A
A record
Points a domain at the IPv4 address of the server that hosts it. This is the record you check first when a website loads the wrong page, or stops loading at all.
Looks like209.42.28.33
Check the live DNS records of any domain or subdomain in seconds — A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, NS and TXT, straight from the authoritative nameservers. No account, no limits.
Querying …
| Host | Type | TTL | Class | Value |
|---|
No records of this type. The domain resolves, but it publishes no A record. That is normal for AAAA on IPv4-only hosts, and for MX on domains that do not receive email.
Every domain name on the internet has to be translated into something a machine can connect to — an IP address, a mail server, a verification string. That translation lives in the domain's DNS zone, and a DNS lookup is the query that asks the domain's authoritative nameservers what that zone currently says.
Your browser does this silently every time you open a website. This tool does it out loud: you pick the record type, and it prints the raw answer — host, type, TTL, class and value — exactly as the nameservers returned it.
It is the quickest way to answer the questions that come up during a migration or an outage: did my A record actually change? Are the nameservers pointing at the right provider? Is my SPF record still there after the email move?
Six record types cover almost every real problem. Pick one to run it against your domain.
Points a domain at the IPv4 address of the server that hosts it. This is the record you check first when a website loads the wrong page, or stops loading at all.
Looks like209.42.28.33
The IPv6 version of an A record. Check it when visitors on IPv6-only mobile networks reach a different site than everyone else — or nothing at all.
Looks like2400:cb00:2049:1::a29f:1804
Makes one hostname an alias of another, so it follows whatever that hostname points to. Common on www, and on the verification hostnames a CDN or SaaS tool asks you to add.
Looks likewww.example.com → example.com
Names the mail servers that accept email for the domain, each with a priority — the lowest number is tried first. The first thing to check when mail stops arriving.
Looks like10 mx1.example.com
Lists the nameservers that hold the domain's DNS zone. If these point at your old provider, every other record you edit at the new one is simply ignored.
Looks likens1.example.com
Free-form text used for SPF, DKIM and DMARC email authentication, and for the ownership checks Google, Microsoft and payment gateways ask for.
Looks likev=spf1 include:_spf.example.com ~all
This tool queries the six types above. If you host with SkyServer, every one of these — including SRV and CAA — can be added from the DNS zone editor in your client area.
The five fields every DNS answer carries, in plain language.
The exact name that was queried. example.com and www.example.com
are different hosts and can hold completely different records.
Which kind of record this row is — A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, NS or TXT. One host can publish several types at once, and several records of the same type.
Time to live, in seconds. How long resolvers may cache this answer before asking
again: 300 is five minutes, 3600 an hour,
86400 a day.
Practically always IN, for internet. The other classes date from
networks that DNS outlived — you will not meet them.
The answer itself: an IP address for A and AAAA, a hostname for CNAME, NS and MX, and a text string for TXT.
MX records only. The lowest number is tried first; equal numbers share the load.
10 before 20, always.
In our support queue, almost every "DNS is broken" ticket turns out to be one of these six.
If the nameservers still point at your previous provider, every record you edit at the new one is ignored — the zone you are editing is not the zone the world reads. Run an NS lookup above before anything else.
Resolvers may serve the previous answer until the old record's TTL expires, not the new one's. A record that had a 24-hour TTL can keep the old value for a full day after you change it.
Your computer caches too. On Windows run ipconfig /flushdns, on macOS
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache, and restart the browser — Chrome keeps
its own cache at chrome://net-internals/#dns.
A site that loads at www.example.com but not example.com
is missing a record on the root, not broken. Look up both names.
Your registrar, your hosting panel and a CDN can each hold a copy of the zone. Only the one the NS records point at is live; the others are just old copies waiting to confuse you.
MX says where mail is delivered; the SPF record in TXT says who may send on your behalf. Change mail providers and both need updating — fixing only one is why mail arrives but lands in spam.
The records you just looked up are the ones you edit every time you launch a site, move a mailbox or add a subdomain. On SkyServer they are yours to manage free — a full DNS zone editor with every record type, on every domain you register with us.
What people ask us most about DNS records and this tool.
Send us the domain and what you expected to see. Our team reads zone files all day and will tell you exactly which record is wrong.
Talk to support