Can I keep DNS with my current provider

Yes. Hosting sites with us does not oblige you to use our nameservers. If your DNS is already somewhere you are happy with, point an A record at the address we give you and leave everything else where it is.

The two ways to point a domain

• Change nameservers so we answer for the whole zone. Records are then managed here, and anything the account needs is created for you.
• Keep your nameservers and add records pointing at our addresses. You keep full control of the zone and manage every record yourself.

Both are normal. The second is common when a domain's DNS is tied to something else, such as a mail provider's setup or a CDN in front of the site.

What you take on by keeping external DNS

Records that would otherwise be created automatically become yours to maintain:

• The A record for the site, and a second one for www.
• Mail records, if mail is on the account. Missing these is the usual reason mail breaks after an otherwise clean move.
• Any validation record a certificate needs, which is covered in the panel's own tools only if we hold the zone.

Nothing here is difficult. It is simply a list you have to remember rather than one that maintains itself.

Where it costs you on an estate

External DNS is fine for one domain and gets tedious across forty. Every address reassignment becomes a change in someone else's control panel, and the record of which site sits on which address lives in two places instead of one.

It also removes the automatic part of certificate issuance for hostnames we cannot validate, which means more manual renewals to track.

Where it is the right call

Keep external DNS when the zone is doing more than pointing at a website: complex mail routing, a CDN with its own record requirements, or a provider whose features you rely on. Fighting that to consolidate rarely pays.

Mixing the two

You can, and plenty of estates do. Some domains on our nameservers, others elsewhere, chosen per domain rather than as a policy. The only thing to avoid is losing track of which is which, so write down which zone lives where while you still remember.

If IP separation is the point of your setup, note that shared nameservers can undo part of it regardless of where the zone is hosted. That interaction is explained in why shared nameservers undo IP diversity.