Gated preview · Session 01 · 2026-04-24 11:00 · Not the live site
BAF Training × Hook and Eye
Session 01 preview · prepared 2026-04-23

Hook and Eye Company — Domain Transfer Path

Prepared for: Lindsay, Hook and Eye Company

From: Taylor / BAF Training

Date: 2026-04-23, for session 01 on 2026-04-24 at 11:00

This document explains how we move your domain from Wix to Cloudflare, why it cannot go directly, what the middle step looks like, and how to not break your existing email while we do it. It is written so you can read it without me in the room. If you want to do any of the steps yourself, great. If you want me to do them on a screenshare, also great.

Why not direct

Cloudflare Registrar does not accept incoming transfers from Wix. This is not a Cloudflare problem and it is not really a Wix-bug either — it is a deliberate gap, because Wix's domain system is built around keeping domains inside Wix and Cloudflare's registrar is strict about the kind of auth codes it will accept. The industry-standard transfer path (unlock the domain, request an auth code, hand the code to the new registrar) works fine from Wix to most registrars, and it works fine to Cloudflare from most registrars — it just does not work Wix-to-Cloudflare in one hop.

The fix is to route through a middle registrar that accepts Wix transfers on one end and hands off cleanly to Cloudflare on the other. I am recommending Porkbun as the middle. (Namecheap would also work; I prefer Porkbun for this because its fees are lower and its transfer handling to Cloudflare is reliably clean.)

The full path, step by step

Step 1 — Prepare at Wix

Before anything else, take stock.

  1. Confirm renewal window. You renewed recently, which is good — transfers roll one year onto the registration, so you will not lose time. If we were within 60 days of expiry we would want to wait.
  2. Record current DNS. Take a screenshot or copy-paste of every DNS record currently on the domain at Wix. Specifically the MX records (email), any TXT records (including SPF, DKIM, domain-verification tokens for Google Workspace and anything else), and any A or CNAME records pointing at live services. This is the thing we cannot recover if we lose it — DNS records do not transfer automatically between registrars and some take hours to resolve if set wrong.
  3. Unlock the domain. In the Wix domain settings there is a transfer-lock toggle. Turn it off.
  4. Request the auth code (EPP code). Wix calls this a "transfer key" or similar. They will usually email it to the registered admin email on the domain. This code is the password that authorizes the transfer.
  5. Disable WHOIS privacy temporarily if it is on. Some transfer steps fail against privacy-enabled domains. We will turn it back on at Cloudflare at the end.

Step 2 — Initiate transfer at Porkbun

  1. Create a Porkbun account (free; their UI is human-grade; two-factor authentication available).
  2. Paste the domain into Porkbun's transfer page. Porkbun will prompt for the auth code from step 1.
  3. Pay the transfer fee. At current Porkbun pricing for most TLDs this is under $15 and includes a one-year renewal tacked onto your existing registration.
  4. Porkbun will email Wix requesting the transfer. Wix usually takes 1–5 days to release. During this window the domain still resolves from Wix — nothing breaks.
  5. Do not change anything at Wix during this window. Specifically, do not touch DNS, do not cancel your Wix plan, do not let Wix "helpfully" reset anything. If Wix sends a "confirm this transfer" email to the admin address, click it; that speeds the release.

Step 3 — At Porkbun, replicate your DNS

While the domain is sitting at Porkbun (even briefly), set up the DNS records there exactly as they were at Wix. Use the screenshot from step 1. This is the moment where email silently breaks if we are not careful — MX and TXT records for Google Workspace must match.

This is also a good moment to update anything that was half-broken at Wix, because Porkbun's DNS editor is faster and cleaner than Wix's.

Step 4 — Transfer from Porkbun to Cloudflare

Once the domain is stable at Porkbun and DNS is resolving correctly (test by sending and receiving an email on the domain — if that works, DNS is fine):

  1. Create a Cloudflare account if you do not have one; add the domain as a site.
  2. Cloudflare will scan the DNS records Porkbun is serving and import them. Review the import carefully — occasionally records are missed or mangled. Compare against the Wix-era screenshot from step 1.
  3. Once the DNS is correct at Cloudflare (still pointing at Wix's old live services or wherever they currently point), change the nameservers at Porkbun to Cloudflare's. This hands DNS control to Cloudflare without changing what the domain resolves to.
  4. Wait for the nameserver change to propagate (usually minutes to a few hours).
  5. Once Cloudflare is fully authoritative and everything is still resolving correctly, go to Cloudflare's transfer flow and initiate the registrar transfer from Porkbun.
  6. At Porkbun, unlock and request the auth code (same two-step as Wix originally).
  7. At Cloudflare, paste the auth code. Pay the transfer fee — Cloudflare charges at cost (~$10/year for most TLDs, less than most other registrars because they do not mark it up).
  8. Cloudflare waits for Porkbun to release; this is usually 1–3 days.

Done. Domain is at Cloudflare, DNS is at Cloudflare, the site still resolves from wherever it was resolving, and your email has not missed a beat.

Step 5 — Re-enable privacy and turn on the good stuff

Once the domain is fully at Cloudflare:

  1. Turn on WHOIS privacy at Cloudflare (free; on by default on most TLDs).
  2. Turn on DNSSEC (one toggle; protects against DNS-level spoofing).
  3. Enable the Cloudflare proxy on any A/CNAME records pointing at the new site when we are ready — the proxy gives you free DDoS protection, free CDN caching, and a free SSL certificate. For email-related records (MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC) we leave the proxy off so email routing is not interrupted.

The big gotchas

These are the things that bite people. Listed so we can avoid them.

DNS records do not transfer with the domain. When the domain moves from Wix to Porkbun, Wix stops serving DNS for it. If Porkbun does not have your MX records set up at that exact moment, your email stops arriving. The step-3 replication above is what prevents this. We do it before the final nameserver flip.

Wix's email service is not your email service. You use Google Workspace — that email will continue to work as long as the MX records and TXT verification records stay intact through every transfer step. The Wix "email" service (the one you don't use and are not sad about) just goes away when Wix stops being the registrar. That is fine.

The Wix site itself is not the domain. The site at Wix and the domain are two separate things. Transferring the domain does not delete your Wix site. The site keeps running at whatever Wix-provided address it had. We only redirect traffic to the new site (built at Cloudflare Pages, or wherever we host) when the new site is ready and we flip the A record.

Do not let Wix auto-renew during the transfer. If Wix renews the domain while the transfer is in flight, the auth code can be invalidated and we have to start over. The window is small but worth being aware of.

Google Workspace domain verification must survive. Google uses a TXT record to verify that you own the domain. That TXT record must be present at every registrar along the way. If it disappears for more than a short window, Google Workspace can lock the domain out of the workspace and you have to re-verify, which is annoying but not destructive.

Double-check the auth code for typos. If you copy-paste it and it contains an invisible trailing space, the transfer silently fails. Trim aggressively.

Rollback

If anything goes wrong mid-transfer, we have two rollback paths.

Before the nameserver flip to Cloudflare (end of step 4.3): if the transfer to Porkbun completes but the DNS at Porkbun is not correct, we can revert nameservers to Wix's nameservers temporarily while we fix Porkbun's DNS. This takes minutes and email stays up.

After nameserver flip but before registrar-transfer completes: if Cloudflare's DNS import got something wrong, we can point the nameservers back to Porkbun without losing the domain. Porkbun's DNS still exists.

If the Cloudflare transfer completes and something is broken downstream: we fix at Cloudflare. At this point we cannot easily undo the transfer — but everything Cloudflare can do to the DNS, we can also undo. We do not lose data.

There is no point in the flow where we lose the domain. The worst case is a short email outage if MX records go wrong, and that is recoverable in minutes.

Timeline

If we start the transfer on a Monday:

Roughly two weeks from start to finish, mostly waiting for registrars to hand things off. Active work is an hour or two.

Cost

Net: under $25, and after the transfers complete you pay Cloudflare's at-cost renewal every year rather than whatever Wix charges. You will save that first-year cost many times over the life of the domain.

What I need from you

  1. Confirmation that you want to proceed with this path (Wix → Porkbun → Cloudflare).
  2. Access to the admin email on the Wix domain record — or confirmation you have it and will forward the auth code to me when it arrives.
  3. Credentials for the Wix account itself (separate from the admin email) when you are ready. These live in a password manager, not in an email, and I would like to handle them on a screenshare so we do both review the changes together.
  4. A decision on Porkbun account ownership. Options: (a) you create the Porkbun account and add me as a collaborator; (b) I create the Porkbun account under a BAF email and transfer ownership to you at the end; (c) I walk you through creating it on a screenshare. (a) is most common; (c) is my recommendation because the account is short-lived and the walk-through teaches the shape of the thing.

See you Friday at 11:00.