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I am in the process of setting up Cloudflare.My domain was registered at Godaddy, my host is Hostgator.

I understand that I will have to log into Godaddy and point the name server from Hostgator to Cloudflare, is that correct?

But I feel uncomfortable with downtime:

  • both while setting up
  • potentially when I pause Cloudflare
  • or when totally cancelling the Cloudflare's service

1) approx. how long my website will be down when I first change nameserver from Hostgator to Cloudflare inside Godaddy?

2) IMPORTANT: IF I decide to cancel the Cloudflare account, do I need to go back to Godaddy and change back the name server to Hostgator? IF YES, how long will my site be down (approx)?

3) If I don't cancel Cloudflare, I just pause it, then do I need to change the name server in Godaddy, does it affect website functionality for a short while etc.

David Makogon
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James
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    Great question for CloudFlare tech support. Or maybe ask on SuperUser. But this isn't a question for StackOverflow. – David Makogon Dec 06 '16 at 12:11
  • Sorry about that, I wasn't aware - I will keep this in mind next time. I just saw that cloudflare tag exists, so I thought it's ok to ask how the mechanism of DNS name server change works. Is there a way to delete this question or shall I keep it, it might help someone. – James Dec 06 '16 at 12:38

1 Answers1

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There shouldn't be any downtime if you switch your DNS from Hostgator to CloudFlare. What happens when you switch name servers is that your change will take some time to propagate to all DNS servers; some will point to CloudFlare in a matter of minutes, whereas others could take hours or more to reflect the change. Even if the change is not effective on a given DNS server yet, it will still point to your previous Hostgator name server. So as long as you don't change your Hostgator setup, and only change your Gogaddy domain's name server to CloudFlare, everything should be fine.

Also, if you "pause" CloudFlare, that only means that CloudFlare's additional services (DDoS protection, etc.) will be disabled, but your domain name will still point to CloudFlare and CloudFlare will still do its job and serve your visitors correctly.

Pierre-Loup Pagniez
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  • That is brilliant answer, thanks!! And how about the other way around, if I happen to cancel Cloudflare, it's the same process, literally no downtime? – James Dec 06 '16 at 12:26
  • If you do cancel your CloudFlare subscription, then yes, there might be some downtime, so you will need to change your Godaddy's config back to Hostgator before cancelling your CloudFlare subscription. You can then use a DNS propagation checker to see when your change has been applied to most servers. Google "dns propagation check" to find some websites that can do this for you. – Pierre-Loup Pagniez Dec 06 '16 at 12:31
  • Thanks! Very helpful insights :) !! – James Dec 06 '16 at 12:39