DNS Monitoring
DNS changes you didn't make — flagged before they cause a support fire
Someone changed the MX records and now the client's email is silently routing to the wrong place. Or a CNAME got repointed during a migration. The website stays up, so nothing alerts — until the support tickets start. Sitewatch sees the DNS change the day it happens.
- Alerts on unexpected MX (mail) record changes
- Alerts on CNAME (subdomain/alias) changes
- Snapshots and diffs your records on a schedule
DNS record changed
Detected in last check
Affected records
Recent activity
- MX — changed to mail.unknown-host.comjust now
- Previous: aspmx.l.google.com12h ago
- CNAME www — unchanged1m ago
- Website still responding 200 OK1m ago
High blast radius, often outside your control
DNS drift breaks email and services while the website stays up
MX record monitoring
Mail records are the highest-stakes DNS records. A change can silently reroute or drop a client's email — and the website gives no sign anything is wrong. Sitewatch flags MX changes you didn't expect.
CNAME change detection
A repointed CNAME during a migration, a subdomain alias gone wrong, a service handoff that broke an integration. Sitewatch catches CNAME drift before it takes a service down.
Snapshot and diff
Sitewatch snapshots your DNS records and compares each check against the last known-good state, so you see exactly what changed — old value versus new.
Changes from outside the agency
DNS is often touched by people you don't control — a client's IT contractor, a registrar migration, a third-party service. Sitewatch is the watch on changes nobody told you about.
Tuned to avoid noise
A/AAAA records churn constantly with CDNs and round-robin DNS, so they are captured but not alerted on at launch. Sitewatch alerts on MX and CNAME — the records where an unexpected change almost always means trouble.
Before the support fire
Email bouncing or a service failing is how most teams discover a DNS change — after customers complain. Sitewatch moves that discovery to the moment the record changes.
MX + CNAME
Records alerted on
Before/after
Exact value diff in the alert
Every plan
Available on free and paid
DNS failure modes
How DNS drift breaks things the website can't show you
Mail (MX) changes
- MX records repointed to an unexpected mail host
- MX records removed, silently dropping inbound mail
- A migration that changed mail routing without notice
Alias (CNAME) changes
- A CNAME repointed during a platform migration
- A subdomain alias broken by a service handoff
- A third-party integration CNAME changed under you
Know about DNS changes before your client does
Add a site and Sitewatch snapshots its DNS automatically. Free plan, no credit card.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
MX (mail) and CNAME (alias) records at launch. These are the records where an unexpected change reliably signals a problem — misrouted email or a broken service. A and AAAA records are captured for context but not alerted on, because CDN and round-robin churn would create constant false alarms.
Availability monitoring checks whether a domain resolves at all — a hard failure. DNS change monitoring checks whether the records themselves changed when you didn't expect it — a silent change that can break email or services while the site still resolves and returns 200 OK.
The record type that changed, the previous value, and the new value — so you can immediately tell whether it was a legitimate change you forgot about or something to investigate.
Because DNS is frequently managed outside the agency — by a client's internal IT, a contractor, a registrar during a transfer, or a third-party service. Those changes rarely get communicated. Snapshotting the records is the only reliable way to catch them.
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