A DNS provider (DNS host) runs the authoritative nameservers that serve your zone's records. Your registrar stores which nameservers are responsible, while the DNS provider stores what the records are. They can be the same company or two different ones.
Why it matters
Your DNS provider is a critical dependency. If it has an outage, resolvers cannot refresh your records and your site, email and APIs fail once caches expire, even when your servers are healthy. Features worth comparing include anycast network coverage, DNSSEC support, API access, record limits, proxy or flattening options and audit logs. Many teams use a managed provider and a second one as backup, see secondary DNS.
Example
To find out who hosts your DNS, look at the NS records:
$ dig example.com NS +short
ns-123.dnsprovider.net.
ns-456.dnsprovider.org.Records must be edited at the provider named here, not at the registrar, unless they are the same.
Common mistakes
- Editing records at the registrar after delegating to another DNS host.
- Switching providers without copying every record, especially MX and TXT.
- Using a single provider with no export or backup of the zone.
Related
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This page is general information written by our editorial team and updated when documentation changes. Servers and providers differ, so test changes safely first. See our editorial policy and disclaimer.