# Add a DNS zone > Create a DNS zone with a short wizard that does the cross-provider work for you — including pointing your domain at the new provider. Source: https://infranest.io/docs/add-a-dns-zone Last updated: 2026-10-26 --- Creating a DNS zone brings a domain's records into InfraNest and connects it to the provider that will actually run its DNS — this is for anyone setting up a new domain or moving one between providers. ## Overview - Walks you through creating a zone at a DNS provider, step by step - Can fill the new zone automatically by scanning live DNS, copying from a connected provider, or starting from a template - Offers to point your domain at the new zone in one step, checking first that nothing will break - Keeps watching the zone afterwards for changes made outside InfraNest > [!TIP] > Registering the domain through InfraNest right now? You don't need this wizard. Choose **Use one of your DNS providers** on the add-domain page and the zone is created and connected for you as soon as the registration is confirmed — see **Register a new domain**. ## Create a zone 1. Go to **DNS** and select **create a zone**. 2. Enter the domain. InfraNest matches it to a domain in your portfolio and detects which DNS provider currently runs it, from the domain's live nameservers. ![Add a DNS zone](/media/38974bef-a691-420c-872b-dca542244810) 3. Choose how to fill the zone: - **Scan** — reads the domain's live DNS and imports the records it finds, so the new zone matches what's working now. - **Copy from** — copies the records from an existing zone at a provider you've connected. This comes with DNS templates, so on a plan without them it shows locked. - Moving from Route 53: InfraNest leaves out *alias* records, since no other provider can recreate them, and tells you how many it left out. Add a record for each one by hand in the new zone. - Moving from OVHcloud: a record using the zone's default TTL (shown as **0s**) gets that default as its own TTL at the new provider, or 5 minutes if InfraNest doesn't know the default. Copied into another OVHcloud zone, it keeps using that zone's default. - **Template** — starts from a DNS template (see **DNS templates**). Like **Copy from**, it shows locked on a plan without DNS templates. - **Manual** — starts blank. 4. InfraNest creates the zone at your chosen provider and picks up its nameservers. Not every provider can host a *new* zone. GoDaddy, TransIP, Namecheap, Dynadot and Porkbun only run DNS for domains registered with them — if your domain is registered there, the zone already exists and there's nothing to create. OVHcloud can host any domain's DNS, but the zone has to be ordered in its own control panel first. Those accounts show greyed out here, with a note explaining why. To bring one of their zones in, open **Integrations** in the sidebar, open the account, and choose **Discover zones**. 5. Point your domain at it. If the domain is at a connected registrar, the wizard offers to update its nameservers to the new provider in one step — no second dashboard needed. InfraNest first checks that the new zone answers every one of its names the way your current DNS does, and switches only then. If a name differs, nothing changes, and the zone's page says which name and what each host answered. Once created, drift detection keeps an eye on the zone from then on. ## If the domain still points somewhere else Sometimes the zone exists here but the domain is still pointed at your registrar's own nameservers — the step above was skipped, the registrar refused the change at the time, or somebody moved it back later. The records you edit here are then not what visitors and mail servers are actually being told. The domain page says so. Open the domain, look at **Where it points**, and you'll see a line naming the provider your zone is at, with **Point it at the zone** beside it. One press writes the right nameservers at your registrar — you never have to look them up. Nameservers take a while to spread across the internet, so give it up to a few hours before judging the result. If the button is greyed out, your registrar connection cannot change nameservers; the tooltip says which reason applies. ## If some records could not be added **Scan** and **Copy from** write records into the zone at your DNS provider, and a provider can refuse — a rate limit on a large zone, a key that has expired, a record type it doesn't accept. When that happens, InfraNest stops rather than pushing the rest, and tells you how many records were added, how many were not, and what the provider said. Records it couldn't add aren't kept. A record that existed only in InfraNest would show as live here while nothing had changed at your provider — and it would disappear on the next sync anyway. Sort out what the message describes, then run the scan or copy again: records already there are skipped, so nothing is duplicated. A record can also be left out before it ever reaches the provider, because its value doesn't fit its type — an A record holding a word instead of an IP address, for example, which some registrars put in a parked domain's zone. InfraNest doesn't copy that record, adds everything else, and shows a warning naming each record it left out and what its value would need to be. If you want the record, add it by hand with a value that fits. ## If your zone says the records came from a public lookup A zone that isn't connected to a provider account can't be read directly, so InfraNest works out what's in it by asking public DNS servers about the apex and a list of common subdomain names. That gets you something to look at, but it's a guess, and the zone page says so at the top. Three things it cannot see: - **Records behind a proxy.** If a record is proxied — Cloudflare's orange cloud, for example — public DNS answers with the proxy's own addresses instead of what you set. So a name pointing at a Pages or Workers site shows up as an IP address that changes on its own, and never settles. - **Anything with an unusual name.** Only common names are tried, so `status`, `docs`, `shop` and the like are missed entirely. - **Whether a name really exists.** A catch-all (wildcard) record answers for every name asked about, so names that were never set up can appear as though they were. **Connect this zone** on that message fixes all of it at once. InfraNest looks through the provider accounts you've connected, finds the one holding this zone, and reads the real record list from it — adding what was missing and removing what was never really there. If nothing happens, the message tells you which of two things is true: no DNS provider account is connected yet, or the accounts you have don't hold a zone by this name. Either way the fix is in **Settings → Integrations** — connect the provider that hosts the domain, then press it again.