[Support Guide] Is my site using Netlify’s DNS correctly?

Last reviewed by Netlify Support - August, 2023

So you want Netlify to manage your DNS, and you’ve selected that option in your Netlify settings. But still DNS does not seem to be working as expected for you. Hmmm. This is actually a very common issue.

One thing to check in this situation is your name servers. Open up a terminal window and type

whois mydomain.com | grep -i "name server"

Some Whois servers might not use the phrase “name server”. If you don’t get any results, try using grep for “nserver” or just “server” instead of “name server”.

If the name servers that result from that search do not match the name servers assigned to your site in your Netlify DNS zone, this means you've configured our service to host your DNS, but you have not yet changed the DNS settings at your registrar to actually use our DNS hosting. So we are not really managing your DNS yet.

You have two easy options to fix this:

  1. Update the settings at your registrar to point to the name servers listed on your Netlify DNS zone settings page, which looks like this:

Before you make that change, please enter all records from your current DNS host in our UI as those all must be transferred. If you have trouble transferring a record, do not proceed - let us know about the troublesome record so we can advise before you deactivate your existing DNS hosting!

  1. You do not need to use Netlify to manage your DNS. You can disable our managed DNS by choosing to delete the DNS zone on your Netlify DNS zone settings page and stick with your existing DNS host.