Your domain name and DNS: why they matter and who should hold them

Your domain name, such as yourbusiness.ca or yourbusiness.com, is the foundation of your website and your email. Lose control of it and both stop working, often with no way back. Yet it is remarkably common for a small business's domain to be registered to a former employee, a web designer who has moved on, or a personal email address nobody checks. This article explains what to get right.

What the domain and DNS do

The domain is the name. DNS, the domain name system, is the set of records that says where the name points: which server hosts your website, which service handles your email, and the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records that prove your email is genuine (see Your emails bounce or land in spam). Anyone who controls the DNS controls where your website and email go.

Who should hold it

The domain should be registered to your business, with the registrant and contact details pointing to a role address the business controls, such as a shared mailbox, not to an individual's personal email. The account at the registrar should have a strong password and multi-factor authentication, and the business should hold the credentials, stored in your password vault, with us having access to manage it on your behalf. We never register a client's domain in our own name. If your domain is currently held by someone else, we help you transfer it to your own account.

Renewals

Domains are rented, usually a year at a time, and expire if not renewed. An expired domain takes your website and email down, and after a grace period it can be bought by anyone, including people who register expired business domains specifically to resell them or to catch your email. Turn on auto-renewal with a payment method that will not expire, keep the contact email current, and renew for several years at a time if you can. Renewal dates are in your handover documents and we remind you before they fall due.

Changing DNS

Most DNS changes are small, such as adding a record for a new email service or pointing a subdomain at a new system, and we make them for you on request. A mistake can take email or the website down, so we document each change and make it at a quiet time when it could affect mail flow. Tell us before you sign up for any service that asks you to add a DNS record; that is normal, and we will add it correctly.

Extra domains

Many businesses hold a few related domains, such as both .ca and .com, or common misspellings, to protect the brand and catch mistyped email. These should be in the same account, renewed on the same schedule and pointed at your main site.

Checking where you stand

If you are not sure who holds your domain or when it expires, email hello@bitlogix.tech with the domain name and we will check the public records and tell you. It is one of the first things we look at in a free IT assessment.