Records worth monitoring
- A / AAAA — where your site actually lives.
- MX — where email is delivered.
- NS — who's authoritative for your zone.
- TXT — SPF, DMARC, domain verification keys.
Monitoring
DNS Monitoring Guide
DNS is the layer between your brand and every customer who types your name. When it changes silently — by a registrar transfer, a CDN switch, or a misconfigured TTL — the symptoms can take hours to surface. DNS monitoring catches it instantly.
Quick summary
- Pin the apex, www, MX, NS, and SPF/DMARC TXT records.
- Hourly polling catches typical changes within an hour.
- A 'changed' alert with no planned change is your signal to investigate.
- Pair with SSL and blacklist monitors for full coverage.
Reading change alerts
Most "changed" alerts are explainable: a planned migration, a new CDN edge, a TTL update. Open the diff, confirm the reason, mark the alert read. Anything unexplained should trigger a registrar audit and an SSL re-check.
Troubleshooting workflow
Run through these steps in order. Each step links to the right diagnostic tool.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
Frequently asked questions
What DNS records should I monitor?
A/AAAA for your apex and www, MX for email, NS for nameserver drift, and TXT for SPF/DMARC. Pin the records you depend on.
How fast will I see a change?
Our DNS monitor polls authoritative resolvers and flags any change between runs. Hourly cadence catches typical registrar updates within an hour.
Why do records sometimes show different answers?
Geo-aware DNS and CDNs intentionally return different IPs by region. A 'changed' alert is only meaningful for records you control directly.
Does DNS monitoring prevent outages?
It prevents the slow ones — silent misconfigurations, lapsed registrations, or a takeover attempt. It can't help with upstream registrar outages.
Monitor it continuously
Save this check, get alerts on changes, and track multiple domains in one dashboard.