How to point your domain to HostPowr nameservers

Changing your nameservers is what actually connects a domain you own to hosting you bought. Until you do it, the domain keeps answering with whatever DNS your registrar set by default, and your new site stays invisible no matter how correctly it is configured on our side.

You only need this if your domain is registered somewhere else. Domains registered with HostPowr already point at our nameservers, and nothing below applies to them.

Before you start

• Have your registrar login to hand — the company you bought the domain from, which may not be your old host.
• Know whether your email currently runs on that domain. If it does, read the warning in the last section before you change anything.
• Make sure the site already exists on our side. Pointing a domain at empty hosting produces a broken site rather than a coming-soon page.

Steps

1. Log in to your domain registrar's control panel.
2. Find the DNS or nameserver settings for your domain. Registrars bury this under different names — 'Nameservers', 'DNS Management', 'Domain Settings'.
3. Choose the option for custom or third-party nameservers rather than the registrar's defaults.
4. Replace the existing nameservers with ns1.hostpowr.com and ns2.hostpowr.com, removing any others that are listed.
5. Save the change. Propagation typically takes 2 to 24 hours and is outside anyone's control.

Check that it worked

• Use Domains → DNS Checker in our client portal to see which nameservers the world currently sees for your domain.
• Expect inconsistency during propagation: some networks will show the new nameservers while others still show the old ones. That is normal and resolves itself.
• Once the checker reports ns1 and ns2.hostpowr.com from every location, the change is complete.

If it goes wrong

The site still shows the old host after 24 hours

Check whether the domain has a DNS zone at the registrar that overrides the nameservers, and clear your local DNS cache — your own machine caches results independently of the internet at large. If the DNS Checker shows our nameservers but your browser does not, it is your cache, not propagation.

Email stopped working after the change

Moving nameservers moves the whole DNS zone, including MX records. If your mail is with a separate provider, its MX records need recreating on our side. Open a ticket and we will copy them across — but the fix is faster if you have a screenshot of the old records.

The registrar rejects our nameservers

Some registrars require nameservers to be registered as glue records first, and some block changes for 60 days after a domain transfer. The error message usually says which. Contact us with the exact text and we will tell you which applies.

Nameservers are the heavier of the two ways to connect a domain. The lighter alternative is to leave the nameservers alone and change only the A record to point at your server's IP address, which keeps your existing email and DNS untouched. That is often the better choice for a live business domain with mail on it.

If you would rather not do either yourself, migration is free on every plan and our engineers handle the DNS cutover as part of it.