How to connect your InMotion Hosting domain to your Service Bay Digital website

Your domain is with InMotion Hosting. To make it show the website we built you, you change two records in your InMotion cPanel: the www address, and the plain address without the www. It takes about five minutes and you keep the domain.

Read this part first. Your email is not involved and does not change. You change two records: the www address, and the plain address without the www. You will not touch your nameservers, your email (MX) records, your TXT records or DNSSEC. If any screen asks you to change nameservers, stop and tell us. You never need to for this.

On InMotion, your email often runs on the same server as your old website, and the plain address is how it’s found. We check that at step 1. If your email depends on it, we don’t use these steps; we make the change with you by hand so your email keeps working. These steps use cPanel, which comes with InMotion web hosting. If you only have the domain at InMotion, with no hosting, InMotion gives no cPanel and your records live wherever your nameservers point; tell us and we’ll send the steps for that place.

Before you change anything, write down what’s there. Take a photo or screenshot of your records screen before you edit it. If you ever want to go back, that picture is all you need.

The steps

Tell us before you touch anything

Reply to our email and say go. We switch both addresses on at our end first, and we check from the outside that your email does not depend on the plain address (for nearly every shop it doesn’t) and that nothing on your domain would block its security certificate. If the records go in before we’ve done that, your address shows an error page instead of your site. Told first, the whole thing is uneventful. On InMotion, wait for our go-ahead before step 5.

Sign in to cPanel

Log in with the cPanel user that owns the domain. InMotion’s Zone Editor only works if your domain uses InMotion’s nameservers (ns1/ns2.inmotionhosting.com, or servconfig.com on reseller accounts). If yours are somewhere else, stop and tell us. If any screen asks you to change nameservers, stop and tell us.

Open the Zone Editor

In the Domains section, click Zone Editor. Find your domain and click Manage.

Change the www record

Type www into Filter by name. Click Edit next to the www record, set its type to CNAME, put the www value in our email to you in the Record field, and click Save Record. If there’s no www record, click +Add Record, choose the CNAME type, enter www and the value, and click Save Record.

Change the plain-address record

Find the A record whose name is your domain followed by a dot (yourshop.com.). Click Edit beside it, put the plain-address value in our email to you in the Record field, and click Save Record. cPanel writes the plain address as yourshop.com., not @.

Remove anything else on the plain address

If there’s a second A record, or an AAAA record, named yourshop.com., click Delete next to it, then Continue. Leave every other record exactly as it is, including mail. and anything of type MX or TXT.

Expect a few odd minutes

For a short while, your address may refuse to load. You won’t get a warning you can click past, just a browser saying it can’t make a secure connection. That’s our end issuing the security certificates for your two addresses. It’s normal and it clears itself. A phone on mobile data may see your old site a little longer than your laptop does. InMotion says record changes can take up to a day to reach everyone.

Tell us it is done

Reply to our email. We check that both addresses reach your new site over a proper secure connection, with or without the www and with or without https://, and that your mail records are exactly where they were.

Questions people actually ask

Will this break my email?

No. Email runs on its own records, and you don’t touch them. The www address and the plain address are web addresses only, and we check before you start that your mail doesn’t lean on either.

Do I lose my domain?

No. It stays registered to you at InMotion Hosting, you keep paying InMotion Hosting for it, and it stays yours.

Can I change it back?

Yes. Put both records back to the values in your before-photo. Nothing here is one-way.

Why does the plain address point at a different value from www?

The www record sends visitors to your new site. The plain-address record sends anyone who leaves the www off to the same place, keeping the page they asked for, over a secure connection.

My records aren’t at InMotion Hosting, they’re somewhere else.

That happens: a domain bought in one place can have its records kept in another. Make the same two changes wherever your records live, or tell us where that is and we’ll send the steps for that company. Don’t move your nameservers to make InMotion Hosting’s screens work.

Never click Reset Zone.

InMotion’s own warning: it deletes your custom records, and that’s where your email setup can live.

cPanel won’t let me edit the record, only add new ones.

Some InMotion plans work that way. Tell us before deleting anything and we’ll go through it with you.

Does my InMotion hosting have to stay?

Not for the website. If your email runs on it, yes, until you move your email. Tell us before you cancel anything.

Registered somewhere else?

Plenty of owners find their domain is not where they thought it was. If it is not at InMotion Hosting, open the page for the company it is at — the screens and the wording are different at every one.

Not sure which of these you are with? Start here and we will work it out with you.

Steps checked against InMotion Hosting’s own help pages, “Using the Zone Editor in cPanel”, “How to Create a CNAME Record”, “How to Set DNS Records for 3rd Party Services”, “Adding an A Record”, “How Do I Add DNS Records?”, “How to Change Your Domain Nameservers in AMP”, on 2026-10-08. InMotion Hosting can change its screens without telling anyone; if what you see doesn’t match this page, tell us and we’ll fix the page.