers your new provider gives you, and save. The wording varies between registrars, but the idea is the same.
Changing specific records (website and email) happens in your current DNS provider's panel
Once the delegation is settled, everyday changes (A, CNAME, MX, TXT) are all made in the panel of the DNS provider currently responsible for your domain, and usually take effect fairly quickly. Put simply: changing the keeper happens at the registrar, while rearranging the furniture happens in the keeper's own panel.
One more thing worth flagging. Switching your name servers, and delegating the whole domain to a new provider, is a higher-impact operation. Once it switches, every record has to be set up again at the new provider, and a poorly planned handover can leave you with a working website but no email, or the other way round. The professional approach is to set the records up at the new provider first and then switch the delegation, rather than switching first and filling in the gaps afterwards.
How 5U Website handles this for clients
Name servers and DNS delegation are the kind of thing nobody notices when they are set up correctly, and that take down a whole website along with the company's email when they are not. Over the past 17 years we have handled many domain transfers, website moves and email migrations, so we know where the pitfalls are. Before touching anything, we work out who your domain is currently delegated to and what the records look like today, and we keep "this is changed at the registrar" cleanly separate from "this is changed in the DNS panel". When a delegation does need to change, we set the records up at the new provider first and then switch, to keep service interruptions to a minimum.
Let us handle it
You do not need to work out which name servers to enter or whether the delegation should change. That happens to be our day job. 5U Website's website design, development and hosting service includes the configuration and maintenance of domains, DNS and name servers. If you are planning to move a website, switch email providers, or you are stuck on who to ask for a particular change, send us an email and we usually reply within one to two business days.
Last updated:
