7 Steps to Transfer Your Wix Domain & DNS to Cloudflare

The Price Hike Irk

A few days ago, I received an email from WIX:

Now this irked me for a couple of reasons:

1. I found out recently that Payoneer had increased its fees — what once cost me just $1 to withdraw now costs $111 😩 *$ = USD

2. Then, my card was charged $466 because Wix raised their 2-year website hosting fee from $276 to $466; I last paid $138 thanks to a 50% coupon.

3. With those two price hikes, I decided to check how much my domain and DNS hosting were costing on Wix. At $18.73 per year, ChatGPT assured me it was still a reasonable rate — as long as they didn’t increase it again.

But alas! Just 2 days later… that email arrived. 🙃

I never thought I’d write a technical post about domains and DNS — not even when I was working in the cloud computing industry. But as a freelancer managing my own voice acting website, the knowledge suddenly mattered.

As much as I’d like to think my name is gaining popularity (making my domain more valuable), I doubt that’s the case. So when samyeow.com went from $0 → $16 → $18.73→ $23, I figured it was time to transfer my domain and DNS hosting out of Wix.

Setting My Sights on Cloudflare

After consulting ChatGPT and checking prices from a few domain registrars, I quickly decided on Cloudflare: 

• Cloudflare: about $10.20/year (wholesale + ICANN fee, no markup)

• Namecheap: around $14–16/year, depending on promos

• GoDaddy: usually more expensive unless discounted (~$20+).

Questions I asked ChatGPT:

Q: What’s the difference between using Wix and Cloudflare?

A: Mainly convenience. You’ll save money, but you’ll need to manage your DNS yourself. Your Wix site will still work fine — it won’t load any slower.

Q: Is it hard to transfer a domain for someone not that technical (like me)?

Short A: Nope 🙃

Long A: Nope, IF I had a clear step-by-step guide back then. But as we say in Malaysia, “so many ding-ding-dong-dong only gaodim” — it was a winding path before everything finally worked because of the lack of concrete instructions I could find online.

Q: Do I lose any remaining time if I transfer early?

A: No, you don’t, as the new registrar adds 1 year on top of your current expiration date.

⚠️ Super Important

Do not update your contact info before transferring! ICANN (the global domain authority) enforces a 60-day lock whenever you update ownership or contact details — meaning you can’t transfer your domain for 2 months. I almost updated mine but thankfully I stopped myself, or I’d have had to wait 60 days — which would’ve passed my renewal date and locked me in with Wix for another year.

7 Steps to Clearer Skies

Step 1: Turn off Wix domain auto-renewal

Wix charges you one month before the actual renewal date. Turn this off first so you don’t get billed for another year.

Step 2: Prepare your Cloudflare account

• Sign up on Cloudflare.

• On the dashboard, go to Account Home → Onboard a domain → Enter your existing domain

• Cloudflare will scan and import your existing DNS records.

• Double-check them against your Wix records (Wix → Settings → Domains → Manage DNS Records) — make sure everything matches.

• Cloudflare will then give you two nameservers (e.g. nile.ns.cloudflare.com and candy.ns.cloudflare.com).

Step 3: Change Nameservers and Unlock Domain on Wix

Unfortunately, you can’t change the nameservers or unlock the domain by yourself.

This is what I got after signing up to Cloudflare:

So, contact Wix Customer Support (CS) and ask them to:

1. Change your nameservers to the ones provided by Cloudflare.

2. Unlock your domain.

3. Check that the status has been updated on whois.com

They’ll relay the details to their technical team. It took 2–3 working days for me to get it sorted.

Once the nameservers are updated, Cloudflare sends you an email:

Step 4: Get your Transfer Authorization Code

Here’s something worth noting: When I first started this entire process, I did not know I had to change the nameservers first. Wix CS and AI chat asked me to go to my Account → Domains → Transfer Away from Wix. They sent me a Domain Transfer Authorization Code by email which expires in 7 days.

It was only then I realize all the other things I needed to do. So I’m unsure if you could ask Wix CS to do Step 3 before choosing ‘Transfer Away from Wix’ or they might only do so afterwards, but I’d try the former since there’s a expiration date for the code.

Step 5: Complete the domain transfer in Cloudflare

After Wix CS has changed your nameservers and unlock your domain, 

go back to Cloudflare, and you’ll be able to ‘select domains to transfer’.

After filling in my contact information, I paid $11.30 = $10.46 + 8% Malaysian service tax.

With that, my transfers are now underway 😀

Step 6: Speed up the transfer

The next day, I received an email from noreply@opensrs.email, saying that Wix.com Ltd. had received a request to transfer samyeow.com to another registrar.

Now, the funny thing is — if I hadn’t been in the middle of writing this blog, I wouldn’t have clicked on that link at all, because like, I don’t wish to cancel innit? 😅

But I did — and clicking it brought me to a page where I could process the transfer immediately, instead of waiting until the 14th.

After accepting, I received this: 

Domain Transfer Accepted

Thank you. Your domain will be transferred to 1910. You may be asked to complete their confirmation processes before the domain is actually transferred away.

About one minute later, I received an email from Cloudflare:

Your domain transfer is complete and now registered with Cloudflare! 😀

I checked my website immediately — everything was working perfectly… BUT ! 

Step 7: Connect the domain in Wix

You still need to head back to Wix to connect the domain, otherwise, your site will stop showing up (which happened to me). So go to Wix → Select Site → Settings → Domains → Connect Domain

Turbulence Along the Way

As mentioned earlier, I hit a few bumps in this process, so here’s a quick rundown that might come in handy.

ChatGPT makes mistakes:

• It told me Cloudflare doesn’t need to change nameservers first. Turns out, Cloudflare is one of the few registrars that actually requires it before anything else can proceed.

• It also said Wix didn’t need to unlock my domain, assuming it was unlocked automatically when they sent the transfer code. Nope. Wix still needs to unlock it manually — and only their technical team can do that.

Cloudflare Error Message:

If you see this:

That means your domain is still locked. Contact Wix Customer Support to unlock it.

Wix Customer Support: Reactive, not Proactive

When I first contacted Wix CS to change my nameservers, they didn’t ask if I also wanted to unlock my domain or update WHOIS — so I ended up reaching out 3–4 times to get everything done.

Save yourself the back-and-forth by asking them to do all three in one go:

1. Change nameservers to Cloudflare’s

2. Unlock your domain

3. Update WHOIS if needed

After transferring, your website doesn’t show up:

If you see this:

That means your domain isn’t connected to your Wix site (check Step 7).

In my case, I only found out because someone tried to visit my site a few days later and notified me that it wasn’t loading. To fix it, go to: Wix → Select Site → Settings → Domains → Connect Domain

It reconnects right away — your site should be live again within minutes.

Wix still shows a “problem connecting this domain” warning

Despite your website being live and accessible, you see this on your Wix interface:

Explanation: When you move your domain and DNS to Cloudflare, Wix no longer has direct control over your DNS records. So it can’t verify the connection automatically anymore, even if your site is working perfectly.

When I proceeded, Wix asked me to log in and authorize with Cloudflare:

ChatGPT initially said it’s cool to authorize it, only to change its answer to “don’t authorize it.” 😅 saying it’s like a smoke alarm that beeps even though there’s no fire — annoying, but harmless.

Based on my cousin brother and a web developer acquaintance, basically this is Wix trying (and failing) to detect the updated DNS from Cloudflare. It wants to validate my domain because the current DNS setup has multiple A records that may be redundant or causing conflicts.

In simpler terms: I can leave it as is (my site will still work fine), but the DNS records will look a little messy; like having a dusty floor — it doesn’t stop the house from being a habitable house, it just isn’t… clean.

I went ahead and authorized it to “make it clean.” There was no downtime (which I was worried about), and Wix showed everything was fine within minutes. :)

And that wraps it up! Hopefully this blog was useful to someone — and saved you a bit of ding-ding-dong-dong haha.