Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Your domain name is your digital real estate. It is how customers find you, search engines rank you, and your brand builds trust in the digital world. Whether you run a small blog, an e-commerce store, or a large business, your domain is the foundation of your online activities. But what happens if you forget to renew it? A domain expiry can cause your site to go offline. It can also hurt your SEO rankings and affect your website traffic.

On July 14, Cloudflare’s popular public DNS service (known as 1.1.1.1) suffered an outage lasting over two hours. As rumors swirled about the cause, we were the first to push back on the theory that a BGP hijack had caused the outage. In fact, the hijack was actually a consequence. How did we know this so early when other internet watchers did not? We’ll discuss in this post.

Most MSPs don’t advertise DNS monitoring as a service—but they should. Why? Because when DNS goes wrong, your client won’t blame their registrar or email provider. They’ll blame you. And the worst part? You probably didn’t know anything had changed until the problem reached your inbox.

When something goes wrong in a client’s infrastructure, MSPs are expected to fix it—fast. But there’s one area most teams still overlook, and it’s often the first point of failure: DNS. Misconfigured DNS doesn’t always break things immediately. It’s subtle. It lingers. And when it finally causes an outage, broken email, or a security issue, it’s often too late. Here are the DNS misconfigurations MSPs can’t afford to ignore—and what to do about them.

Most MSPs don’t think much about DNS—until something breaks. A record is deleted, an MX entry is misconfigured, or a zone is out of sync. Suddenly, your client’s email is bouncing, their site is down, and your phone is ringing. The problem? DNS issues are easy to miss. They don’t always trigger alerts, logs, or tickets. But when they surface, you’re the one your client calls first.

We’re excited to announce a powerful new addition to your monitoring toolkit: DNS Monitoring is now available on UptimeRobot! DNS (Domain Name System) is a core component of internet functionality. When DNS records are misconfigured, hijacked, or simply expire, they can lead to serious outages, broken email services, or even security risks. That’s why we’ve introduced DNS Monitoring – to help you stay in control of your domain’s health at all times.

Like many shoppers in the UK this week, I found myself staring at half-empty shelves in my local grocery store. In a small but frustrating twist, my usual sandwich, chicken mayo on malted bread, was nowhere to be found. The disruption wasn’t just about lunchtime preferences; it was part of a broader impact from cyberattacks that hit major UK retailers, including Co-op and Marks & Spencer.

Have you ever launched a website, made a DNS change, and then waited and waited some more for it to go live? You are not alone.

On the information superhighway, an IP address is a series of numbers telling the location of a digital resource, similar to having a street address for a building. However, when all you know is the street address, you have no idea what the building itself looks like. If you’re a visual person, you might insert that address into Google Maps to pull up a picture of the building so you have a marker to help find a drive.