General Questions

Technical Questions

Have a question about that isn’t answered above? Please contact us by emailing support@slickdns.com or use our contact form.

Answers

What is DNS?

DNS is an acronym for Domain Name System. You can think of DNS as the phone book for the Internet as it translates human-friendly computer names like www.google.com into IP addresses like 74.125.237.16.

For more information on how DNS works at a technical level, see this Wikipedia page.

What is SlickDNS?

SlickDNS is a managed DNS hosting service. We operate a global network of authoritative name servers that can publish DNS records for your domains.

Why use SlickDNS? Can’t I get DNS from my registrar?

We think the registrars do a fine job of selling domain names, but generally their DNS configuration interfaces are slow and clunky.

If you own a couple of domains from the same registrar, the DNS management tools they provide are probably good enough for simple configurations. But if you have to manage complex DNS configurations for dozens of domains from multiple registrars, it very quickly becomes frustrating and unwieldy. SlickDNS excels in this scenario since it is designed from the ground up to efficiently manage complex DNS configurations for dozens or hundreds of domains.

With SlickDNS you can consolidate your DNS management in a single location regardless of how many registrars you use.

What features make SlickDNS unique?

SlickDNS was developed because we felt that existing DNS management solutions are too slow, too hard to use, use jargon that’s only understood by DNS specialists, and aren’t designed with the modern web in mind.

Here are some of our favorite SlickDNS features:

  • a fast, easy-to-use DNS management web interface
  • integrated website and server uptime monitoring
  • link DNS host records to named server IP addresses—never look up a server address again!
  • one-click handling of web alias domains
  • quick synchronization with our global network of name servers
  • TTL values for humans, not computers

For more information about SlickDNS features, see our in-depth features page.

How much does it cost?

You can try out SlickDNS risk-free with our 14-day free trial—no credit card required. After that pricing starts at just $9.95/month to manage DNS for 10 domains, and 10 uptime monitors. See the Pricing page for more information.

What DNS record types are supported?

  • A’ IP address
  • AAAA’ IPv6 address
  • CNAME’ alias
  • MX’ mail server
  • TXT’ text
  • NS’ name server
  • SRV’ service

(Note that so-called ‘SPF’ and ‘DKIM’ records used to authenticate mail servers are just regular DNS TXT records.)

SlickDNS also lets you set up HTTP URL redirects. (Under the hood they’re implemented as ‘A’ records pointing to the SlickDNS redirect servers which then do the HTTP redirect to the destination URL.)

‘NS’ and SOA’ records are automatically generated for your SlickDNS hosted domains, but you can also create NS records to delegate subdomains to third-party name servers.

See the Features page for how SlickDNS automatically generates DNS records for web alias domains.

What are the SlickDNS name server hostnames?

  • ns1.slickdns.com
  • ns2.slickdns.com
  • ns3.slickdns.com
  • ns4.slickdns.com

Do the name servers use anycast?

The SlickDNS name servers are anycast routed, so responses are typically provided by the server which is geographically closest, reducing latency and increasing reliability. The name servers are located in multiple data centers across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

How frequently are the name servers updated?

The SlickDNS name servers are updated as soon as you make record changes to any of your domains. On average they are all synchronized with the master database in under 15 seconds.