How long do DNS changes take?

The honest answer: usually 15 minutes to a couple of hours, occasionally up to 48 hours, and the delay isn't something anyone can speed up after the fact. Here's why.

Why it isn't instant

DNS answers get cached. Every resolver between a visitor and your site (their router, their ISP, public resolvers like 1.1.1.1) keeps the old answer for as long as your record's TTL (time to live) allows. A TTL of 3600 means "remember this for an hour." Until each cache expires on its own schedule, different visitors see different answers. That's why your phone might show the new site while your laptop still loads the old one.

The trick for planned changes

Lower the TTL to 300 (five minutes) a few hours before you make the actual change. Caches pick up the short TTL first, and then your real switch propagates in minutes instead of hours. This is standard practice for every migration we do.

How to check what's actually happening

• whatsmydns.net shows your record as seen from dozens of locations worldwide. Green checks everywhere means you're done.
• On a computer, dig yourdomain.com (or nslookup yourdomain.com on Windows) shows what your own resolver currently answers.

If some locations show the new value and others the old one, nothing is broken. That's propagation doing its thing. Come back in an hour.

When to worry

If nothing has changed anywhere after a few hours, the record itself is probably wrong or was saved in the wrong place (a common one: editing DNS at your registrar while your nameservers point somewhere else). Ask us and we'll look at it with you.