BackupMyDNS vs. the alternatives
Most people don’t back up DNS at all. It’s invisible infrastructure until it breaks. For those who have thought about it, here’s how the options compare.
At a glance
| BackupMyDNS | Manual export | Custom script | Nothing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Automated | Yes, on schedule or on change | No | Yes, if you build it | — |
| Multi-provider | Cloudflare, Route53, DNSimple, GoDaddy | One at a time | One per script you write | — |
| Change detection | Snapshots on every change | Only when you remember | Possible, but you build it | — |
| Diff history | Full record-level diffs | No | You build the UI | — |
| All record types | Yes, including SRV, CAA, DNSKEY | Depends on export format | Depends on API parsing | — |
| Encryption | AES-256 at rest | Up to you | Up to you | — |
| Effort to maintain | None | Ongoing discipline | You’re on-call for it | None |
| Failure mode | We alert you | You don’t notice | Silent unless you built alerting | You find out during an outage |
Manual exports
Exporting zone files from your provider’s dashboard works. Once. The problem is doing it consistently across every domain, every provider, every time someone makes a change.
In practice, exports go stale within weeks. Most provider dashboards don’t export all record types cleanly — SRV, CAA, and DNSSEC records are often missing or mangled. And the person who remembered to do exports eventually changes roles, goes on vacation, or just stops.
Discipline doesn’t scale. Automation does.
Custom scripts
You can absolutely build this yourself. Curl the Cloudflare API, parse the JSON, store the output, diff it against yesterday’s version. It’s a weekend project.
Then you add Route53, which uses a completely different API and pagination model. Then you need a place to store results, a way to view diffs, alerting when the script fails, and someone to fix it when the API changes. Your backup system now needs its own backup plan.
The hidden cost isn’t building it. It’s maintaining it forever, and being the on-call engineer for a tool nobody else on your team understands.
Doing nothing
This is the most common approach. It works right up until it doesn’t.
The scenario: a migration goes sideways at 2 AM, or someone accidentally deletes a zone. You need to rebuild DNS from memory, old emails, and Slack messages. MX records, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, SRV records for half a dozen services — all from recall, under pressure, while your site and email are down.
The cost of a DNS backup is trivial. The cost of rebuilding DNS from scratch during an outage is not.
Get started
Your first domain is free. No credit card, no trial expiration. Connect a provider, and your DNS is backed up within minutes.