Domain expiry and DNS basics
How registration, nameservers and records fit together — and how to avoid your site and email going dark overnight.
Registration vs DNS hosting
Your domain registrar holds the billing and expiry date. DNS may live at the registrar, your web host or a provider like Cloudflare. Losing track of either account is a common way websites and email stop working.
Records you should know
A and AAAA point to your website. MX delivers email. TXT holds SPF, DKIM and verification tokens. CNAME aliases subdomains. NS records tell the internet where your DNS is authoritative.
Avoid surprise outages
Turn on auto-renew with up-to-date payment details, enable registrar lock, and store credentials in a shared password manager. Check expiry annually and after any agency or developer handover.
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Keep reading
More guides
What is DNS?
How the internet finds your website and delivers your email — explained without jargon for business owners.
- DNS in plain language
- Why businesses should care
A, CNAME, MX and TXT records explained
The DNS record types every Melbourne business touches — what each one does and common misconfiguration mistakes.
- A and AAAA records
- CNAME records