: Is there any way to change host for a website without suffering from downtime? I have a website with DNS pointing to my hosting account at ns1.a.com and ns2.a.com I want to switch a hosting

@Ogunnowo487

If you keep your files on old server, there will be no downtime.

DNS is cached heavily, and is only refreshed every hour (in most cases)

It does not matter what happens during that hour, because it's still on old server and your DNS record is still the same (only refreshed once a hour, and switched to new server with files ready), so you will have no downtime

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@Phylliss660

I do this all of the time for customers.


Duplicate the site from host A onto host B.
Cut over the DNS to point to host B.
Cancel the host A account.


The only gotcha in all of this is if the site is very dynamic. If it's only you (or a small group) that are making changes, then just schedule accordingly. Larger groups may need to be locked out from making changes to the old site. Even more dynamic sites (heavily trafficked blogs w/comments) are trickier.

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@Holmes151

I think you may be mistaken.

The site won't be inaccessible while the change is propagated to the other DNS servers. You will just likely have some people directed to the old site and some people directed to the new during the transition, or more accurately some will be directed to the old IP address and others to the new IP address. If you don't have concerns about this, you should be fine.

Just make sure to leave the site active at the old location until the transfer is complete, unless you have explicit reasons not to do this.

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