How to Point Your Domain to Noiz Hosting

This guide is for anyone who has bought Noiz hosting and now needs their domain name, the address people type into a browser, to actually load the website and receive the email that live on Noiz servers. It covers the two ways to connect a domain to hosting: handing the whole domain over to the Noiz nameservers ns1.noiz.co.za and ns2.noiz.co.za (the simple, recommended route), or leaving your nameservers where they are and pointing only individual records such as A and MX. It also explains, in plain terms, why the change is never instant and how to check for yourself when it has taken effect, so you are not left refreshing a page and guessing.

A word on terminology first, because two ideas get muddled constantly. Your nameservers are the servers that answer the question "who is in charge of this domain's records", and they are set at your registrar, the company you bought the domain from. Your DNS records (A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT and so on) are the individual entries those nameservers hand out, and they say things like "the website is at this address" and "send mail to this server". Changing nameservers moves the whole job to a new set of servers at once. Changing records edits single entries at whichever nameservers are already in charge. This guide keeps the two clearly apart, because choosing the right one is most of the battle.

Last reviewed: 27 July 2026, against current DNS practice (RFC 1034/1035/2181) and the Noiz client area. This guide is written for Noiz hosting and is kept current as the Noiz client area and nameservers evolve. It complements, and does not replace, the standards and authority references linked below. Registrar control panels differ in layout and wording, so where a field name here does not match your registrar exactly, look for the equivalent; the action and its effect stay the same.

Official Documentation Reference

• RFC 1034: Domain Names, Concepts and Facilities: the authoritative description of how the domain name system delegates authority to nameservers, which is exactly what you are changing when you point a domain.
• RFC 1035: Domain Names, Implementation and Specification: defines the record types you will meet (NS, A, MX, CNAME) and the TTL field that governs caching.
• RFC 2181: Clarifications to the DNS Specification (Section 8, Time to Live): the precise rules for TTL, the value that decides how long the old answer lingers after you make a change.
• IANA Root Zone Database: the list of every top-level domain and its registry, useful for understanding the chain that leads a visitor from .co.za or .com down to your nameservers.
• ZADNA, the .za Domain Name Authority: the statutory authority for South Africa's .za namespace, including .co.za, for registrant rights and the rules that govern local domains.

Prerequisites

• You have an active hosting service with Noiz for the domain you are pointing. Pointing a domain at Noiz before the hosting exists gives visitors an error, because there is nothing yet for the nameservers to serve.
• You can sign in to the account at your current registrar, the company where the domain is registered, with enough access to change nameservers or edit DNS records. If someone else registered the domain on your behalf, they may hold this access.
• You know your domain name, written here as yourdomain.com throughout as an example to replace with your real domain.
• The domain is not locked in a way that blocks changes. A registrar transfer lock stops a domain moving to another registrar but does not usually stop nameserver or record edits; if changes are refused, check with your registrar.

Two Ways to Point a Domain, and When to Use Each

There are two clean approaches, and picking the right one avoids most of the trouble people run into.

For most people the first approach is simpler and less error-prone: you change two nameserver values once, and from then on every record for the domain is managed together on the Noiz side. Reach for the second approach only when something outside Noiz genuinely needs to remain the authority for your DNS.

Nameservers and DNS Records, Explained

It helps to picture what actually happens when a visitor types yourdomain.com. Their computer does not know where your site is, so it asks a chain of servers. The top-level domain registry, for example the operator of .co.za or .com, does not store your website's address either. What it stores is a signpost: the names of your nameservers. This signpost is the delegation, and it is exactly what you set at your registrar.

Once the visitor's computer learns that ns1.noiz.co.za and ns2.noiz.co.za are in charge, it asks those nameservers for the specific record it needs: the A record for the website's address, the MX records for where mail should go, and so on. So nameservers are the "who is in charge" answer, and DNS records are the individual answers that server then gives. When you delegate to Noiz, you move the "who is in charge" job to Noiz, and all the records travel with it. When you edit a single record instead, you are changing one answer while the "who is in charge" part stays put.

If Your Domain Is Registered with Noiz

If you registered the domain through the Noiz website domain search or added it in the Noiz client area at checkout, there is nothing to do here. Noiz sets the nameservers to ns1.noiz.co.za and ns2.noiz.co.za for you when the domain and hosting are set up together, so the domain is already pointed at your hosting. You can confirm this in the client area, and you can jump straight to How to Verify the Change below to see it for yourself. The manual steps that follow are for domains registered somewhere other than Noiz.

Method 1: Point Your Nameservers to Noiz (Recommended)

This is the route to use unless you have a specific reason not to. You are telling the domain's registry to hand the whole job to Noiz.

Step 1: Sign in at your current registrar

Log in to the account at the company where the domain is registered. Every registrar has a page for managing an individual domain, often labelled Manage, DNS, or Nameservers. Open the settings for yourdomain.com.

Step 2: Find the nameserver setting

Look for a section named Nameservers, Name Servers, or sometimes DNS. Registrars usually offer a choice between the registrar's own default (often called "basic", "parked", or a default that uses the registrar's own nameservers) and a "custom" or "use your own nameservers" option. Choose the option that lets you enter your own nameservers.

Step 3: Enter the Noiz nameservers

Replace whatever is there with the two Noiz nameservers, one in each field:

ns1.noiz.co.za
ns2.noiz.co.za

Enter them exactly, with no extra spaces and no trailing full stop unless your registrar's field already shows one. If the form provides more than two nameserver fields, leave the extras blank; two are all that is required. Do not enter an IP address in a nameserver field; nameservers are names, not numbers.

Step 4: Save

Save or apply the change. The registrar sends the new delegation up to the domain's registry. The registry itself usually records the change within minutes, but the wider internet takes longer to notice, for the reasons explained under propagation below. From this point your website and email will move to Noiz as the change spreads.

One caution before you switch. Delegating to Noiz means the Noiz nameservers become the single source of truth for the domain. Any records that existed only at your old nameservers, for example a mail-related TXT record, a subdomain, or a record for a service unrelated to Noiz, will stop being used the moment the delegation moves. Before you switch, note down any such records so they can be recreated on the Noiz side. Your standard website and Noiz email records are set up for you as part of your hosting; it is the extra, non-Noiz records that are easy to forget.

Method 2: Keep Your Nameservers and Point Only Records

Use this approach only when another provider must remain the authority for your domain's DNS, and you want to move just the website, just the email, or both, to Noiz without handing over the whole domain. Here you leave the nameservers untouched and edit individual records at whoever currently runs your DNS.

Point the website (A record)

The website is moved by editing the A record for the domain (and usually for the www host) so that it holds the IP address of your Noiz hosting. To do that you first need that IP address; see How to Find Your Server IP Address for where to read it from your Noiz account. Set the A record for yourdomain.com, and the A record (or CNAME) for www, to that address at your current DNS provider.

Point the email (MX records)

Email is moved by editing the MX records so they name the Noiz mail host for your service rather than your old provider. The exact mail host and priority for your account are shown with your Noiz hosting details; use those values rather than copying them from elsewhere, because mail host names differ between services. Remove or replace the old MX records so that mail is not split between two providers, which is a common cause of some messages arriving and others vanishing.

Because this approach leaves the "who is in charge" answer with your existing provider, only the records you edit change. Anything you do not touch keeps pointing wherever it did before, which is exactly why this method suits a partial move but adds ongoing work: every record you want on Noiz has to be set by hand, and future changes are made at your DNS provider, not on Noiz.

Why the Change Takes Time (Propagation and TTL)

Whichever method you use, the change is not instant, and understanding why saves a lot of needless worry. The delay is not your registrar being slow, and it is not Noiz being slow. It is caching.

To keep the internet fast, DNS answers are cached. When a resolver anywhere in the world looks up your domain, it is told how long it may remember the answer before asking again. That lifetime is the TTL (time to live), a value attached to every record and measured in seconds. Until a cached answer's TTL runs out, that resolver keeps serving the old answer, even after you have made your change. What people call "propagation" is really nothing more than these old cached answers ageing out around the world and being refreshed with the new ones. Nothing is travelling anywhere; old copies are simply expiring at different times in different places.

This is why two people can see different results at the same moment: one is behind a resolver that has already refreshed, the other behind one still holding the old answer for a few more minutes or hours. It is normal, and it resolves itself. The widely used rule of thumb is to allow up to 24 to 48 hours for a change to be seen everywhere, though in practice most locations update far sooner, often within an hour or two.

Two nuances are worth knowing:

• Nameserver changes (Method 1) can feel slower than record changes. The lifetime of the delegation is set by the top-level domain's own settings, not by you, and for some extensions it is long. That is inherent to how the registry publishes delegations and is outside anyone's control, so patience is the only remedy here.
• Record changes (Method 2) are under your control in advance. If you know you are about to move an A or MX record, lower that record's TTL, for example to 300 seconds (five minutes), a day or two before the switch. Once the old, long TTL has expired everywhere, the actual change is picked up within the new short window. Raise the TTL back to a normal value afterwards. This trick only helps if you plan ahead, because you cannot shorten a TTL that resolvers have already cached.

How to Verify the Change

Rather than guessing from a browser, which caches aggressively, check DNS directly. There are two easy ways.

From the command line

On macOS or Linux, the dig command asks DNS the exact question you care about. To confirm the nameserver delegation (Method 1), run:

dig NS yourdomain.com +short

Once the change has reached the resolver you are using, the reply lists your Noiz nameservers:

ns1.noiz.co.za.
ns2.noiz.co.za.

To confirm where the website points (useful for Method 2, or to check the site after delegating), ask for the A record:

dig A yourdomain.com +short

And to confirm mail delivery, ask for the MX records:

dig MX yourdomain.com +short

On Windows, the equivalent is nslookup:

nslookup -type=ns yourdomain.com

With an online propagation checker

Because your own computer only shows you the answer at one location, a global DNS propagation checker is the better tool for seeing the wider picture. These are free websites (search for the term "DNS propagation checker") that query DNS resolvers in many countries at once and show you, on a map or a list, which parts of the world already return the new answer and which still hold the old one. Choose the record type you changed (NS for a nameserver switch, A for the website, MX for mail), enter yourdomain.com, and watch the locations turn over to the new value. When they are all showing the Noiz nameservers or the correct records, the change is effectively complete.

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: hours have passed and the site still shows the old page or an error. First confirm the nameservers actually changed at the registry, using dig NS yourdomain.com +short or a propagation checker set to NS. If it still lists the old nameservers everywhere, the change did not save at your registrar; go back and set the nameservers again. If the checker shows the Noiz nameservers in most locations but your own browser does not, it is your local or network cache; try a different device or connection, or clear your browser cache.
• Symptom: the website works but email has stopped, or the reverse. This usually means you moved one and not the other, or records are split between two providers. If you delegated to Noiz (Method 1), make sure any records that lived only at the old nameservers were recreated on the Noiz side. If you are using Method 2, check that the A record and the MX records both point where you intend, and that no leftover MX record still names the old mail provider.
• Symptom: the registrar rejects the nameserver values. Check for typos and stray spaces, that you entered names and not IP addresses, and that you filled the two nameserver fields rather than a "hostname registration" field, which is a different feature for registering your own custom nameservers. Enter ns1.noiz.co.za and ns2.noiz.co.za exactly.
• Symptom: some visitors reach the new site and others do not. This is normal propagation in progress: different resolvers are refreshing at different times as their cached answers expire. It settles on its own within the propagation window. A propagation checker will show the split clearly and confirm there is nothing to fix.
• Symptom: you cannot find where to change nameservers at your registrar. The setting sometimes hides under a "DNS" or "advanced" menu, and a few registrars require you to switch off a managed-DNS or parking option before the nameserver fields become editable. If it is genuinely absent, the domain may be managed through a reseller or a third party who holds that access.

Managed Plans and Noiz Support

If you are on a Noiz managed plan, you do not have to make these changes yourself. Open a ticket with the Noiz support team, tell them the domain and where it is currently registered, and they will point it at your hosting and confirm when it is live. For domains registered with Noiz, the pointing is already handled as part of setting up your service.

If you are pointing a domain yourself and something does not behave as expected, Noiz support can help. When you open a ticket, include your domain name, whether you changed nameservers or individual records, what your registrar is (without sharing passwords), and what a check such as dig NS yourdomain.com currently returns. That lets the team see the same DNS you do and tell you quickly whether the change is still propagating or genuinely needs fixing.