Every DNS record type, explained plainly

A DNS zone is just a list of records, and each record is a single, specific instruction: "when someone asks about this name, answer with this." The confusing part is that there are more than a dozen record types, most sites only ever need five or six of them, and the names give almost no clue what they do. This goes through every type you are likely to encounter, roughly in order of how often you will actually touch one.

A — the workhorse record

An A record maps a name to an IPv4 address. It is the record that answers "where is the website", and it is usually the very first thing you set for a new domain.

yourdomain.com.   A   203.0.113.10

The name @ in a DNS panel usually means "the domain itself with nothing in front of it" — so an A record on @ is what answers when someone visits yourdomain.com directly. See how to add or edit an A record for the exact steps.

AAAA — the same job, for IPv6

An AAAA record does exactly what an A record does, except it points to an IPv6 address instead of an IPv4 one. IPv6 addresses are longer and written in hexadecimal groups separated by colons. Most domains run both an A and an AAAA record side by side so that visitors on either kind of network reach the same server. See what an AAAA record is for more detail.

CNAME — an alias for another name

A CNAME record does not hold an address at all. It holds another name, and tells resolvers "do not answer here — go and look up that name instead, and use whatever it says." This is how www.yourdomain.com is commonly set up: as a CNAME pointing at yourdomain.com, so it always follows whatever the main domain currently resolves to, without needing to be updated separately.

MX — where email goes

An MX record names the mail server responsible for a domain's incoming email, separately from whatever handles the website. This is what makes it possible for a domain's website and its email to be hosted in two completely different places without conflict.

yourdomain.com.   MX   10 mail.yourdomain.com.

The number before the mail server name is priority — lower numbers are tried first. Multiple MX records with different priorities give a fallback if the primary mail server is unreachable.

TXT — free-form text for machines to read

A TXT record holds arbitrary text, and DNS itself does not care what is in it — the meaning is entirely up to whatever system reads it back. In practice, TXT records are how most domain ownership verification and email authentication work: proving you control a domain to a third-party service, or publishing rules about which servers are allowed to send mail on your behalf. See how to add a TXT record and SPF, DKIM and DMARC explained for the most common uses.

NS — who is authoritative

NS records name the nameservers responsible for a domain or a specific subdomain. At the top level, these are what the registry consults to find your DNS in the first place. You will rarely edit these directly for the main domain — that is done through the nameserver setting at your registrar rather than as a record inside a zone — but NS records also make it possible to delegate a whole subdomain to a different set of nameservers, which is covered in how to delegate a subdomain.

SRV — service location for specific protocols

An SRV record points a specific service, not a whole domain, at a host and port. It is built for protocols that need to know both which server to contact and which port to use — voice-over-IP systems and some chat protocols being the most common examples. See what an SRV record is for its exact format.

CAA — who is allowed to issue a certificate

A CAA record restricts which certificate authorities are permitted to issue an SSL certificate for your domain. Certificate authorities are required to check for one before issuing, so a CAA record is a narrow but genuine security control: even with a stolen or mistakenly issued request, an authority not listed in your CAA record cannot issue a valid certificate for your name. See what a CAA record is.

PTR — the reverse lookup

Every record covered so far answers "what address does this name point to." A PTR record answers the opposite question — "what name belongs to this address" — and is used for reverse DNS. It matters most for outgoing mail servers: many receiving mail systems check that a sending server's IP address has a PTR record pointing back to a matching hostname, and treat mail as more suspicious when it does not. PTR records are usually set by whoever controls the IP address block itself, which on shared hosting is your provider rather than something in your own DNS panel.

The ones you will use, and the ones you will not

Records also carry a TTL

Every record, of any type, has a TTL — how long other servers are allowed to cache the answer before checking again. This is set per record, not once for the whole domain, so you can safely lower it just on the one record you are about to change without affecting anything else. See what a DNS TTL is for how to use that when planning a change.

Put together, these records are the whole of what DNS can say about a domain. Nothing more exotic is going on underneath any hosting control panel or registrar dashboard — every button and field in either ultimately edits one of the record types above.