Point your domain from Bluehost nameservers to GoDaddy
Nameservers decide which company gets asked for your DNS records. Changing them hands over the entire zone in one move — website, email, subdomains and verifications all switch to the new provider's answers simultaneously.
That is what makes this the highest-consequence step on the page and also the fastest to perform. It is two fields and a save button. Everything that makes it safe happens beforehand.
Which side you make the change on depends on where the domain is registered. Still at Bluehost? Change it in the Bluehost portal. Already transferred to GoDaddy? Change it in the GoDaddy Domain Portfolio. Both are covered below.
- Hands-on time
- 10 minutes to change
- Start to finish
- 24–48 hours to propagate fully
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Steps
- 6
Downtime risk: High if the target zone is not ready. This is the moment the switch actually flips for the public.
Check this first
Do you actually need to change nameservers at all?
Often not. Nameservers decide who manages your DNS, which is a separate question from where your website is hosted. If you are moving hosting to GoDaddy but are happy for your current provider to keep answering DNS, leave the nameservers alone and change one A record instead. Change nameservers only when you want GoDaddy to be the company managing your zone.
The short version — 5 minutes instead of 48 hours
- 1Ask what you actually want: a website on a different server, or a different company managing DNS?
- 2If it is only the website, edit the A record where your DNS is managed today and stop here.
- 3If your DNS is at a third party such as Cloudflare, that is where the A record lives — neither Bluehost nor GoDaddy is involved.
- 4Only if you want GoDaddy managing the zone should you continue with the nameserver change below.
Not what you need? If you are shutting down the Bluehost account entirely and your nameservers currently point at Bluehost, you cannot skip this — DNS is going away with the account, so the zone has to move somewhere.
Can I do just this, and nothing else?
Yes — this works on its own
Technically yes, but this is the one task that is never really "just" one task. Changing nameservers hands the entire zone to GoDaddy in a single move, so every record has to already exist there. If your goal is only to move the website to a new server, change the A record instead — it is a smaller change with none of the email risk.
What changes
- GoDaddy answers every DNS question for the domain, not just the website ones
- Email, subdomains and verification records all resolve from GoDaddy's zone
What stays exactly as it is
- The domain stays registered wherever it is now — this is not a registrar transfer
- Website files are not moved by this step
- Bluehost's zone remains intact and unedited, which is what makes rollback instant
Before doing nameservers on its own: Every DNS record must already be recreated at GoDaddy. This is the only task on this page with a hard prerequisite, and skipping it is the most common cause of a migration outage.
Before you start
- The DNS records already recreated at GoDaddy — do not start this step otherwise
- The GoDaddy nameserver pair assigned to your domain, read from your own account
- TTLs lowered at Bluehost at least a day earlier, if you want a fast correction path
- The website already tested on GoDaddy hosting, if the host is moving too
Step-by-step
Each step is labelled with which side you are working on, so you always know whether you should be signed in to Bluehost or GoDaddy.
- 1At GoDaddy
Find your assigned GoDaddy nameservers
GoDaddy assigns a numbered pair per domain — nsNN.domaincontrol.com and the next number up — rather than using one global pair. Read yours from your own account; the values in a tutorial belong to someone else's domain and will not serve your zone.
- GoDaddy Domain Portfolio → select the domain → DNS → Nameservers
- The assigned pair is shown there, in the form ns27.domaincontrol.com / ns28.domaincontrol.com
- If GoDaddy is only providing DNS and not the registrar, the pair still comes from the DNS product
- 2At GoDaddy
Confirm the GoDaddy zone is populated
Before you change anything, look at GoDaddy's DNS record list and satisfy yourself it is complete. After the switch, this zone is the only source of truth.
- A record pointing at the correct server
- www resolving, by CNAME or its own A record
- MX records present, with correct priorities
- SPF, DKIM, DMARC and any verification TXT records present
- 3At Bluehost
Change the nameservers where the domain is registered
If the domain is still registered at Bluehost, this happens in the Bluehost portal — the registrar controls the delegation, regardless of who runs the hosting.
- Bluehost portal → Domains → select the domain → Nameservers tab
- Click Change Nameservers, then enter the new values and Save
- Replace ns1.bluehost.com and ns2.bluehost.com with your GoDaddy pair
- Save, and expect the change to be visible within 24–48 hours
Replacingns1.bluehost.com → nsNN.domaincontrol.com ns2.bluehost.com → nsNN+1.domaincontrol.com - 4At GoDaddy
Or change them at GoDaddy, if the domain already moved
Once the registrar transfer has completed, the delegation is controlled from GoDaddy instead.
- Domain Portfolio → select the domain → DNS → Nameservers → Change
- Choose GoDaddy Nameservers to use GoDaddy's own DNS
- Or choose "I'll use my own nameservers" to point elsewhere — Cloudflare, or back at Bluehost
- 5On your computer
Watch propagation rather than guessing at it
Check what resolvers around the world are actually returning. Do not rely on your own browser, which caches aggressively and will mislead you in both directions.
- whatsmydns.net shows resolution from multiple locations at once
- Expect a mixed picture for a while — some resolvers on the old answer, some on the new. That is normal and not a fault
Check the delegationdig NS example.com +short dig @8.8.8.8 example.com A +short dig +trace example.com - 6At GoDaddy
Re-issue SSL once the domain resolves to the new host
Certificate issuance validates by checking that the domain points at the requesting server, so it can only succeed after propagation. Until then you will see certificate warnings.
- Provision or renew the certificate in GoDaddy's hosting panel once dig returns the new IP
- Confirm the site still redirects HTTP to HTTPS afterwards
- Check that a stale CAA record is not blocking issuance
What goes wrong
The failures that actually happen on this step, rather than a generic warning to be careful.
You cannot shorten nameserver propagation with TTLs
Can cause delaysLowering the TTL on your A and MX records genuinely speeds up record changes. It does not speed up a nameserver change: the delegation TTL is set by the TLD registry — typically 48 hours for .com — and is not yours to adjust. Plan for the full window rather than expecting your TTL work to cover it.
This moves email too, whether you meant it to or not
Can cause downtimePeople change nameservers to move a website and are surprised when mail stops. The nameservers determine the whole zone, MX records included. If email is staying where it is, its MX records still need to exist in the new zone.
Both zones stay live during propagation
Can cause downtimeFor a day or two, some visitors reach the old host and some reach the new one. If both can accept form submissions, orders or comments, you will end up with data split across two databases. For an ecommerce site, put the old one in maintenance mode at cutover.
Half-changed nameserver pairs
Can cause delaysEntering the GoDaddy primary and leaving the Bluehost secondary produces intermittent, maddening behaviour — resolvers get different answers depending on which nameserver they happen to ask. Replace the whole set at once.
How to check it worked
Do not rely on the site looking fine in your own browser — it caches, and it will tell you what you want to hear.
- dig NS example.com +short returns only the GoDaddy nameservers
- dig @8.8.8.8 example.com A +short returns the new hosting IP
- whatsmydns.net shows consistent results across most global locations
- The site loads over HTTPS with a valid certificate, without a warning
- A test email to the domain arrives, confirming MX survived the switch
If it goes wrong
Set the nameservers back to ns1.bluehost.com and ns2.bluehost.com. Bluehost's zone is unchanged and immediately correct again — though you wait out propagation a second time, which is the real cost of getting this wrong.
Questions about this step
What are Bluehost's nameservers?
ns1.bluehost.com and ns2.bluehost.com. Those are the values you are replacing, and the ones to put back if you need to roll the change back.
What are GoDaddy's nameservers?
GoDaddy assigns a numbered pair per domain in the form nsNN.domaincontrol.com and nsNN+1.domaincontrol.com — for example ns27 and ns28. There is no single universal pair, so always read the values from your own GoDaddy account rather than copying them from an article.
Do I need to change nameservers if I only transferred the registrar?
No, and you should not. A registrar transfer preserves the existing nameserver settings, which is what keeps your site up during the transfer. Only change them when you actually want a different provider answering DNS.
Why does my site still show the old version?
Almost always your own browser or your ISP's resolver still holding the previous answer. Check with dig against a public resolver such as 8.8.8.8 before concluding anything is wrong — that tells you what the internet sees, rather than what your laptop remembers.
Reference documentation
Provider interfaces change. When these steps and the official documentation disagree, the documentation wins.
Only if you are doing the full move
Stuck on this step?
Send me the domain and what you have tried. I do Bluehost to GoDaddy moves regularly and can tell you what is actually blocking it.