Last reviewed by Netlify Support in July 2025 You have the option to manage your DNS at Netlify or somewhere else, and either way will work great! You can still use Netlify to build your awesome site, and leave DNS management where it is. Or Netlify can manage your DNS for free (!) and we are happy…

[image] laura: we don’t allow inbound dns zone transfers so if you have a lot of existing DNS records its simplest & safest to use external. I don’t understand what this means. Netlify allows me to add preexisting DNS records for email, etc. when setting up Netlify DNS

Hi, @Ethicli . Laura is recommending that, if people are not confident copying their existing DNS configuration, they use the external DNS instructions instead. Why? Because many people forget to manually copy their DNS records from their existing DNS service to Netlify DNS when they activate it. Th…

I currently have DNS hosted at another hosting provider. I am considering moving the records over to Netlify including MX, that’s fine. The Netlify site will use the apex domain but we also have a blog on the existing domain as a subdomain. Would there be an issue to point to the blog on a subdomain…

Hi @betterimagesofai , The only problem with pointing a subdomain out of Netlify is that Netlify won’t be able to serve a SSL certificate for that. So if you can get a SSL certificate for your subdomain, then I believe you’d not have any other issue.

I am relatively new to Netlify (but LOVE next.js) and wanted to migrate my site over to netlify. I used a personal domain for testing and it worked great (synced with github and auto deploy, yay!) HOWEVER, I was setting up an external domain, because I have a lot of custom dns records and simply w…

Hi @StartupsAndCode , We’ve a guide detailing this: [image] [Support Guide] Minimal downtime for a live site DNS migration Support Guides Last reviewed by Netlify Support - July 2025 IMPORTANT UPDATE While many details in this support guide remain valuable in…

Hi hrishikesh, Thanks for the reply. Another user just mentioned it is against the terms of service to use NEtlify DNS to point to another site (even as a subdomain?). Am confused between the responses. Also would it be best to use a CNAME record to point to a subdomain on another hosting service,…

[image] betterimagesofai: Another user just mentioned it is against the terms of service to use NEtlify DNS to point to another site (even as a subdomain?) Yes, that would be correct if you’re not using Netlify DNS to point your root domain to a Netlify website and using Netlify DNS only to m…

Actually my original scenario was using NetlifyDNS for the root domain website like example.com which is hosted on Netlify, but using Netlify DNS to also point a subdomain blog.example.com which would sit on another hosting provider (it is built in WordPress). If I used a CNAME to do that, it needs …

Well, that sounds like incorrect DNS setup. If example.com is being hosted on Netlify and you create a CNAME record for blog.example.com and value as example.com, it will resolve back to Netlify and since that domain is not mapped to any Netlify website, it would return a not found error. Your Wor…

[Support Guide] Should I use Netlify to manage my DNS?

Support Support Guides

hrishikesh October 27, 2021, 4:30pm 38

Hi @StartupsAndCode,

We’ve a guide detailing this:

Topic		Replies	Views
[Support Guide] Can I host my site on Netlify but keep my DNS at my domain registrar? Support Guides netlify-dns-https-ssl , support-guide	57	21817	March 14, 2025
[Support Guide] DNS Quick Start - How to set up DNS Support Guides netlify-dns-https-ssl , support-guide	21	21431	January 29, 2025
[Support Guide] How can I manage my DNS with Netlify if I used another vendor to purchase my domain? Support Guides netlify-dns-https-ssl , support-guide	22	9189	January 15, 2025
[Support Guide] Difference Between Netlify DNS and External DNS Support Guides netlify-dns-https-ssl , support-guide	0	1329	June 17, 2025
Godaddy DNS -> Netlify Support netlify-dns-https-ssl , redirects	8	14706	November 11, 2019

[Support Guide] Should I use Netlify to manage my DNS?

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