How to Manage DNS Records in ISPConfig

This guide shows you how to add and edit DNS records in the ISPConfig control panel, covering the six record types you are most likely to need: A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT and SRV. It also explains how to choose a sensible TTL and what to expect from DNS propagation once you save a change. It is written for Noiz clients whose domain already has a DNS zone in ISPConfig. A DNS zone is simply the collection of DNS records for one domain, and individual records are sometimes called zone entries or DNS entries.

Last reviewed: 27 July 2026, against ISPConfig 3.3.1p1, the version Noiz runs. This guide is written for Noiz hosting and is kept current against ISPConfig. It complements, and does not replace, the official ISPConfig documentation linked below.

Official Documentation Reference

• DNS Basics (ISPConfig 3 Documentation): the official explanation of how DNS resolution works and where ISPConfig fits in.
• Record type CNAME (ISPConfig 3 Documentation): the official walkthrough of adding a record on the zone's Records tab, including the trailing dot rule.
• Setting up your own name service (DNS) with ISPConfig (HowtoForge): the DNS tutorial published by the ISPConfig developers, covering zones, records and testing.
• ISPConfig Documentation overview: the index of all official ISPConfig documentation, including the full manual.

Prerequisites

• You can log in to the ISPConfig control panel.
• An existing DNS zone for your domain in the DNS module. If the module is empty, the zone for your domain is managed elsewhere, and changes you would like made should go through a support ticket instead.
• Your domain must actually use the nameservers that host this zone. If your registrar points the domain at different nameservers, records edited here have no effect on the live domain.
• The exact values for the record you want to add, for example an IP address from a service provider or a verification string from an email or search service.

Open the DNS Zone for Your Domain

1. Log in to the ISPConfig control panel.
2. Click the DNS module in the top navigation.
3. In the left menu, under DNS, click Zones. A list of the DNS zones on your account appears. Zone names are shown with a trailing dot, for example yourdomain.com., which is normal DNS notation.
4. Click the zone you want to edit. The zone opens on the DNS Zone tab, which holds the zone-wide settings. Leave those alone for day-to-day record changes.
5. Click the Records tab.

The Records tab lists every record in the zone in six columns: Active, Type, Name, Data, Priority and TTL. Each column has a filter box above it, which is worth using on a large zone. Across the top of the list is a row of buttons, one per record type, including A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT and SRV. You will also see buttons for less common types such as ALIAS, CAA, NS, PTR, SPF, DMARC and TLSA; this guide covers the six you are most likely to need.

Understand the Common Record Fields

Every record form shares a few fields, and one convention trips up almost everyone, so read this section before adding your first record.

• Hostname: the name the record describes. You can enter either a short name or a fully qualified name, and the difference matters:
  • A short name without a trailing dot is relative to the zone. Entering www in the zone for yourdomain.com creates a record for www.yourdomain.com.
  • A fully qualified name must end with a dot, for example shop.yourdomain.com. If you leave the dot off a fully qualified name, ISPConfig appends the zone to it and you end up with a broken name such as shop.yourdomain.com.yourdomain.com.
  • Leaving the field empty means the record applies to the domain itself, yourdomain.com. Wildcards are supported on most record types, written as * or *.sub. SRV records are the exception and do not accept them.
• TTL: the time to live in seconds, which tells resolvers how long they may cache the record. The form is pre-filled with 3600 (1 hour). The lowest value ISPConfig accepts is 60; anything smaller is refused with Min. TTL time is 60 seconds. See the TTL guidance section below before changing it.
• Active: whether the record is published. Unticking it removes the record from the live zone without deleting it, which is handy for testing.

Add a New Record

On the Records tab, click the button for the record type you need, fill in the form and click Save. The sub-sections below describe each type.

A Record: Point a Name at an IPv4 Address

An A record maps a hostname to an IPv4 address. Use it to point your domain, or a subdomain, at a web server.

1. Click the A button.
2. In the Hostname field, enter the name, for example www, or leave it empty for the domain itself.
3. In the IP-Address field, enter the IPv4 address, for example 203.0.113.10 (an example address; use the one you were given).
4. Leave TTL at 3600 unless you have a reason to change it, keep Active ticked and click Save.

AAAA Record: Point a Name at an IPv6 Address

An AAAA record is the IPv6 equivalent of an A record. The form is identical except that the address field is labelled IPv6-Address and takes an IPv6 value, for example 2001:db8::10 (an example address). A name can have both an A and an AAAA record at the same time; clients on IPv6 networks will prefer the AAAA record.

CNAME Record: Make One Name an Alias of Another

A CNAME record makes a hostname an alias for another name, so it always follows wherever the target points. Use it for names like blog.yourdomain.com that should track another hostname, including hostnames provided by external services.

1. Click the CNAME button.
2. In the Hostname field, enter the alias, for example blog.
3. In the Target Hostname field, enter the name it should point to. For a fully qualified target the trailing dot is essential, for example sites.exampleservice.net. ISPConfig checks this on save: a target without the trailing dot must already exist as a record in the same zone, otherwise the save is refused with Target hostname not found in the current zone. It should end in a . when it's external.
4. Click Save.

ISPConfig enforces two CNAME rules that catch people out:

• A CNAME cannot share a hostname with any other record. Adding one where another record already exists is refused with A CNAME record already exists for this hostname. CNAME records cannot coexist with other record types at the same hostname.
• A CNAME cannot be used on the bare domain. Leaving Hostname empty, or entering @ or the zone name, is refused with CNAME records are not allowed at the zone apex (empty hostname). Use an ALIAS record instead, or specify a subdomain hostname. For the bare domain, use an A or AAAA record pointing at the address the service gives you.

MX Record: Route Email for the Domain

MX records tell other mail servers where to deliver email for your domain. Edit these only when you are deliberately moving email, for example to or from an external email service, because a wrong MX record stops mail arriving.

1. Click the MX button.
2. Leave the Hostname field empty (or enter yourdomain.com. with the trailing dot) so the record applies to addresses of the form [email protected].
3. In the Mailserver hostname field, enter the hostname of the mail server, for example mail.yourdomain.com. with the trailing dot. This must be a hostname with its own A (or AAAA) record. It must not be a CNAME, and it cannot be a bare IP address.
4. In the Priority field, enter a number. ISPConfig pre-fills 10, and values are conventionally between 0 and 100. Lower numbers are preferred, so if you have two MX records, the one with the lower priority value receives mail first and the other acts as a fallback.
5. Click Save.

TXT Record: Verification Codes and Other Text

A TXT record attaches a free-text string to a hostname. The most common use is an ownership verification string issued by an email, search or analytics service.

1. Click the TXT button.
2. In the Hostname field, enter the name the service asked for. Leave it empty for the domain itself, or enter a name such as a selector label if the service specifies one. Underscore names are accepted here.
3. In the Text field, paste the string exactly as supplied, for example a verification code such as example-site-verification=abc123. Do not add a trailing dot here, and do not add surrounding quotation marks unless the service explicitly includes them.
4. Click Save.

A domain can have many TXT records, so add a second one rather than overwriting an unrelated value.

SPF, DMARC and DKIM Have Their Own Buttons

SPF, DMARC and DKIM records are all published as TXT records in the zone file, but ISPConfig will not let you type them into the TXT form. The Text field rejects anything containing v=spf, v=DMARC1; or v=DKIM, with a message telling you to use the matching button instead, for example SPF is not allowed. Use the SPF button.

Use the SPF, DMARC and DKIM buttons on the Records tab instead. Each opens a guided form rather than a free-text box. The SPF form, for example, builds the policy from tick boxes and lists: an SPF Mechanism choice covering Pass, Fail, SoftFail and Neutral, options to allow the domain's MX servers and its current A record address, and separate fields for additional IP addresses in CIDR format, other hostnames and other domains. It shows the finished record in a read-only SPF-Record field before you save.

These forms also guard against duplicates, which matters because more than one SPF record on a name makes the policy invalid and gets your mail rejected. If a record already exists, ISPConfig offers to edit it rather than adding a second one. If duplicates already exist it refuses outright and asks you to delete or merge them first. If you open an existing TXT record whose value starts with v=spf1, ISPConfig sends you to the SPF form automatically.

SRV Record: Publish the Location of a Service

SRV records advertise the server, port and priority for a specific service, and are required by protocols such as SIP telephony, XMPP messaging and some autodiscovery systems. The service you are configuring will tell you the exact values to use.

1. Click the SRV button.
2. In the Hostname field, enter the service and protocol labels, for example _sip._tcp. Each label starts with an underscore; a short form like this is relative to the zone.
3. In the Target field, enter the hostname of the machine providing the service, for example sipserver.yourdomain.com. with the trailing dot for a fully qualified name.
4. In the Weight field, enter the relative weight used to share load between records of equal priority. If you only have one record, 0 is fine.
5. In the Port field, enter the TCP or UDP port of the service, for example 5060.
6. In the Priority field, enter the preference for this target, commonly between 0 and 100. As with MX records, lower values are preferred.
7. Click Save.

Priority, Weight and Port must each be between 0 and 65535. Weight only comes into play between records that share the same priority: given two records at priority 10 with weights 60 and 40, clients send roughly 60 per cent of requests to the first and 40 per cent to the second. A third record at priority 20 would be used only if both of the others failed.

Edit, Deactivate or Delete an Existing Record

• Edit: on the Records tab, click the record in the list. The same form opens with its current values; change what you need and click Save.
• Deactivate: open the record, untick Active and click Save. The record disappears from the live zone but stays in the list so you can re-enable it later.
• Delete: click the delete icon at the end of the record's row and confirm. Deleting is permanent, so if you are unsure, deactivate the record first and confirm nothing breaks.

Choosing Sensible TTL Values

The TTL controls how long resolvers around the world may cache a record before asking for it again. It is a trade-off: high TTLs mean fast, resilient lookups but slow changes; low TTLs mean quick changes but more queries.

• 86400 (24 hours): right for stable records that rarely change, such as MX records and the main A record of a settled website.
• 3600 (1 hour): what ISPConfig pre-fills, and a sensible choice for records you adjust from time to time.
• 300 (5 minutes): useful temporarily around a planned change. The day before moving a website or mail service, lower the TTL of the affected records to 300, wait for the old TTL to expire, make the change, confirm everything works, then raise the TTL again.
• 60 (1 minute): the lowest value ISPConfig will accept. Do not leave a record here permanently, because every expiry costs another lookup. A TTL of 0 is not an option; the form refuses it.

Check Your Changes and Allow for Propagation

Saving a record does not update the nameserver instantly. ISPConfig queues the change and shows a pulsing red counter near the top right of the panel while work is pending. Click it and a panel opens headed The following changes are not yet populated to all servers, listing what is outstanding, for example Create DNS record or Update DNS zone. ISPConfig's own guidance is that storing updates can take up to a minute. The counter disappears once the zone has been rewritten on the nameserver.

After that, propagation takes over. Resolvers that have never seen the record pick it up immediately, but any resolver that cached the old value keeps serving it until the previous TTL expires. In practice most of the internet sees a change within the old TTL, and the commonly quoted worst case is 24 to 48 hours.

You can check what the world sees from any computer with these commands, replacing yourdomain.com with your own domain:

dig yourdomain.com A +short
dig yourdomain.com MX +short
dig yourdomain.com TXT +short

On Windows, nslookup does the same job:

nslookup -type=A yourdomain.com
nslookup -type=MX yourdomain.com
nslookup -type=TXT yourdomain.com

To bypass caches and query the zone's own nameserver directly, first list the domain's nameservers with dig yourdomain.com NS +short, then repeat the lookup against one of them, for example dig yourdomain.com A @ns1.yourdomain.com +short (substitute the actual nameserver hostname returned). If the authoritative answer is correct, the record itself is right and any stale result elsewhere is just caching that will expire on its own.

Troubleshooting

• Symptom: a newly saved record does not resolve at all. Wait a couple of minutes for the red change counter in the panel to clear, then check that Active is ticked on the record and that the zone itself is active on the DNS Zone tab.
• Symptom: a lookup returns a doubled name such as shop.yourdomain.com.yourdomain.com. A fully qualified name was entered without its trailing dot, so the zone was appended to it. Edit the record and add the dot, or use the short form instead.
• Symptom: email stops arriving after an MX change. Open the MX record and confirm the Mailserver hostname points to a hostname that has an A record, not a CNAME and not an IP address, and that the trailing dot is present on a fully qualified value. Also confirm no stray second MX record points somewhere obsolete.
• Symptom: the old value keeps coming back on some networks. This is TTL caching, not a fault. Query the authoritative nameserver directly as shown above; if it returns the new value, the change is live and cached copies will expire by themselves.
• Symptom: changes in ISPConfig never affect the live domain. The domain is probably delegated to different nameservers at the registrar, so the zone you are editing is not the one the world reads. Check the delegation with dig yourdomain.com NS +short and raise a ticket if the result looks wrong.

If you get stuck at any point, open a support ticket with the Noiz support team and include your domain name, the record type and exact values you are trying to set, and a screenshot of the zone's Records tab.