DNS
DNS is where a name you have claimed answers from. When Hosting serves the name's DNS, this is the page that holds the records, shows what is actually published, and lets you bring records in from another provider or take them away again.
Open a name from Company → Domains, then choose DNS records on it. The page has several views — Records, Import, Templates, Delegation & DNSSEC, Log history and Mail DNS — and each is a separate tab of the same name.
A name that Hosting does not serve DNS for has no zone to manage. The page then offers to Create managed zone, which records the zone as desired state and queues the first apply. A name whose ownership is not currently proved cannot have one at all: the page says so, and the next step is to publish the ownership record.
Zone state
The Zone state section tells you where the zone stands:
| Row | What it means |
|---|---|
| Status | The zone's own state |
| Signing requested | Whether you have asked for the zone to be signed |
| Signing observed | What has actually been observed serving |
| Desired generation | The state you have asked for |
| Last observed apply | The generation last seen applied, and when |
| Last observed SOA serial | The serial last seen, or that none has been observed yet |
The page keeps the two apart deliberately. A newer desired generation means your changes are not applied yet — it is never reported as applied until an observer says so. A zone that has never been observed has no SOA serial observed, not a serial of zero, because zero is a real serial.
Records
The Records view lists the record sets the zone wants the authoritative servers to serve: the record Name inside the zone, its Type, its TTL in seconds and its Values.
A record set is addressed by its name and type together, so @ is the zone's own
apex.
Add or change a record
Choose Add record set, or Edit beside a set you want to change. Give the
Name (use @ for the apex), the Type, the TTL in seconds and the
Values — one value per line, so a set with several addresses or text values takes
one line each.
Saving replaces the whole set and advances the zone's desired generation, so the change is applied to the authoritative servers on the next pass. The types you can choose are the ones Hosting can serve.
Remove a record
Choose Remove beside the set and confirm. The confirmation names the set it removes. The zone stops wanting it and the generation advances, so the authoritative servers stop serving it. Other record sets are kept, and any value Hosting never adopted is preserved.
If the zone changed while the page was open, the removal is refused rather than applied to a newer state, and the records reload so you can try again.
Export the zone
Two buttons on the page write the zone out, and both are read fresh each time you press them:
- Export zone file — a standard BIND zone file.
- Export CSV — a CSV with the columns
name,ttl,type,valueand one row per value.
Each download is a fresh request, so records can change between the two downloads. What is downloaded is what the DNS provider that holds the zone reports, including values Hosting has not adopted. This is not a public DNS propagation check, and complete coverage of online-generated DNSSEC material is not established. If the provider holds no zone, or its connection is not configured, the download is labelled partial and contains only what was accepted; a provider that cannot be reached reports a failure rather than an empty file.
Import records
The Import view brings records in. It writes nothing until you have reviewed them.
Choose the Import format first:
| Format | What you supply |
|---|---|
| Typed lines | One set per line as name TTL type value |
| BIND zone file | A .zone or .txt zone file |
| CSV | The same CSV the export writes |
A file is read into the text box rather than uploaded straight away, so what you review is exactly what is submitted. A file is read up to 256 KiB; a larger, unreadable or malformed file is refused with the reason rather than truncated.
Typed lines read as name TTL type value, one set per line. A value may contain
spaces, and repeating the same name, TTL and type adds another value to that set.
@ is the zone's own apex.
BIND zone file is the familiar owner/TTL/IN/type/rdata form. $ORIGIN and
$TTL are read, ; comments and blank lines are ignored, owners may be relative to
the origin or absolute, an omitted owner continues the previous record, and a
parenthesised record may span several lines (including a multiline TXT). Any other
directive, any class other than IN, and any owner outside the name are refused
rather than guessed at.
CSV has one header row name,ttl,type,value and one row per value, so a set
with several values reads back as that same set. name is relative to the name (@
for the root) or written absolutely inside it, and a value is quoted the standard CSV
way when it contains a comma or a quote.
The types Hosting can serve are accepted: A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, SRV,
CAA, NS (a child delegation; the apex nameservers are the zone's own) and DS.
The material the zone itself owns is reported as excluded and never imported —
the zone's own authority (SOA), its apex nameservers, and its DNSSEC signing
material (DNSKEY, RRSIG, NSEC, NSEC3, NSEC3PARAM, CDS, CDNSKEY).
Review, then apply
- Choose Preview changes. The review classifies every set against what is served, and lists the records the file carried that are never imported, as Records this import does not adopt.
- Read it. Edit nothing you have not re-read: changing the text, choosing another file, changing the format or starting another review retires the previous review.
- Choose Apply reviewed changes to submit exactly the input you read, with the review it produced.
A refused apply sends you back to review. Nothing is written until a review matches.
An import is additive: it records the sets you reviewed and never deletes records merely because they are absent from the file. A name written absolutely outside the name you are importing into is refused; a relative name is read against the name you chose, so a file exported from one name is applied to whichever name you select.
Templates
The Templates view holds your company's own reusable record sets, kept apart from the name they were saved from. The list shows each Template, how many sets it stores, the name it was Saved from and when it was last saved.
Choose New template to save a template from the name you are on: name it, describe it, and pick the record sets to store. The zone's own authority, its apex delegation and its signing material are never part of a template, and saving from a name skips the sets the platform manages and any set whose records are all retired.
To use one, choose Preview beside it. The preview shows how its sets classify
against this name, and lists the Values that need your attention — values that
still mention the name the template was saved from, or that sit at a service or
verification owner such as _dmarc or a DKIM selector. Then choose Review template
changes and Apply template to this name, which use the same review and
confirmation as any import.
Editing a template never changes a name it was already applied to.
Delegation and DNSSEC
The Delegation & DNSSEC view says where the name is served from and how it is signed.
Delegation
Where this name is served reads Managed when the parent delegates to our nameservers, External when the parent delegates elsewhere, and Unknown when the delegation is mixed or could not be read. The last observation and the parent it read are shown next to it.
If the name's DNS is managed somewhere else, the page lists the Records to publish where this name's DNS is managed — the exact records the zone wants served, with their TTLs. Publish those at your own provider; no supplier credentials are needed here.
Signing a zone
Signing is two steps, and both are needed for a signed delegation to work.
Step 1 — turn signing on for this zone. Choose Turn on signing. This asks the zone to be signed; resolvers still trust nothing until the DS record is published at the parent.
Step 2 — publish the DS at your registrar. The page lists the DS material to publish at the registrar that holds the parent zone. Until it is published there, the zone is not trusted by resolvers.
Removing signing
Choose Start signing removal to turn signing off. This starts a guided removal rather than an immediate unsigned switch: signing and its keys stay in place while the parent DS is removed and the previous DS cache time passes, so validating resolvers keep working. The page shows the removal's progress and the next action — removing the parent DS, waiting, or reviewing a problem — and it never promises an instant unsigned switch. While the removal is in progress, the DS publication guidance is withheld so you do not re-publish the record the removal is waiting for.
Moving a name to external DNS
Choose Move “name” to external DNS to ask us to stop serving the name. The zone row and its history are kept, so this is a change of state rather than a deletion. The page then lists the changes left for you at the registrar — including removing our nameservers from the delegation, and the DS record first if the zone was signed.
A signed zone whose parent DS would be orphaned is refused until that DS is removed. A zone with changes that are not applied yet should be applied or waited for first, so the external copy matches what was served.
Log history
The Log history view reads the zone-transfer (AXFR) events the platform recorded for the name recently. Nothing is read until you ask: choose the Window — the last hour or the last six hours — and choose Read history. Each read covers one of those bounded windows.
Export JSON downloads exactly what was shown, including the window, whether the read was truncated and anything excluded from it. An unavailable source is not an empty history: the page says so rather than showing a quiet empty list.
Mail DNS
The Mail DNS view explains how mail for the name is set up and which records you publish, who owns each one and what limit goes with it. It explains and copies; it never changes DNS itself, and it never needs a supplier login or a domain transfer.
For a name whose mail Hosting serves, review the actual values in the Records view. For external DNS, publish your provider's own names and values there. The delegation view holds the nameserver and DS handover information, not mail configuration.