Skip to main content
Mon to Sun, 9 AM to 9 PM ET
GoDaddy Access

Give Us Delegate
Access to Your Domain.

Two minutes. We ask for Domains Only access, enough to point your domain at the new site, nothing else. No password, no billing, no ownership change.

You keep everything

Delegate access is a permission, not a transfer. You stay the account holder and the domain owner, we cannot see your payment methods or your other products, and we cannot transfer the domain away. You can revoke it in about thirty seconds, the steps are published further down.

Invite these details:

Matthew Roguske
[email protected]
Access level: Domains Only

Jump to a section

Step zero: not sure where your domain is registered?

Very common, especially if someone else bought it for you years ago. Takes a minute and costs nothing.

  1. Go to lookup.icann.orgThe official registry lookup. Free, no account.
  2. Type in your domainJust the domain, yourbusiness.com, no www.
  3. Find the “Registrar” lineThat is the company that holds your domain. GoDaddy, Namecheap, Squarespace, Network Solutions, Tucows, whoever.
  4. Also check the “Registrant” and expiry dateRegistrant should be your business, not an agency or a person who no longer works with you. If it is not, tell us. That is a bigger conversation than DNS and it is worth having now.

While you are looking: check the expiry date

Make sure auto-renew is on and the contact email on the account is one you can actually open. A domain that expires mid-build is the worst thirty seconds of admin anyone ever skipped, the site goes dark, the email stops, and recovering an expired domain ranges from annoying to genuinely expensive.

“Will this break my email?”

The question everyone asks and almost nobody gets a straight answer to. No, and here is exactly why not.

Your domain’s DNS holds several kinds of record. The ones that route your email (MX records, plus SPF, DKIM and DMARC) are separate from the one that points your website (the A record). Changing where your website lives does not have to touch email at all.

What we actually do

  1. We ask who provides your email before we touch anythingGoogle Workspace, Microsoft 365, your host, or something older. This is on the onboarding checklist for exactly this reason.
  2. We record every existing DNS record firstMX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, TXT verification records, anything unusual. A full copy before a single change.
  3. Where we can, we change only the A recordThat points the website at the new server and leaves email completely untouched. This is the safest route and it is the one we use by default.
  4. If nameservers do have to move, we recreate every record firstMoving nameservers moves all your records at once, which is where people’s email genuinely does break, because someone forgot to copy the MX records across. We rebuild them at the new provider before the switch, not after.
  5. We check your email is flowing after launchSend yourself one from an outside address. We will ask you to do the same, two minutes, and it is how you find a problem in the window where it is easy to fix.

How long does a change take to spread? Usually minutes to a couple of hours. Occasionally up to 48 for some networks. We do not launch on a Friday afternoon for exactly this reason.

GoDaddy: seven steps

  1. Log in to GoDaddyWith the account that owns the domain.
  2. Open your account menuYour name or avatar, top right.
  3. Find “Delegate Access”Under Account Settings. On some layouts it sits under Account Settings Delegate Access; on others you reach it from the Domains area. If you cannot find it, search “delegate” in GoDaddy help. They move it.
  4. Click “Invite to Access”Under “People I’ve delegated access to”, not the other list, which is access other people gave you.
  5. Enter our name and emailMatthew Roguske and [email protected]
  6. Choose “Domains Only”Not “Products, Domains & Purchase” and not full access. Domains Only is all we need. If a shop asks you for more than this, ask them what for.
  7. Send the invitationWe accept the same business day, usually within a couple of hours.

Not on GoDaddy?

Every registrar handles this differently and some do not offer delegated access at all. Find yours below, or skip to the option where you give us nothing.

  • Namecheap

    No true delegate access. Either add us as a sub-account user with DNS permissions, or use the paste option below.

  • Squarespace Domains formerly Google Domains

    Invite us as a contributor with domain permissions, or use the paste option. If you moved over from Google, the interface changed but the idea is the same.

  • Cloudflare the easy one

    Genuinely good at this. Invite us to the account with a DNS-scoped role and nothing else is exposed.

  • Network Solutions, Web.com, Register.com awkward

    Sharing is often all-or-nothing. The paste option is recommended, or a scheduled call where you make the changes while we read them out.

  • Wix, Squarespace, Shopify domain bought inside the platform

    Usually manageable, sometimes locked. Tell us at kickoff: a domain living inside a platform changes what is possible on launch day.

  • Your web host Bluehost, HostGator, GoDaddy hosting, a local IT company

    Tell us who it is. If a local IT provider manages it, we are happy to talk to them directly and keep you out of the middle.

Not sure which of these you are on? Step zero tells you in a minute.

Option B: give us no access at all

Completely legitimate, and some people prefer it. We are not going to talk you out of it.

Instead of access, we send you the exact records to enter, the type, the name, the value, and the TTL, and you paste them in yourself. It works at every registrar and you never share anything.

What it costs you

  • You have to be available on launch day. Not “around”, at a computer, within a scheduled window. The switch is a five-minute job that has to happen at a specific moment.
  • Typos are the risk. A single wrong character in a TXT record breaks email authentication in a way that is invisible for days. We will check your work after, send us a screenshot of the records once you have saved them.
  • Anything urgent later takes longer. If something DNS-related breaks in six months, we have to reach you before we can fix it rather than just fixing it.

None of that is a dealbreaker. Plenty of clients run it this way for years. Just tell us at kickoff so we schedule launch day around your availability rather than ours.

What Domains Only can and cannot do

Delegate access at the Domains Only level. Six things it lets us do, and six it structurally cannot, whatever anybody tells you.

What Domains Only lets us do
  • Edit DNS records: A, CNAME, MX, TXT
  • Change nameservers
  • Set up subdomains
  • Configure domain forwarding
  • Add SSL and verification records
  • Diagnose why something is not resolving
What it cannot do
  • See or use your payment methods
  • Buy anything on your account
  • See your billing history or personal details
  • Touch your hosting, email accounts or other products
  • Transfer the domain away from you
  • Change your password or lock you out

If a task genuinely needs more than Domains Only, we will ask you to do that one thing yourself and explain why. We will not ask you to widen the permission because it would be convenient for us.

How to remove us

Published, because access you cannot revoke is not access.

  1. Log in to GoDaddy and open Delegate AccessSame page you used to invite us.
  2. Find our entry in the delegates listListed under People I have delegated access to.
  3. Choose Edit to change the level, or Delete to remove it entirelyImmediate. No notice to us required and no reason needed.

At the end of an engagement we remove ourselves as part of handover anyway, but you should never have to wait for us to do it.

If something is not working

I cannot find Delegate Access

GoDaddy moves it. Try your account menu top right, then Account Settings. If it is not there, search “delegate access” in GoDaddy’s own help and use their link. Send us a screenshot of what you are seeing and we will point you at it.

Do you need a GoDaddy account to accept?

Yes, and we have one. The invitation goes to our email and we accept from our own account. You are never sharing a login.

What is the difference between the access levels?

Domains Only is DNS and domain settings. “Products, Domains & Purchase” adds hosting and the ability to buy things on your account. Full access is everything including billing. We ask for the smallest one that does the job, and you should expect the same from anyone else.

Can you transfer my domain away?

No. Transfers require the account owner and an authorization code that only you can generate. Delegate access does not include it, deliberately, on GoDaddy’s part.

How long until you accept?

Same business day, usually within a couple of hours. If it is still pending after a day, tell us, occasionally the invite lands somewhere unhelpful.

I cannot log in to my own GoDaddy account

Run the account recovery on the login page first. If two-factor is going to a phone number you no longer have, GoDaddy’s support can help but they will need to verify you own the account, have the domain, the account number and a payment method on file ready. Start this early; it can take a few days and it blocks launch.

My domain is registered to my old web guy

Tell us at kickoff. Depending on the situation it is either a friendly request, a transfer with an auth code, or a formal dispute. All three take time and it is the one thing on the onboarding list that can genuinely delay a launch by weeks, so we want to know in week one.

Will my site go down during the switch?

No. The new site is live and tested on our server before we change anything, the DNS change just points traffic at it. Visitors go to the old site or the new one, never to nothing. That is the whole reason we build on staging first.

Can I watch you do it?

Yes, and some people prefer that. We will get on a call, share a screen and talk through each record as we change it. Ask at kickoff and we will schedule launch day for a time that suits you.

Done?

Tell us on the project thread that the invite is sent, and let us know who provides your email. That is the one detail that decides how we handle launch day.

Matthew Roguske
[email protected]
Access level: Domains Only

Something is not working+1-248-205-6977

Related: onboarding checklist · Google Business Profile access · how the build runs

  • Published pricing
  • Month to month, no minimum term
  • You own everything
CallBook a Free Call