No. A host change does not have to take your website down. Sites go dark during a move after the old server gets switched off too early, while part of the internet is still sending visitors to it. That is a question of order, and order is yours to control.
What actually changes when you change hosts
Nothing physical moves. Your files get copied onto a new server, and that server has its own address. Your domain name is a label that points at an address. Changing hosts means changing what the label points to.
The catch is that the internet does not learn the new address all at once. Computers all over the world hold on to the old answer for a while. Every answer comes with a timer on it.
That timer is called time to live, or TTL. It was written down in RFC 1035, published in November 1987 by P. Mockapetris. The document defines the field as “the time interval that the resource record may be cached before the source of the information should again be consulted.”
Put plainly: this answer is good for this many seconds. Until the seconds run out, a computer that already asked does not ask again. It keeps using the old address.
The number that decides how long the old host still gets traffic
The TTL is set in seconds, and it is set wherever your DNS records live, which is not always the same company as your host.
RFC 1912 tells you to turn it down before a move. That document was published in February 1996 by D. Barr of The Pennsylvania State University. It is writing about the default timer for a whole domain, which it calls by far the most important timer of the lot, and it says: “If you plan to make major changes, it’s a good idea to turn this value down temporarily beforehand. Then wait the previous minimum value, make your changes, verify their correctness, and turn this value back up.” It gives 1 to 5 days as typical values, and it notes that the value can be overridden on individual records.
Read that order twice. You have to wait out the old TTL before the new short one is in force everywhere. If your records have been sitting at one day, lower them a full day before the switch, not two hours before.
You can check your own number in about a minute. Put your domain into Google’s Public DNS page at dns.google and press Resolve. The answer carries a TTL. Google’s notes on that lookup, on a page marked last updated 3 September 2024, describe the field as “Record’s time-to-live in seconds.”
What nobody can promise you about that window
The TTL is a request. It is not a rule you get to enforce on other people’s computers.
RFC 2181, published in July 1997 by R. Elz of the University of Melbourne and R. Bush of RGnet, says it flatly: “The TTL specifies a maximum time to live, not a mandatory time to live.” The same section says implementations “are always free to place an upper bound on any TTL received.”
There is slack in the other direction too. RFC 8767, published in March 2020 by D. Lawrence, W. Kumari and P. Sood, sets out a method called serve-stale. It lets a resolver hand out expired records when it cannot reach the real source. On how long an expired record should be kept, that document says the suggested value is between 1 and 3 days.
So no host and no builder can name the minute the last old copy dies. Anyone selling you a zero second cutover is guessing. The answer is not a promise. The answer is to leave the old site switched on, so a late visitor still lands on a working page.
The 60 day lock that sounds like it blocks the move
People hear about a 60 day lock on their domain name and assume a move is off the table. The lock is real, and it is about something else.
Changing hosts changes where your files live. Moving your domain changes which company bills you for the name. The lock only touches the second one.
The ICANN Transfer Policy, on a page marked updated 21 February 2024, lets your current registrar refuse a transfer “requested within 60 days of the creation date” of the name, and refuse one for a name that is within 60 days after being transferred. It also says a registrar “must impose a 60-day inter-registrar transfer lock” following a change of registrant, though the registrar may let you opt out beforehand.
Now look at what that policy is about. It covers moving a name from one registrar to another. It does not mention web hosting anywhere in it. A locked domain does not stop you pointing the name at a new server. You can edit your records any day of the week, lock or no lock.
This is not legal or tax advice. The contract over your domain is the registration agreement you signed with your registrar, so read it, and put anything that turns on a date in front of an attorney in your own state before you plan around it.
The parts that do not follow the address
A few things do not ride along with the files.
- The security certificate. A new host issues its own, and until that lands a browser can throw a warning. What to do when your website says not secure walks through that warning.
- Contact forms. A form is often wired into something sitting on the old host, and it can go quiet without showing an error. Work out where your form submissions actually go first, then send yourself a test after the switch.
- Email. Mail runs on its own records and is its own job, and moving a website can break it. Leave it out of the same week.
- Redirects. Old addresses that used to forward somewhere have to be built again on the new host, and how long you keep them is its own question.
How to do the switch without going dark
- Write down the current TTL on the records that point at your website.
- Lower that TTL. Then wait at least as long as the old value before you touch anything else.
- Build the site on the new host and test it there first. If the new host gives you a temporary address, open every page on it. Submit every form.
- Change the record. Change nothing else that day.
- Keep paying the old host for at least a week after. That week is what turns a bad cutover into a slow one that nobody notices.
- Watch the site yourself instead of waiting for a customer to call. How you find out your website is down before a customer does covers the setup.
- Put the TTL back up once traffic looks normal again.
One last thing, and it may talk you out of the job. Do not move hosts hoping the phone will ring more. Move when the site is slow, when the host has stopped answering the phone, or when the site is being rebuilt anyway. A rebuild is a host move as well, so if a new site is already on the table, do both together and change the record only once.