What Is DNS TTL and How Do You Lower It Before Moving Your Website?

TTL stands for Time to Live. It's a setting on every DNS record that tells other servers around the world how long they're allowed to store, or "cache," a copy of that record before checking with your domain's nameservers again for the latest version. If you're planning a change that affects your DNS, such as pointing your domain to a new host, lowering the TTL beforehand is one of the few things you can actually do to speed up how quickly visitors see the update.

What TTL Actually Controls

Every DNS record type, an A record, CNAME, MX, or TXT record, has its own TTL value, usually shown in seconds. A TTL of 3600 means resolvers are allowed to cache that record for one hour before asking your nameservers again. A TTL of 86400 means a full day.

This caching is what makes the internet fast: resolvers don't have to look up the same record over and over. But it's also why DNS changes don't take effect instantly everywhere. Until the old TTL expires wherever a resolver last cached the record, that resolver keeps serving the old answer.

Why TTL Matters Before a Planned Change

If your current TTL is set high, for example 24 hours, and you update an A record to point to a new server, some visitors could keep hitting the old server for up to a day after the change, depending on when their resolver last cached it. This is normal and not a sign anything went wrong.

You can't force every resolver worldwide to drop its cache early. Lowering TTL ahead of time only shortens how long resolvers are allowed to hold onto the old answer once you do make the change.

The fix is to lower the TTL a day or two before you make the actual change, then wait for that lower TTL to take effect, and only then update the record itself. Once the change is confirmed working, you can raise the TTL back to a normal value.

How to Check and Lower TTL

In cPanel

1. Log in to cPanel and open Zone Editor under the Domains section.
2. Click Manage next to the domain you want to edit.
3. Find the record you're planning to change and click Edit next to it.
4. Change the TTL field to a low value, such as 300 (5 minutes) or 1800 (30 minutes).
5. Click Save Record.

In DirectAdmin

1. Log in to DirectAdmin and open DNS Management (sometimes listed under Account Manager or Advanced Features, depending on your theme).
2. Select the domain whose zone you want to edit.
3. Locate the record and update the TTL value in the row for that record, again using something short like 300 or 1800 seconds.
4. Click Save to apply the change to the zone.

What TTL Value to Use

• For day-to-day records that rarely change, a TTL of 3600 (1 hour) to 86400 (24 hours) is fine and reduces unnecessary lookups.
• Before a planned change, lower it to 300 to 1800 seconds (5 to 30 minutes) at least 24 hours ahead of time, so the low value has fully propagated before you make the real change.
• After the change is live and confirmed working, raise the TTL back to a normal value to reduce load on your nameservers.

If you didn't get a chance to lower the TTL in advance, a change will still work, it will just take longer for every resolver to pick it up. See our guide on how long DNS changes take to propagate for what to expect while you wait.