# Overview

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The DNS service supports the following record types with standard
 and extra types. 

## Standard DNS record types

|Type|Portal|API or CLI|Description|
|-------|---|---|---|
| A     | X | X | Add an "A" record that points your domain or a subdomain to an IP address.
| AAAA  | X | X | Add an "AAAA" record that points your domain to an IPv6 address. These records are the same as A records except they use IPv6 addresses.
| CAA   |   | X | Add a "CAA" record to your domain. Certification Authority Authorization (CAA) record is used to specify which certificate authorities (CAs) are allowed to issue certificates for a domain. Transferring CAA records to secondary name servers is not supported.
| CNAME | X | X | Add a "CNAME" record that aliases a subdomain to another host. These types of records are used when a server is reached by several names. Only use CNAME records on subdomains.
| HINFO | X | X | Add an "HINFO" record is used to describe the CPU and OS of a host.
| MX    | X | X | Add a mail exchange record that points to a mail server or relay. These types of records are used to describe which servers handle incoming email.
| NAPTR | X | X | Add an "NAPTR" record to provide a means to map a resource that is not in the domain name syntax to a label that is. More information can be found in <a href="https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2915.txt" target="_blank">RFC 2915</a>.
| NS    | X | X | Add an "NS" record the delegates a domain to another name server. You may only delegate subdomains (for example subdomain.yourdomain.com).
| SPF   | X | X | Add an "SPF" record to indicate what hosts and addresses are allowed to send mail from your domain. When creating an SPF record we will automatically create a corresponding TXT record for you as some older mail exchanges require a TXT version of the SPF record.
| SRV   | X | X | Add an "SRV" record to specify the location of servers for a specific service.
| SSHFP | X | X | Edit an "SSHFP" record to share your SSH fingerprint with others.
| TXT   | X | X | Add a "TXT" record. This is useful for domain records that are not covered by the standard record types. For example, Google uses this type of record for domain verification.

## Extra DNS record types

|Type|Portal|API or CLI|Description|
|-------|---|---|---|
|URL    | X | X | Add an URL redirection record that points your domain to a URL. This type of record uses an HTTP redirect to redirect visitors from a domain to a web site.
|POOL   | X | X | Add a "POOL" record that aliases a subdomain to another host as part of a pool of available CNAME records. This is a DNSimple custom record type.
|ALIAS  | X | X | Add an "ALIAS" record. An ALIAS record is a special record that will map a domain to another domain transparently. It can be used like a CNAME but for a name with other records, like the root. When the record is resolved it will look up the A records for the aliased domain and return those as the records for the record name. Note: If you want to redirect to a URL, use a URL record instead.
