Keep DNS records on the right path

Give your domain its own lookout

Open Monitors → Domains & DNS → Add monitor → Watch a domain. Choose DNS records. All plans can use these monitors within their existing monitor allowance and minimum interval. Endpoint monitors and job heartbeats remain in their own views.

1. Enter the DNS name without a scheme or path, such as example.com or _dmarc.example.com.
2. Choose A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, NS or TXT.
3. Choose whether any record should exist, all expected values must be present, or the complete record set must match. Enter one expected value per line when needed.
4. Set the interval, timeout and confirmation thresholds, then save. Existing notification connections apply.

Choose a useful expectation

A and AAAA values are IP addresses. CNAME and NS values are hostnames. MX values contain priority and hostname, for example 10 mail.example.com. A null MX can be written as “0 .”. TXT values are literal text without surrounding quotes; matching is case-sensitive and multi-part TXT strings are joined.

Contains allows additional returned values, while exact rejects extras. Order and duplicate values do not matter. Up to 20 values and 8 KiB of expected text are allowed. Do not use an exact address set for a rotating CDN unless that is truly your expectation.

Understand the view from public DNS

Checks use public recursive resolvers, not your local hosts file or internal company DNS. Resolver caching and DNS TTLs affect when a change is visible. This is one resolver view per check, not global propagation coverage or an authoritative DNSSEC audit.

Missing records, query failures, timeouts and mismatches are failed checks. Your configured confirmation thresholds decide when an incident opens or recovers. Responses are bounded; unusually large record sets cannot be verified. Returned IP addresses are compared as data and are never contacted by this monitor.

A few everyday examples

Watch that an MX record still points to your mail provider, that a required TXT verification record remains present, or that an expected CNAME still points toward your service. HTTP checks still matter: correct DNS does not prove your application is responding.