Comprehensive DNS analysis for your domains.
Check nameservers, records, and configuration in seconds.
A DNS inspector is a diagnostic tool that analyzes every layer of a domain’s DNS configuration and produces a scored health report. DNSChkr runs 25+ automated tests — from parent delegation through email authentication — and explains every finding in plain language with fix recommendations.
Domains recently inspected using the DNS health checker. Each score shows the percentage of DNS tests passed — covering nameservers, mail routing, DNSSEC, and more.
Written by Ishan Karunaratne · Last updated:
A DNS inspector is a tool that examines a domain’s entire DNS configuration — the delegation chain, nameserver health, record consistency, mail routing, email authentication, and security settings — and reports what is working, what is broken, and what needs to be fixed. DNS is the foundation of every online interaction. If it is misconfigured, visitors cannot reach your website, emails bounce or land in spam, and SSL certificates fail to issue. Every one of those failures translates directly to lost revenue, lost customers, and wasted investment in the website and infrastructure you have already built.
The problem is that DNS misconfiguration is invisible. There is no error page, no alert, and no dashboard that tells you half your visitors are timing out because one of your nameservers is not responding. A broken MX record does not send you a notification — emails simply stop arriving. An invalid SPF record does not announce itself — your outbound emails quietly start landing in spam. By the time someone notices, the damage is done. A DNS inspector makes these invisible problems visible, and DNSChkr’s inspector does it more thoroughly than any other tool available.
Most DNS tools — including dig, nslookup, MXToolbox, and IntoDNS — show raw DNS records and leave you to figure out what they mean. If you know what a SOA serial mismatch looks like or can spot a lame delegation in a dig trace, those tools work. But for the vast majority of people managing domains — business owners, marketers, developers who are not DNS specialists — raw records are not actionable. DNSChkr was built to bridge that gap.
Every scan produces a scored health report that grades your DNS configuration on a 0 to 100 scale, then walks through every finding with a clear explanation of what it means and a specific recommendation for how to fix it. The report is designed to be useful whether you are a network engineer debugging a complex delegation issue or a business owner who just needs to know if your domain is set up correctly. Here is what that looks like in practice:
Scored Health Report
A single health score from 0 to 100 tells you immediately whether your DNS needs attention. Below the score, every test is categorized and color-coded — green for pass, yellow for warning, red for failure. Critical issues like lame delegations and missing NS records are weighted more heavily than informational items like non-standard SOA serials.
Plain-Language Explanations
Every test result includes a human-readable explanation of what was checked and why it matters. If your NS records do not match between the parent zone and your authoritative servers, the report does not just say “NS mismatch” — it explains that this means some DNS queries will fail unpredictably and tells you exactly which records need to change.
Actionable Fix Recommendations
Every warning and failure comes with a specific, step-by-step recommendation. Not “fix your SPF record” but “your SPF record exceeds the 10-lookup limit — remove the unused include for _spf.google.com or flatten your includes.” Recommendations are prioritized so you know which fixes will have the biggest impact.
CDN and Provider Detection
The report automatically identifies whether your domain is behind Cloudflare, AWS CloudFront, Akamai, Fastly, or another CDN. It detects your email provider — Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zoho, ProtonMail — from MX records. This means you do not need to run dig commands or trace headers to answer basic questions like “is my site on Cloudflare?”
Full Delegation Chain Analysis
DNSChkr traces the entire resolution path from the parent TLD servers (the .com servers at Verisign, for example) through your authoritative nameservers. It compares what the parent says with what your zone actually contains. This catches delegation mismatches, missing glue records, and lame delegations — the issues that cause the most damaging intermittent failures.
25+ Automated Tests in One Scan
A single scan covers parent delegation, glue records, nameserver health, lame delegation detection, NS record consistency, SOA validation, A/AAAA records, MX routing, mail server reachability, SPF parsing, DKIM validation, DMARC policy checks, DNSSEC chain of trust, CAA records, zone transfer restrictions, and CDN detection. No need to jump between multiple tools.
Most DNS tools specialize in one area — MXToolbox focuses on email diagnostics, DNSChecker on propagation, dig on raw queries. DNSChkr is the only free tool that combines all of these capabilities into a single scored health report with prioritized fix recommendations. Here is a feature-by-feature comparison with the most commonly recommended alternatives.
| Feature | DNSChkr | MXToolbox | IntoDNS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scored health report (0–100) | Yes | No | Partial |
| Parent delegation chain analysis | Yes | No | Yes |
| Lame delegation detection | Yes | No | Yes |
| Email auth (SPF/DKIM/DMARC) | Yes | Yes | Partial |
| CDN and proxy detection | Yes | No | No |
| Email provider identification | Yes | Yes | No |
| DNSSEC chain validation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Prioritized fix recommendations | Yes | Some | RFC links |
| Blacklist (DNSBL) checking | 50+ lists | 100+ lists | No |
| SMTP diagnostics | Yes | Yes | No |
| Email deliverability tester | Yes | No | No |
| Global propagation testing | Separate tool | No | Limited |
| Number of automated tests | 25+ | Varies | ~15 |
| Cost | Free | Free (limited) | Free |
DNSChkr is the only platform that combines delegation chain analysis, nameserver health, email authentication, blacklist monitoring, SMTP diagnostics, email deliverability testing, security checks, and CDN detection — all in a single scored report with prioritized fix recommendations. MXToolbox focuses narrowly on email. IntoDNS provides basic delegation analysis. dig requires command-line expertise. DNSChecker specializes in propagation only.
MXToolbox is a well-known DNS tool focused primarily on email deliverability. It offers blacklist checks and SPF/DKIM/DMARC lookups — but DNSChkr provides all of those capabilities and more. DNSChkr includes a dedicated Blacklist Checker that scans 50+ DNSBL lists, individual SPF, DKIM, and DMARC record checkers with RFC-level validation, an SMTP Diagnostics tool that tests live mail server connections, an Email Tester for end-to-end deliverability testing, an Email Header Analyzer, and an MX Record Lookup tool. MXToolbox does not offer an email tester, does not check parent delegation, does not detect lame delegations, does not validate SOA records against RFC 1912, does not identify CDN providers, and does not produce a scored health report. DNSChkr covers every email diagnostic MXToolbox offers while also providing a complete DNS infrastructure audit — making it the more comprehensive choice for domain administrators who want a single platform for both email and DNS health.
IntoDNS is a respected free DNS checker that provides solid delegation and nameserver analysis. Both IntoDNS and DNSChkr check parent delegation, NS record consistency, and SOA validation. Where they differ: DNSChkr produces a weighted 0–100 health score while IntoDNS uses basic pass/fail icons with no overall grade. DNSChkr validates SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records in depth while IntoDNS checks SPF only partially. DNSChkr detects CDN providers and email providers automatically. And DNSChkr provides prioritized fix recommendations explaining what to fix first and how, while IntoDNS links to relevant RFCs but leaves interpretation to the user. For quick delegation checks, IntoDNS works well. For a comprehensive audit with actionable guidance, DNSChkr provides more depth and clearer explanations.
DNSChkr is not just a lookup tool — it is built on top of one of the largest DNS datasets publicly available. The platform analyzes over 247 million domains daily from TLD zone files, maintains 220 million WHOIS/RDAP records covering 1,900+ TLDs, and tracks 1,500+ DNS providers with market share data. This dataset powers the inspector’s ability to identify your CDN provider, email provider, and nameserver provider instantly — because DNSChkr already knows which providers serve which infrastructure patterns across the global DNS ecosystem.
247M+
Domains analyzed daily
220M+
WHOIS records maintained
1,933
TLDs in the directory
1,500+
DNS providers tracked
DNS misconfigurations range from catastrophic (your domain does not resolve at all) to subtle (emails intermittently land in spam). Many of these issues are invisible to the domain owner until they cause real damage. Here are the most common problems DNSChkr detects, what they mean, and why they matter.
| Problem | What It Means |
|---|---|
| Lame delegation | A listed nameserver does not respond authoritatively for your domain |
| NS record mismatch | Parent TLD servers and your zone file list different nameservers |
| Missing glue records | Nameserver IPs not embedded at the parent level when required |
| Broken MX records | Mail server hostnames do not resolve or point to invalid IPs |
| Invalid SPF record | Too many DNS lookups, permissive +all, or syntax errors |
| Missing DMARC | No DMARC record published for the domain |
| SOA serial mismatch | Different nameservers report different serial numbers |
| No DNSSEC | Domain is not signed with DNSSEC |
Each of these issues appears in the scored report with a severity level, explanation, and fix recommendation. The most dangerous problems — lame delegations, missing NS records, broken MX — are weighted most heavily in the health score.
Every scan follows the DNS resolution chain from top to bottom. Tests are ordered by dependency — if delegation is broken at the top, everything below it will fail too. Here is what each category covers.
Queries the TLD servers (like the .com servers at Verisign) to confirm your domain is properly delegated. Checks that nameservers are listed at the parent, glue records are present when needed, and delegation matches your actual zone. A broken delegation means your domain is unreachable — no website, no email, nothing.
Tests each nameserver individually: are they responding, are they authoritative, do they agree on the same records? Checks for lame delegations, open recursive queries (a security risk), mismatched NS records between servers, and whether you have enough nameserver redundancy per RFC 2182.
The SOA record controls zone operations — serial numbers, refresh intervals, retry timing, and cache behavior. Validates each value against RFC 1912 recommended ranges, checks serial consistency across all nameservers, and flags misconfigurations that could cause zone transfer failures or stale data.
Email delivery depends entirely on correct MX records. Verifies that all nameservers report identical MX configurations, each mail server hostname resolves to a valid public IP, priorities are set correctly, and no MX record points to a CNAME (violates RFC 2181). Identifies your mail provider — Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zoho — so you can confirm it matches expectations.
Parses TXT records to find and validate SPF, DKIM, and DMARC entries. Flags circular SPF includes, too many lookups, overly permissive policies, and missing DMARC records. For a deep dive, see our guide on SPF, DKIM, and DMARC email authentication.
Checks DNSSEC status, CAA records (which Certificate Authorities can issue certs), and zone transfer restrictions. Detects CDN and proxy configurations — Cloudflare, AWS CloudFront, Akamai, Fastly — and explains what that means for your setup. Also available: HTTP Security Headers and Reputation Check.
A DNS health check is not something you run every day, but there are critical moments where a full inspection prevents hours of troubleshooting or catches a problem before it costs you traffic and revenue. The most important time to run one is immediately after any infrastructure change — switching hosting providers, migrating DNS to Cloudflare or Route 53, changing email providers, or updating nameservers. These are the moments when misconfigurations are most likely to be introduced.
Verify that delegation, glue records, A/AAAA records, and MX records all survived the migration intact. Then confirm worldwide resolution with the Propagation Checker.
Check MX records, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC in one scan. Most email delivery issues trace back to DNS misconfigurations — broken MX routing, invalid SPF syntax, or missing DMARC policies.
Lame delegations, mismatched NS records, or expired zones cause random resolution failures that are nearly impossible to diagnose without inspecting each nameserver individually — which is exactly what this tool does.
Check DNSSEC chain of trust, CAA records, zone transfer exposure, open recursive queries, and email authentication in one pass. The scored report serves as documentation for compliance reviews.
Understand the current DNS setup, identify technical debt, and check for issues that could affect the transfer or require immediate work after purchase.
DNS records drift over time — deprecated TXT records from old verification attempts, stale MX entries from email trials, forgotten subdomains. A quarterly inspection catches problems before they affect users.
The report breaks down into categories that follow the natural DNS resolution chain. Each test gets a pass, warning, or fail status with a plain-language explanation. Here is how to read the results and prioritize fixes.
A weighted percentage where critical issues (lame delegations, missing NS records, broken MX) impact the score more heavily than informational items (missing CAA, non-standard SOA serials). Focus on tests marked as critical first — these are the ones causing real-world problems right now.
Parent DNS is checked first because if delegation is broken, nothing else matters. Then nameservers, since they serve all your records. Then SOA (zone configuration), followed by individual record types and security checks. Failures high in the chain often cause cascading failures below.
The top recommendations highlight the most impactful issues — the ones where a fix will have the greatest effect on your domain’s reliability, email deliverability, or security. Address these first before worrying about lower-priority warnings.
DNS Propagation Checker
After fixing issues found in the inspector, verify your changes have reached DNS resolvers worldwide with real-time TTL countdowns.
SPF Record Checker
Deep-dive into your SPF record with lookup counting, mechanism parsing, and RFC 7208 compliance validation.
MX Record Lookup
Focused mail routing analysis with SMTP connectivity testing and mail provider identification.
Built and maintained by Ishan Karunaratne — software engineer and infrastructure architect with 20+ years of experience in DNS, networking, and cloud infrastructure. CompTIA A+, Network+, and Security+ certified.