Minecraft DNS Checker

A CNAME in almost every case, and on MCHosts that is the only one you need. Minecraft connects on port 25565 unless it is told otherwise, so pointing your subdomain at your server address is the whole job. An A record is an option on some hosts if you want players to type your domain with nothing in front of it, because a plain domain cannot hold a CNAME. An SRV record is only needed when a server runs on a different port. MCHosts uses neither.

Not on MCHosts. SRV records get recommended constantly, and their one real job is telling the game to use a port other than 25565. MCHosts servers use the standard port, so a CNAME is enough and is simpler to get right. If you have already made an SRV record it will still work, and this tool will check it for you.

Three reasons cover nearly all of it. The record has not finished propagating, which takes a few minutes and occasionally a few hours. Cloudflare proxying is switched on, which quietly breaks Minecraft because that proxy only carries web traffic. Or the DNS is perfect but the domain has not been saved against your server in the control panel, so the server does not recognise the name it is being asked for. The checker on this page tells you which of the three you are looking at.

Cloudflare's proxy, the orange cloud, understands web traffic and passes it on after inspecting it. Minecraft does not use web traffic, so there is nothing for the proxy to do with the connection and it never reaches your server. Switching the record to DNS only, the grey cloud, makes Cloudflare hand out your server address and stay out of the way.

It is not part of your domain, it is part of an SRV record's name. SRV records describe a specific service on a specific protocol, so the name says Minecraft over TCP. Players never type it. They just type your domain and their game looks the record up behind the scenes.

A CNAME, and on MCHosts that is the documented setup. A CNAME points at a name rather than an address, so if your server ever moves to another machine the record keeps working without you touching it. An A record points at a fixed address and has to be updated by hand if that address ever changes. The only situation where a CNAME cannot be used at all is a domain with no subdomain in front of it, which is why this tool can still build you an A record even though MCHosts does not use them.

No. Pointing your own domain at your server is included on every plan, and there is no add-on to buy for it. Your original mchosts.co address keeps working alongside it, so players can use either. The separate five dollar setup fee some people are thinking of is for choosing your own mchosts.co hostname at checkout instead of a randomly generated one, which is a different thing entirely.

Usually a few minutes. The time to live value on the record sets how long other systems remember the old answer, so a short one means changes appear faster. Occasionally a network holds on to an old answer for a few hours. Your original mchosts.co address keeps working the whole time.