DNS Outage: What to Do to Keep Your Website and Email Online

A DNS outage is best handled before it happens: use at least two independent nameservers, keep your TTLs sensible, and know exactly where your records live. On 2–3 November 2026, SkyBell published an outage log that described an outage appearing to involve DNS and DNS server settings. This article covers what the log says, why it matters for your domain, and a checklist for what to do now.

What happened in the SkyBell outage

SkyBell, a maker of connected doorbells, keeps a public outage log. These are the facts it states, and nothing here goes beyond them:

The log page was last updated on 3 November. The company has not published a full cause, and the wording is hedged ("appears to be"). We are not speculating about the root cause. The useful part is the pattern: public web pages came back after a DNS change, while other services stayed down.

Why a DNS failure can take your website and email down

DNS is the lookup that turns your domain name into the servers that handle your website, email and apps. If the lookup fails, your servers can be perfectly healthy and still unreachable by name.

Website

A DNS failure means browsers cannot find your site's address. Visitors see a "server not found" error, which looks like downtime. A DNS-related change can bring web pages back, as it did for SkyBell's public site, but it will not fix problems elsewhere in your stack.

Email

DNS outage email delivery problems come from three places:

• MX records tell other mail servers where to deliver your mail. If they cannot be looked up, inbound mail cannot be routed.
• SPF, DKIM and DMARC are published as DNS records. If receivers cannot fetch them, your outgoing mail can fail authentication or be deferred.
• Your own devices and apps that connect to mail, booking or payment services by hostname will fail to connect.

Sending servers usually retry deferred mail for a period, but retry behaviour differs between systems, so do not rely on it as a plan.

DNS outage: what to do in the first hour

Work out whether DNS is the problem before you change anything.

1. Check from outside your network. Test the domain from mobile data, and use an online DNS lookup tool or dig yourdomain.com NS to see whether your nameservers respond.
2. Compare name and address. If the site loads by its IP address but not by name, DNS is the likely cause. If it fails both ways, look at the server.
3. Check your DNS provider's status page and your registrar account for nameserver or zone changes you did not make.
4. Confirm the nameservers at the registry level. The nameservers shown in your registrar panel must match the ones that actually hold your zone.
5. Have your zone export or record list to hand. If you need to move DNS quickly, you will need every A, CNAME, MX and TXT record.
6. Tell customers through a channel that does not depend on your domain, such as a social profile or a mobile message, until things settle.

Avoid making several changes at once. Every edit starts a new propagation cycle and makes the outage harder to diagnose.

Secondary DNS for business: remove the single point of failure

The standard defence is redundancy. The IETF guidance on selecting and operating secondary DNS servers (RFC 2182) recommends multiple authoritative servers in diverse locations, so one failure does not take the zone offline.

If you are considering secondary DNS for business use, check these points:

• Independent infrastructure. Two nameservers in the same network or data centre fail together.
• Zone transfer or sync. Know how changes reach the second provider, and who is responsible for keeping them identical.
• Record parity. Differences between providers cause intermittent failures that are hard to trace.
• Registrar delegation. Both providers' nameservers must be listed at the registry.

For most small sites, the simplest route is to keep DNS with one well-run provider that publishes several nameservers. If your site or email is revenue-critical, ask whether a second, independent DNS provider is justified. Our help centre or sales and support team can advise on how to set up DNS for your plan.

DNS TTL settings and your nameserver change checklist

TTL (time to live) is how long resolvers cache an answer. A long TTL reduces lookups but slows down any fix. A short TTL speeds up changes but increases query volume. Many teams use a higher TTL day to day and lower it ahead of planned work.

Planned-change routine

1. Lower the TTL on the records you will change, at least one full old-TTL period before the change.
2. Make the change, then verify from several networks.
3. Raise the TTL again once everything is stable.

Note that a nameserver change is slower than a record change, because the delegation at the registry has its own caching. Keep the old DNS zone active until the move is verified.

Nameserver change checklist

For the exact steps, see our guide to changing nameservers. The nameservers vs A record article explains which method suits your setup.

What to do now: a DNS resilience checklist

• Log in to your registrar and confirm the contact email, domain lock and renewal settings. Losing control of a domain is a DNS outage you cannot fix quickly.
• Keep your domain, DNS and hosting accounts protected with strong, unique passwords and two-factor authentication where offered.
• Write down where your DNS is hosted, and who can change it.
• Export your DNS records and store a copy outside the DNS provider.
• Confirm that you have at least two nameservers, preferably on separate networks.
• Review the TTLs on your website and MX records.
• Check your SPF, DKIM and DMARC records against your business email setup.
• Make sure your SSL certificate renewals do not rely on a single DNS record you cannot reach.
• Add a status or contact channel that works even if your domain does not.
• Keep your domain, hosting and email with a team you can reach quickly. Domain registration with clear control over nameservers makes recovery faster.

What to watch next

The SkyBell log is the only source we used for this event, and it is a company's own running notes, not an independent investigation. Watch for a later update from the company with a fuller explanation. Whatever the final cause turns out to be, the practical lesson is the same: DNS is a shared dependency for your website, email and any connected service, so treat it as infrastructure you plan for, not a setting you set once and forget.

Keeping your domain registration, nameservers and records under your control is the foundation of a resilient setup. Search and register your domain on our domain registration page.

Frequently asked questions

What should I do first if my website is down and I suspect DNS?

Test from a different network and check whether your nameservers respond. Then compare loading the site by IP address with loading it by name. If only the name fails, review your DNS host's status and your registrar's nameserver settings before changing anything.

Will I lose emails during a DNS outage?

Not necessarily. Sending servers usually retry for a while when they cannot deliver, but timings vary. Mail can be delayed or rejected if MX or authentication records cannot be fetched, so reduce the risk with redundant nameservers.

Do I need secondary DNS for a small business?

Not always. A single provider with several well-run nameservers is enough for many small sites. If your site or email is critical to revenue, a second independent DNS provider is worth considering.

How low should I set my DNS TTL?

There is no single right value. Shorter TTLs make fixes and migrations faster, at the cost of more queries. A common approach is to lower TTLs before planned changes and raise them again afterwards.

Does changing nameservers fix a DNS outage?

Only if the cause is your current DNS host and your new zone is complete and accurate. Changing delegation is slower than editing a record, so prepare the new zone first. Keep the old one running until you have verified the move.