Why do people equate registrars with DNS? Wherever you're hosting your site is where you should be handling DNS.

That is not particularly rational. It makes moving hosting providers harder and many provide very different dns services. You might want an api or support for different record types that otherwise good hosting services dont provide. I use zerigo just for dns because they are really goid at it...

Managing DNS completely separately is fine, too. I just don't think it's a particularly good idea to use your registrar as your DNS provider unless you're also using it for hosting. I'd much rather point my registrar at my host's DNS than to have to update DNS records every time something changes on the host.

> have to update DNS records every time something changes on the host.

On the other hand, you might want to be able to do that rather than not be able to.

I'm thinking of the situation where your host goes down. If it is host-wide, your (their) DNS servers might be down too.

I intentionally use a different company for DNS than hosting, so if the host goes down I can point my DNS to somewhere else.

Every registrar that I have used in the last decade has come with free DNS. Why in the world do I need something cheaper than the ~$10 that most registrars charge?

eNom, Namecheap, like all of them?

This is something I never understood. I am not a sys-admin by any means, but I have never used a registrar, or host that does not have free DNS.

However, I have seen people pay for DNS hosting, separate from their registrar... which is odd to me.

Is this one of those things that was not available back in "good ol-days", so all the sys-admin thinks you have to worry about it separately?

Or is there some sort of benefit to having multiple DNS providers?

* Ability to set a low TTL (usually temporarily) if you need to servers quickly.

* Often better uptime and fast

* Easier to change registrars

* A central place to manage DNS if you end up with domains spread across many registrars

Ability to set SRV records, geographic dns, an API,... lots of reasons.