DNS Record Types Explained in Plain Language Print

Why this matters to you

Your domain's DNS zone is a small collection of records, each answering one question the internet asks about your domain: where is the website, where does mail go, who is allowed to send as this domain, and so on. Most clients never need to touch these, we manage them as part of your hosting, but knowing what each record type does turns third-party instructions like "add a TXT record" or "point a CNAME at us" from jargon into a two-minute request. This article is the translation guide.

The records that matter, one by one

A record: where your website lives

The A record maps a name to a server's IP address. When someone visits yourdomain.tld, the A record is what sends their browser to the right server. Subdomains get their own A records, so shop.yourdomain.tld can live on a completely different server from the main site if needed. The AAAA record is the same idea for the newer IPv6 address format, and where it exists, it does the same job.

CNAME record: an alias for another name

A CNAME says "this name is just another name for that name." It is how www.yourdomain.tld follows yourdomain.tld wherever it goes, and it is the record third-party services most often ask for, "point verify.yourdomain.tld at ourservice.example" style instructions are CNAME requests. One rule worth knowing: the bare domain itself cannot be a CNAME, which is why some service instructions treat www and the bare domain differently.

MX record: where your email is delivered

MX records tell every mail server in the world where to deliver mail addressed to your domain. Multiple MX records with priority numbers provide fallbacks, lower number wins. If your email is hosted with us, the MX points at our server; move to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 and the MX records are what change, alongside the routing setting covered in our article on email going to the wrong place after moving providers. Wrong or stale MX records are behind most "email vanished after a change" tickets.

TXT record: proofs and policies

TXT records hold text the domain wants to publish, and modern email security lives here: the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records covered in our article on why email lands in spam are all TXT records. So are the verification strings services ask you to add, "add this TXT record to prove you own the domain" is Google, Microsoft, and countless others using DNS as proof of ownership.

NS record: who holds the map

NS records name the nameservers responsible for the whole zone, the subject of our article on what nameservers are and how your domain points to Linuxweb. You will rarely deal with these directly, since we manage nameserver changes for you.

SRV record: services with specific doors

SRV records point at a service on a specific port, and turn up mainly in Microsoft 365 setups and telephony or chat systems. If a provider's instructions include an SRV record, send them to us as-is, they are fiddly to type and easy to get wrong by hand.

TTL: why changes take time

Every record carries a TTL, time to live, which tells the internet how long it may cache the answer before asking again. This caching is why DNS changes propagate gradually rather than instantly, as explained in our article on email problems after a nameserver or DNS change. Before a planned change, the TTL can be lowered in advance to shrink the transition window, ask us when scheduling anything time-sensitive.

How changes get made

Two routes. The self-service route is cPanel's Zone Editor, covered in our article on editing DNS in cPanel, suitable if you are comfortable following a provider's instructions exactly. The other route is a support ticket containing the instructions the third party gave you, screenshots or copied text both work, and we make the changes for you, which we recommend whenever you are less than certain, a mistyped record takes effect just as quickly as a correct one.

Good to know

Every record type above can be inspected for any domain, yours or anyone's, at dnschecker.org, select the record type next to the search box. Checking what a domain's records actually say right now is the first step of every DNS diagnosis, and it beats guessing every time. And a reassurance worth repeating from our nameservers article: DNS changes delete nothing and are always reversible, the risk with a wrong record is downtime while it is wrong, never data loss.