How Long is Website Down During Domain Transfer

  • Unknown's avatar
    heiditea · Member ·

    My husband is looking to transfer his domain and website hosting to WordPress. I HAVE read all of the documents related to transferring the domain. He is concerned how long his email will be down. How long does it typically take for that process? The website is a simple single-page website so we’re not concerned about that, but the email is vital and I was just hoping to get a ball-park figure of 1 day or is it 5 days or even longer?

    Thank you,
    Heidi

    WP.com: Yes
    Jetpack: No
    Correct account: Yes

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • staff-95percentghost · Staff ·

    Hello Heidi,

    Will your husband be maintaining his current email service even after transferring the domain to WordPress.com? If so then he can add the DNS records for his email service here on WordPress.com in order to make sure that even after the domain is transferred, emails can still reach him. We do have a guide for how to manage DNS records.

    On the other hand if he’s planning to leave his current email provider in the transfer and start using one of the services we sell (or any other email service) then it’s worth getting that set up before the transfer is initiated.

    Either way, it’s preferable to ensure the preparations are done before the transfer is started!

    Transferring a domain registration in itself doesn’t typically interrupt email services. When a domain registration is transferred from one provider to another it’s a somewhat behind-the-scenes process with very rare downtime.

    What can potentially affect a domain downtime (or that of the email service for it) is when the ‘name servers’ of the domain are changed. When a domain is pointed from one server to another (can be done separately from a domain transfer), it takes some timefor this change to propagate, i.e. to be picked up by other computers and servers around the world.

    That’s why we suggest ensuring all email settings are prepared first, so that when other computers/servers are trying to reach your husband’s domain, then whether they’re using the old information or the new, they can still direct email correctly.

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