Website & pages

Move your own domain without closing your current shop

Prepare your ShipShopity shop, prove domain ownership, and switch website DNS only when hosting is operational and you are ready.

Updated 9 September 2026 · 3 min read

Steps

1. Keep your Shopify or other hosting subscription and existing shop active. Export a backup of products, customer and order records. Import products as drafts here; inspect variants, stock, prices and images. Finish your website, policy pages, payments, shipping and checkout tests using the included platform shop address.
2. Open Settings, Domains. Add the exact hostname you own. Select Root domain for example.com or example.co.uk, or Subdomain for shop.example.com. Use ASCII/punycode for international names. Platform-owned addresses such as your myshopify.com address are not domains you can move without control of their DNS.
3. Add the exact _shipshopity TXT record shown in setup to your current DNS provider, then select Verify ownership. This does not move traffic. Do not change website records yet. TXT challenges expire after seven days if unused; Renew TXT challenge creates a new value. Keep the verified TXT record in place afterward.
4. Wait until setup reports that domain hosting is operational. Save the old website A, AAAA and CNAME values and TTLs so you can restore them. If possible, lower the website TTL to 300 seconds a day before the switch. Take a final stock/order snapshot and plan fulfillment during DNS propagation; imports do not synchronize the two shops.
5. When ready, replace only the website records at the hostname being moved with the exact records shown in setup. Root domains use the displayed A/AAAA records; subdomains use the displayed CNAME. Remove conflicting old website records, including stale IPv6 AAAA records. Use DNS-only mode with this edge, not a DNS-provider proxy. Do not change nameservers or delete your whole DNS zone.
6. Preserve MX and email TXT records, including SPF, DKIM and DMARC. Check whether your email MX target is the root domain you are moving: if so, ask your email provider for a dedicated mail hostname first. A CNAME cannot coexist with other records at the same exact hostname; if that conflicts with mail or other services, use a separate shop subdomain or contact support.
7. Select Connect domain. The states progress through Awaiting DNS changes and Setting up HTTPS to Connected. Certificates are provisioned and renewed automatically. Review CAA restrictions with support if HTTPS remains pending. Open the connected domain and test menus, product options, images, cart, payment return, confirmation and order lookup.
8. Select your primary address in Domains. To redirect www, add www.example.com as a separate subdomain, verify and connect it, then choose the primary custom domain as its redirect destination. The primary choice controls canonical URLs and sitemaps. Existing platform shop links still work.
9. To return to the previous host, restore its saved website DNS records and confirm its shop and HTTPS work before disconnecting the domain in ShipShopity. Allow for cached DNS and keep both shops available during propagation. Disconnect immediately stops serving that hostname here but never deletes shop content, products, orders or payment records.