iFastHostingHow to manage DNS records in your control panel
Adding and editing the DNS records for a domain that uses your hosting account's nameservers.
DNS records are what tell the internet where things on your domain actually live — which server answers for the website, which server handles email, and which external services are allowed to say they represent your domain. If your domain's nameservers point at your hosting account, these records are managed from inside your control panel rather than at your domain registrar.
Where DNS is actually managed
This matters before you touch anything: DNS for a domain is only editable in one place at a time — wherever its nameservers currently point. If the domain uses your hosting account's nameservers, the control panel's DNS section is authoritative and changes here take effect. If the domain's nameservers point somewhere else — your registrar's own DNS, or a third-party DNS service — changes made in your control panel are simply ignored, because nothing is reading them.
Check the nameservers currently set on the domain at your registrar. If they belong to your hosting provider, manage DNS in your control panel. If they do not, you will need to edit records wherever those nameservers actually point instead.
Opening the DNS section
Inside your control panel, find the area dealing with DNS — sometimes grouped with domain management. Select the domain you want to work on, and you should see a list of its existing records: type, name, value, and usually a TTL (time to live) figure.
The record types you are most likely to touch
| Type | Purpose |
|---|---|
| A | Points a name at an IPv4 address. The core record for "this domain shows this website." |
| CNAME | Points a name at another name rather than an address directly — common for www or a subdomain used by a third-party service. |
| MX | Says which server handles email for the domain. Editing this incorrectly is the single most common cause of email suddenly stopping. |
| TXT | Free-text records used for things like SPF, domain verification for an external service, or DKIM keys. |
Our full breakdown of every DNS record type covers the less common ones, and adding or editing an A record walks through that specific job in more detail.
Adding or editing a record
- Choose the record type you want to add, or select an existing record to edit.
- Enter the name — this is the subdomain or the domain root itself, often shown as
@for the root. - Enter the value — an IP address for an A record, a hostname for a CNAME, a mail server's hostname and priority for an MX record, and so on.
- Set a TTL if you are given the option. A lower value means changes to this specific record are picked up faster next time, at the cost of slightly more DNS lookup traffic in the meantime.
- Save the record.
Editing or deleting an MX record incorrectly stops email delivery for the whole domain, and it can take a while to notice — the sender often gets no immediate error, the mail simply never arrives. If you are not confident about a change involving email, write down the exact existing MX records before you touch anything, so you have something to restore.
How long a change takes to show up
DNS changes are not instant everywhere at once. Other DNS resolvers around the internet hold a cached copy of your old records for as long as the previous TTL specified, and only ask again once that expires. In practice, most changes are visible within a few hours, and it is unusual for one to take longer than 48. Reloading your own site is not a reliable test, since your own browser and network are usually the slowest to pick up the change — a fresh dig or nslookup query, or an online DNS checker, gives you a truer picture.
When to leave DNS alone entirely
If a domain's DNS is currently managed somewhere else — a third-party DNS provider, or the registrar directly — and it is working the way you want, there is no need to move it into your control panel just because the option exists. Moving DNS management is worth doing deliberately, not as a side effect of poking around a settings page. See pointing a domain at your hosting if you are deciding between changing nameservers wholesale versus editing individual records.
If something stops working after a change
- Check you edited the right record. A typo in a hostname or IP address in an A record is the most common single cause of a site going down right after a DNS edit.
- Check for a duplicate record. Two A records with the same name but different values cause inconsistent, hard-to-diagnose behaviour rather than an obvious failure.
- Give it time before assuming it is broken. If the record itself is correct, a delay of a few hours before it is visible everywhere is entirely normal, not a fault.
- Check for a typo in an MX record if email stops, since that is by far the most common casualty of a DNS mistake on this page.
Related reading
What each DNS record type actually does, in plain terms, and the handful you will realistically ever need to touch.
How to add or edit an A recordWhere to find the A record setting in your DNS zone, what each field means, and how to confirm the change actually took.
How to point a domain to your hostingThe two ways to connect a domain to a hosting account, when to use each, and how to tell the change has actually taken effect.
A tour of your hosting control panelThe main sections you will find in your control panel and roughly what lives in each one.