Reading DNS Records

A plain-language walkthrough of the record types shown in Domain Mount's "DNS Record Analysis" panel, and what each one actually controls.

A record

Maps a domain name directly to an IPv4 address (e.g., 93.184.216.34). This is the record your browser ultimately follows to know which server to connect to when you type the domain into an address bar.

AAAA record

The IPv6 equivalent of an A record — maps a domain to a (longer) IPv6 address. A domain can have both A and AAAA records at once; modern browsers prefer IPv6 when it's available and reachable.

MX record

Mail Exchange records tell other mail servers where to deliver email for the domain, along with a priority value (lower numbers are tried first). A domain using Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or a dedicated mail provider will point its MX records at that provider's mail servers rather than at wherever the website itself is hosted.

TXT record

A general-purpose free-text field, most commonly used today for domain verification (proving you control a domain to a third-party service) and email authentication standards like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, which help receiving mail servers detect spoofed email claiming to be from the domain.

NS record

Nameserver records declare which DNS servers are authoritative for the domain — i.e., which servers actually answer all the other DNS queries above. These usually reveal the domain's DNS provider (Cloudflare, AWS Route 53, the registrar's own default nameservers, etc.), which Domain Mount also surfaces in the "Technical & Hosting" panel via nameserver-pattern matching.

CNAME record

An alias that points one domain name to another domain name, rather than directly to an IP address. Commonly used for subdomains (e.g., pointing www.example.com to example.com, or a subdomain to a third-party platform like a hosting or CDN provider). A domain's root/apex record technically can't be a CNAME per the DNS spec, which is why Domain Mount only checks for it on the queried name itself.

Why a record sometimes shows "No records"

Not every domain has every record type — a domain with no email service configured simply won't have an MX record, and that's expected, not an error. Domain Mount distinguishes this ("No records") from a genuine lookup failure ("Unavailable"), since they mean very different things.

Want to understand the hosting provider these records often point to? See the Technical & Hosting panel on any domain report, or read about how registration data (WHOIS/RDAP) works.