DNS and our nameservers

The easiest way to connect a domain is to use our nameservers. You change the domain's nameservers once, where you bought it, and we set up every record your site needs. Your other records, like email's, are copied over before you switch, and you edit them in the project's DNS tab.

Move a domain to our nameservers

1. Open your project, then Domains, then Add a domain.

2. Type the domain, choose Use our nameservers, then Continue.

3. Under Records we found, we list the records your domain has today: email (MX), TXT records like SPF, DMARC and email signing keys, and the usual names like www, mail and shop. Each one is ticked. Untick any you don't want, and choose Copy and continue. Or choose Upload a zone file instead, if your old DNS host lets you export one.

4. The page shows our two nameservers. Log in where you bought the domain, find its nameservers (usually under DNS or domain settings), choose custom nameservers, replace them with ours, and save.

That change is also the proof that the domain is yours: only someone at the registrar can make it. We notice it within a minute, and you hear of it under the bell. Most networks follow within hours, a few within 2 days. Your SSL certificate comes with the first visit.

Our nameservers are for a whole domain, like duka.co.tz. For a name under a domain whose DNS lives elsewhere, like shop.example.com, add records yourself instead.

Example: Asha keeps her email working

Asha's email for duka.co.tz is at Google Workspace. When she chooses Use our nameservers, we find her MX records, her SPF TXT record and Google's email signing key, and tick them all. She copies them, then changes the nameservers at her registrar. Her email keeps arriving on the day of the switch, because the records were already waiting on our side.

The records we find are only served once the domain is proven, so nobody can serve records for a domain that isn't theirs.

The DNS editor

Open the project's DNS tab to see every record of each domain on our nameservers. Changes reach the internet within a minute. Next to each record, we show whether the internet sees it yet.

To add one, choose Add record, pick the type, the name and the value, and save. MX values are written 10 mail.example.com; SRV values 10 5 5060 sip.example.com; CAA values 0 issue "letsencrypt.org".

Records we manage

The addresses that keep your site reachable show as Managed by Tanzahost: the A and AAAA records of your domain, and the CNAMEs of the names your project uses, like www. They update by themselves if our addresses ever change, and you can't change them. You can still add MX and TXT records at those names. A CNAME can't share its name with other records, or be the domain itself: that's a DNS rule, not ours.

Before you change an MX record, the editor warns you that email may go elsewhere; before you change SPF, that your emails may go to spam until it's right.

Templates

Templates add the records a service asks for in one step, and only the ones that aren't there yet:

• Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 and Zoho Mail

• Google site verification and Facebook domain verification (paste the code the service gives you)

• Only our certificate authorities (CAA)

History and undo

History lists every change, with who made it and when. Undo last change puts the last one back, one at a time. Export zone file downloads every record, in the format other DNS hosts read.

Moving away

You can point your domain's nameservers elsewhere at any time. Copy your records first with Export zone file. For setting up email records yourself, see our email guide.