Worked example: moving a live site to our DNS

A domain currently hosted elsewhere, with a website and Google Workspace mail. The goal is to move DNS without an outage.

1. Record what exists. Read the current zone at the old provider. You need every A, CNAME, MX and TXT record — especially the mail ones.

2. Recreate the web records.

   POST /zones?domainName=apiname.com
   {"zoneStruct":{"name":"@","type":"A","ttl":3600,"contents":["203.0.113.10"]}}
   
   POST /zones?domainName=apiname.com
   {"zoneStruct":{"name":"www","type":"CNAME","ttl":3600,"contents":["apiname.com"]}}

3. Recreate the mail records. Getting these wrong is what takes mail down.

   POST /zones?domainName=apiname.com
   {"zoneStruct":{"name":"@","type":"MX","ttl":3600,
    "contents":["1 aspmx.l.google.com","5 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com","10 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com"]}}
   
   POST /zones?domainName=apiname.com
   {"zoneStruct":{"name":"@","type":"TXT","ttl":3600,
    "contents":["v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com -all"]}}

4. Verify. GET /zones?domainName=apiname.com and compare against your notes from step 1, line by line.

5. Switch delegation.

   POST /zones/apply?domainName=apiname.com

   Log previousNameServers from the response.

6. Wait. Up to 48 hours for full propagation. Both old and new name servers answer during this window, so a correct zone means no visible outage.