If I configure my external DNS provider to point my domain to Netlify. Will there be any troubles with email accounts that are associated with my domain after pointing it to netlify domain. It will be a big risk to loose emails data or any trouble in recieving emails.
Please advise.
hi there,
Netlify doesn’t provide email addresses, so you will need to set up email through an external provider. Go ahead and give this thread a read through:
@perry thank you for your response. I don’t need email provider. My site is hosted at plesk.com and the domain is also registered there. I am already maintaining 15 email accounts there from last 5 years. As now I have planned to host my site to Netlify for that reason Netlify requires me to change my DNS settings from my current hosting provider so that I can setup external domain. Does these settings will effect my email accounts which are hosted in my plesk.com account that is my question. I am referring to below settings
I don’t want to move my email accounts anywhere else. Please advise.
Hi, @expatguideturkey.off. Yes, if you switch to Netlify DNS, all required DNS records for your email service (and all other services) must be manually copied to Netlify or they (and therefore your email and other services) will stop working.
We at Netlify don’t have a way to reliably determine what “all required DNS records” means for your domain. That is something you must determine. Once that is done, if you tell us what those records should be we are happy to assist with making sure they are created and working at Netlify before switching to our DNS service.
Also, you don’t have to use Netlify DNS to point the custom domain to the Netlify site.
There is another way to point your custom domain to your Netlify site without affecting the existing records at all. That is keeping your existing DNS service and using the instructions below instead:
This adds records to your existing service and leaves your current DNS service unchanged. This means the existing DNS records for email won’t be modified or stop working.
The “external DNS” instructions can be done to get the custom domain working with Netlify now. Then, if you later decide to completely move DNS for this domain to Netlify, that can be done at any time and the custom domain will still work with the Netlify site in the meantime.
If there are questions about the external DNS instructions, please let us know and we’ll be happy to answer.
@luke Thank you for your assistance. If I follow below instructions then there will be no issues with my incoming or outgoing emails. “My domain is example.com not blog.example.com”
For example, if your site’s domain is
blog.petsofnetlify.comand your Netlify subdomain isbrave-curie-671954.netlify.com:
- Find your DNS provider’s DNS record settings for your apex domain,
petsofnetlify.com.- Add a CNAME record with your subdomain,
blog, as the host.- Point the record to your Netlify subdomain,
brave-curie-671954.netlify.com.- Save your settings. It may take a full day for the settings to propagate across the global Domain Name System.
I have below DNS settings, just I should change the first one right?
Host: www.example.com. RecordType: CNAME Value: example.com.
Host: ftp.example.com. RecordType: CNAME Value: example.com.
Host: example.com. RecordType: MX(10) Value: mail.example.com.
Host: example.com. RecordType: A Value: 185.XX.XXX.XXXX
Host: mail.example.com. RecordType: A Value: 185.XX.XXX.XXXX
Host: smtp.example.com. RecordType: A Value: 185.XX.XXX.XXXX
Host: imap.example.com. RecordType: A Value: 185.XX.XXX.XXXX
Host: pop.example.com. RecordType: A Value: 185.XX.XXX.XXXX
and there are other TXT, A and NS Record Types
For the www subdomain, the first DNS record would be changed to the the CNAME for the Netlify site (like example.netlify.com).
For the apex/bare domain, the A record would be changed to point to our load balancer IP address of 104.198.14.52.
These changes should have no effect on the email service for this domain.
@luke thank you for your response.
My Netlify Domain: https://zealous-lamarr-09041b.netlify.com/
You mean I should do below DNS changes, if i am not wrong. Please confirm:
Delete This: Host: www.example.com. RecordType: CNAME Value: example.com.
Add This: Host: www.example.com. RecordType: CNAME Value: zealous-lamarr-09041b.netlify.com.
And
Delete This: Host:example.com. RecordType:A Value: 185.XX.XXX.XXXX
Add This: Host:example.com. RecordType:A Value: 104.198.14.52
Yes, @expatguideturkey.off, those are the correct changes to make.
Thanks a lot @luke for your assistance.
I found this Url: https://5e54ffa81b278dc8fcbe57ad--zealous-lamarr-09041b.netlify.com/ today when I was browsing my website but on my dashboard it is [https://zealous-lamarr-09041b.netlify.com] whats the difference and whats my actual netlify Url. Please clearify
Hi, @expatguideturkey.off. The current production version of the site will be found at https://zealous-lamarr-09041b.netlify.com/.
The other link (https://5e54ffa81b278dc8fcbe57ad--zealous-lamarr-09041b.netlify.com/) is a deploy preview URL. This is a URL for a specific build and deploy of the site. It won’t update. Ever.
In fact, if you want to, you can publish any previous deploy of a site to roll back to that deploy by clicking the publish deploy button. This will “roll back” the site to that deploy.
You can find that button for the deploy above here:
If there are other questions or concerns, please let us know.
Thanks @luke for your response and explaination. I have one more question. I have three websites one main website (www.example.com) in Gatsby and two nested WordPress websites (www.example.com/nested-website-one AND www.example.com/nested-website-two) which are inside subfolder at my current hosting server. The main website I have uploaded to netlify https://zealous-lamarr-09041b.netlify.com/ and will be linking to my main domain today by changing DNS settings discussed above.
How should I upload both nested WordPress websites to netlify and keep the above url structure for all three separate websites. Or I don’t need to move these nested websites to netlify if there are any server settings to keep the url of nested website same (which means they stay on the current hosting provider but they can be accessed when someone visits these sites). But I am afraid when main domain will be linked with the netlify account how the nested websites will be loaded if they stay in my current hosting provider. As these DNS settings might affect the nested website as well. Can you please provide me any simplest solution to this scenario and assist me to solve this issue.
@Luke or anyone available from the support team to provide any simplest solution. I can not afford downtime or any redirect errors. Please advise any reliable solution. The two nested wordpress websites sub folders screenshot is below:
Please let me know ıf there ıs any simplest solution to this so i can take the decision to move my sites and become your paid member or If its not possible then I should not move my sites and not wait. I would appreciate if anyone of your team clearify this situation. It will be a big risk for me if there would be any page not found error or downtime. It would be better if you can provide me solution where I don’t need to move the nested websites ( [ /nested-website-one ] and [ /nested-website-two ]) from plesk.com and still they are linked to my primary domain (https://exapmle.com) which will be pointed to my netlify account.
I believe a migration from Wordpress to Netlify would be more involved than moving your subfolders over and setting up redirects. This is because Wordpress sites have a database and a lot of server-side PHP code, whereas on Netlify… there is no server. We cache already-built sites (built with static site generators) on our CDN nodes around the world. I’d recommend checking out this other thread where several community members have chimed in about what would be involved in this kind of migration:
Wish we had better news for you. Let us know if we can help with anything else!
here are some additional links / resources:
