Get alerted when a CNAME target changes

A CNAME points a subdomain at another host — a storefront platform, an API gateway, a CDN. Repoint it to the wrong target, even briefly, and whatever depends on it stops working.

CNAME targets change more often than you'd expect

Platform migrations, vendor-side changes to the target hostname you were told to point at, an old value left behind after switching providers, or a typo made while updating records by hand can all repoint a CNAME. Because the domain still resolves to something, this often isn't obvious until the storefront, API, or custom domain it served starts failing.

CNAMEshop.example.com

shops.platform-provider.comold-shops.platform-provider.com

A leftover or mistyped target can silently break a custom domain during a migration.

How OneDollarDNS catches this

OneDollarDNS queries your domain's authoritative nameservers directly and compares each host's CNAME target against its last snapshot. By default, each domain is checked every hour; hosts you mark as Priority under the Frequent Monitoring add-on are checked every 5 minutes. When a CNAME target changes, you get an alert with the exact old and new value — useful both for catching a mistake and for confirming an intentional migration went as planned.

What this doesn't do

OneDollarDNS tells you when a CNAME's target changes — it doesn't check whether that target itself is up and responding. That's a job for uptime monitoring, which checks whether a website or service responds rather than what DNS record points to it. See how DNS monitoring compares to uptime monitoring.

New to CNAME records? Read CNAME records explained.

Start watching your DNS today.

Try it free for 14 days. No credit card required. Cancel any time.