How to export and back up your DNS records (before you need them)
Three different guides on this blog — moving a Cloudflare zone, leaving an agency, recovering from a vanished developer — all start with the same instruction: export your DNS records first. This is the how.
The stakes are simple: DNS is the map that makes your domain mean something. Lose the records during a move and your website goes dark, and — worse — your email silently stops arriving. A current export turns every migration and recovery from surgery into a paste. It takes five minutes.
Cloudflare: the two-click export
- 1Open your zone → DNS → RecordsSign in and select the domain.
- 2Import and Export → ExportCloudflare hands you a standard BIND zone file with every record. Note: proxied records are tagged in the file (cf-proxied:true) — relevant if you re-import later.
- 3Save it with a date in the nameyourbusiness.com-zone-2026-07-18.txt — you want to know how fresh a backup is at a glance.
Everywhere else
Most DNS hosts and registrars offer an export in the DNS management screen — look for 'export zone file' or 'download zone'. cPanel-based hosts have a Zone Editor with export. If your provider genuinely offers no export, do it the unglamorous way: screenshot or copy every record into a document — type, name, value/target, TTL, priority. Ugly beats absent.
Verify the export actually has the crown jewels
- MX records — the ones whose loss you discover via angry customers. Confirm the mail host entries are present.
- TXT records — SPF, DKIM and DMARC (email deliverability), plus the verification records that prove domain ownership to Google, Microsoft and others.
- CNAMEs and subdomains — app., shop., mail., the staging site everyone forgot.
- The apex A/AAAA or ALIAS records — where the website itself points.
Storage and cadence
- Keep it with your backups, access-controlled — a zone file is a map of your infrastructure, so it's not a public artifact.
- Re-export after any DNS change, and on a quarterly rhythm otherwise (pair it with the register review).
- Keep the last two or three exports, not just the latest — 'when did this record change' answers more incidents than you'd expect.
- Note the export can't capture provider-side settings (proxying, page rules, load balancing) — jot those separately if you rely on them.
The free scan maps your domain, email, cloud, social and tools from public records — and shows what you'd lose access to tomorrow. No login, nothing to install.
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