Getting Started with HostingWC When Your Domain Is Registered Elsewhere

You already own a domain, say yourbusiness.com, and you bought it from another company. Good news: you don't have to move it to start hosting with us. A domain and a hosting account are two separate things. The domain is your address; the hosting is the building the address points to. This guide connects the two, from the moment you pick a plan to the moment your site loads over HTTPS with working email.

Set aside about an hour of your own time. Most of the waiting happens afterwards, while the internet catches up with your changes.

What you need before you start

• Access to the account where you bought the domain. We'll call this company your registrar. You need to be able to sign in and change the domain's settings. If you can't remember which company it is, look up your domain in any public "WHOIS" search: the registrar's name is listed there.
• Your current website files or a backup, if you already have a site somewhere. If you don't have a site yet, you can skip everything about moving files.
• A list of the email addresses you use on the domain (for example [email protected]), if any. You'll recreate them with us so mail keeps flowing.
• About 15 minutes of quiet time for the DNS step. It's the only part where a typo matters.

Step 1: Choose a plan and create your account

1. Go to our pricing page and pick the plan that fits your site. If you're unsure, start smaller: you can move up a plan later without rebuilding anything.
2. Create your account at my.hostingwc.com. Use an email address that is not on the domain you're setting up, such as a personal Gmail or Outlook address. If your domain's email breaks halfway through, you still get our messages.
3. At checkout, choose the option to use a domain you already own and type it in exactly, for example yourbusiness.com (no www, no https://).
4. Pay the first invoice. Your hosting account is created and a welcome email arrives with your details.

Keep that welcome email. It contains the three things you need next:

You'll also find all of these in your dashboard at my.hostingwc.com under Services.

Step 2: Point your domain at HostingWC

This is the step that connects the address to the building. There are two ways to do it. Pick one.

Option A: Change the nameservers (recommended)

Nameservers decide who answers questions about your domain. When they point to us, we manage all of its records for you: website, email and the security certificate all work together without extra setup.

1. Sign in at your registrar and open the list of your domains.
2. Find yourbusiness.com and open its management page. Look for a section called Nameservers or DNS servers.
3. Switch it from the registrar's default nameservers to custom nameservers.
4. Delete the existing entries and type in the two nameservers from your welcome email, exactly as written, one per line.
5. Save. Most registrars show a confirmation message; some send an email you have to approve.

Before you switch: if the domain already has email set up somewhere else (an office email service, for example), write down its existing records first. Once the nameservers change, those records stop being used, and you'll recreate the ones you still need in cPanel's Zone Editor. If you're not sure what you have, send us a screenshot of the current records and we'll tell you which ones matter.

Option B: Keep DNS at your registrar and point records at us

Choose this if you want to keep managing DNS where it is today, for example because other services already depend on it. You'll change a few individual records instead of the nameservers.

1. At your registrar, open the domain's DNS records or Advanced DNS page.
2. Edit or create these records, using the server IP address from your welcome email:

• Remove any other A record for @ or www that points somewhere else. Two A records for the same name split your visitors between the old site and the new one.
• If your registrar shows a "URL redirect" or "parking" record for @ or www, delete it. Those override the records above.
• Save each change.

With Option B you also need to add the email security records yourself (see Step 5), because we can't see or change DNS that lives at your registrar.

Step 3: Wait for the change to spread

DNS changes aren't instant. Every network on the internet keeps a short-term copy of your old settings and only checks again after a while. That delay is called propagation.

• Record changes (Option B) often show up within minutes to a few hours.
• Nameserver changes (Option A) usually take a few hours, and can take up to 48 hours in rare cases.

While you wait, some visitors may see the old site and some the new one. That's normal. To check progress, search for a free "DNS propagation checker", enter your domain and look at the A record: when most locations show your new server IP, you're through.

Your own computer may hold on to the old address the longest. If everyone else sees the new site and you don't, restart your browser, or try your phone on mobile data instead of your Wi-Fi.

Step 4: Put your website on the new hosting

You can do this while DNS is still spreading. There are three common situations.

You're moving an existing website

The easiest route is to ask us to do it. Every plan includes a free migration: we copy your site to your new account, check that it works on a private address before your domain points at it, and send you the measurements from both places. Start it from the migration page or from your dashboard.

If you'd rather move it yourself:

1. Download a full backup from your current host: the website files and, for sites like WordPress, the database (usually an .sql file).
2. In cPanel, open File Manager, go into the public_html folder and upload your files there. Upload a .zip and use Extract rather than uploading thousands of files one by one.
3. If your site uses a database, create one in cPanel under Manage My Databases (or the Database Wizard), create a database user with a strong password, give that user all privileges on the database, then import your .sql file in phpMyAdmin.
4. Update your site's configuration file with the new database name, user and password. For WordPress, that's wp-config.php.

You're starting a brand-new site

Upload your files to public_html with File Manager, or install the software you want to build with from cPanel. Your home page must be called index.html or index.php and sit directly inside public_html, not in a subfolder.

You're not ready yet

That's fine. Your domain will show a simple placeholder page until you upload something.

Step 5: Set up your email

If your email will be hosted with us:

1. In cPanel, open Email Accounts and select Create.
2. Recreate each address you use, for example [email protected], with a strong password.
3. Open Email Deliverability in cPanel. It checks the records that stop your messages landing in spam (SPF and DKIM). With Option A (our nameservers), use Repair and cPanel fixes them for you. With Option B (DNS at your registrar), cPanel shows the exact records to copy; add each one at your registrar as a TXT record.
4. Connect your phone and computer. cPanel's Connect Devices page lists the incoming and outgoing server names and ports, and offers automatic setup files for Apple devices.
5. Send a test message to an outside address and reply to it, so you know mail works both ways.

Moving old messages: mail stored at your previous provider doesn't move by itself. If you use IMAP, add both the old and new accounts to the same email app and drag the folders across. Or ask us and we'll help.

If your email stays somewhere else (a separate office email service, for example), don't create mailboxes here and don't change the MX record. Leave your email provider's records exactly as they are.

Step 6: Make sure the padlock is on

Every plan includes a free SSL certificate, the thing that puts https:// and the padlock in the address bar. It's issued automatically after your domain points at us, and renews itself from then on.

1. Once Step 3 is done, wait up to a few hours for the certificate to be issued.
2. Visit https://yourbusiness.com and https://www.yourbusiness.com. Both should load with a padlock.
3. If the padlock is missing after a day, open SSL/TLS Status in cPanel and select Run AutoSSL. If it still fails, the domain most likely isn't pointing at us yet; go back to Step 3.

For WordPress sites, also go to Settings → General and make sure both addresses start with https://.

Step 7: Final checklist

Go through this once everything has had a day to settle:

• yourbusiness.com and www.yourbusiness.com both open your new site.
• Both show the padlock, with no browser warnings.
• Contact forms on the site deliver to your inbox.
• You can send and receive email on every address you need.
• Email Deliverability in cPanel shows no problems.
• You've run the free site audit to get a baseline speed and security score for the new hosting.
• You've kept your old hosting running for a few more days, until you're sure nothing was left behind. Then cancel it.

Common problems and quick fixes

Do I ever need to move the domain itself?

No. Your domain can stay with its current registrar for as long as you like; just remember to renew it there every year, because hosting with us doesn't renew it.

If you'd rather keep everything in one place, with one bill and one login, you can transfer the domain to HostingWC from your dashboard at any time. You'll need the domain's transfer code (also called an auth or EPP code) from your current registrar, and the domain must be unlocked there first.

Stuck at any step?

You don't have to figure it out alone. Send us a message from your dashboard or the contact page with your domain name and a screenshot of where you are, and a real person will walk you through it.