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Feature · 2026

DNS monitoring that catches a record change before your users do

UptimePad includes DNS monitoring on every plan, including the free tier. It watches your A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, and NS records and alerts you the moment a record changes, disappears, or drifts from what you expect, so a silent edit or a hijacked record never becomes an outage your customers report before you do.

Last updated
DNS monitoring is included on every UptimePad plan, not gated behind an add-on
ToolDNS monitoringRecord typesFastest checkStatus pagesMonthly price
UptimePad Free
No card, commercial use allowed
A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, NS5 min1 public$0
UptimePad StarterAll supported types1 min1 custom domain$12
UptimePad ProAll supported types1 min3 pages$39
UptimePad ScaleAll supported types30 sec5 pages$99

What DNS monitoring actually catches

DNS is the layer almost nobody watches until it breaks, and when it breaks the symptoms look like everything else: the site is “down,” email stops arriving, a subdomain 404s. DNS monitoring is continuous verification that the records resolving your domain are still the records you intended. It catches:

  • Accidental record edits. A teammate updates an A record in the wrong zone, or a Terraform apply rewrites a value. You hear about it in seconds, not from a support ticket.
  • Record drift and removal. A CNAME that quietly disappears, an MX record dropped during a migration, an NS delegation that changed at the registrar.
  • Hijack and takeover signals. If an A or NS record suddenly points somewhere you do not control, that is the first measurable sign of a DNS hijack or a dangling-subdomain takeover.
  • Email-breaking changes. A modified TXT record can invalidate SPF, DKIM, or DMARC and silently send your mail to spam. A changed MX record can stop delivery entirely.

Which DNS records to monitor

  • A / AAAA decide where your traffic physically lands. A wrong value here is an outage even when your server is healthy.
  • CNAME aliases (www, app, status) break a subdomain the instant they drift, and are the classic dangling-takeover vector.
  • MX records route your email. A bad MX change is invisible on the website and catastrophic for the business.
  • TXT records hold SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and domain-verification tokens. Editing one by hand is easy to get wrong.
  • NS records define who is authoritative for your zone. A change here moves control of your entire domain.

How UptimePad monitors DNS

On every check, UptimePad resolves your records from its own probe regions, compares what came back against the last known-good answer, and alerts your channels the moment something changed. Because DNS lives on the same monitor as your HTTP and SSL checks, a single timeline shows cause and effect: you can see the DNS edit, then the failed request, instead of guessing why the site went red. Alerts route to Email, Slack, Discord, Telegram, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, OpsGenie, a signed webhook, or Web Push, depending on your plan.

Free DNS checker vs continuous DNS monitoring

Need a one-off answer right now? The free DNS checker resolves A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, NS, SOA, and CAA records for any domain with no signup. DNS monitoring is the continuous version: it runs that lookup on a schedule, remembers the expected answer, and tells you when it changes. Both are part of the same product, and continuous DNS monitoring is on the free plan alongside SSL monitoring and 10 uptime monitors.

FAQ

Is DNS monitoring really included on the free plan?+

Yes. DNS monitoring and SSL monitoring are both on the UptimePad Free plan, with no credit card and commercial use allowed. The free tier covers 10 monitors at a 5-minute interval. This is a deliberate difference from tools that put SSL and DNS behind a paid tier.

Which DNS record types can UptimePad watch?+

A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, and NS records on the standard monitor, with SOA and CAA also available through the free DNS checker tool. UptimePad compares the resolved answer to the last known-good value and alerts you on any change.

How fast will I be alerted to a DNS change?+

On the same cadence as your monitor: as fast as every 30 seconds on Scale, every minute on Starter and Pro, and every 5 minutes on Free. The change is detected on the next check after the record changes.

Does DNS monitoring help with email problems?+

Yes. Monitoring your MX and TXT records catches the changes that silently break email: a dropped MX record that stops delivery, or an edited SPF, DKIM, or DMARC TXT record that sends your mail to spam.

Can DNS monitoring detect a domain hijack?+

It detects the symptom: if an A or NS record changes to a value you did not set, UptimePad alerts you immediately. That sudden, unexpected record change is the first measurable evidence of a DNS hijack or a dangling-subdomain takeover.

How is this different from just pinging my website?+

An uptime ping tells you the site answered. DNS monitoring tells you the records pointing to the site are still correct. They fail independently: DNS can be wrong while the server is perfectly healthy, and you want to catch that before traffic and email are misrouted.

Add DNS monitoring in under a minute

Create a free account, add your domain, and turn on DNS monitoring alongside SSL and uptime checks. No credit card, commercial use allowed.

Start monitoring free