Your site is on Framer, your email is on Google, and your DNS is somewhere else: how to find out who actually serves your records

An Austin video production studio asked me in September to add one DNS record so their email would stop landing in spam. The record was added in Squarespace, where the domain had been bought. Nothing changed for a week. The domain was bought at Squarespace, the site ran on Framer, the email ran on Google Workspace, and the DNS zone, the thing that actually answers when a mail server asks a question, was served by Wix, from an old site nobody had turned off. A record added anywhere but Wix did not exist.

This is the most common shape of small business DNS I see, and it is nobody's fault: each platform offered to "manage your domain" at the moment you signed up, and each one meant something slightly different by it. Here is how to find out who is actually answering.

Four jobs, often four accounts

• Registrar. Where the domain was bought and renews. Squarespace Domains, GoDaddy, Namecheap, Google Domains (now Squarespace), Cloudflare Registrar.
• DNS host. The account whose nameservers the registrar points at. This is the only place a record you add will exist. It can be the registrar, the site host, or something else entirely.
• Site host. Where the website itself runs: Framer, Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, Webflow, Shopify.
• Email provider. Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, or the host's own mail. It publishes the records the DNS host must carry.

Two commands that answer it

On a Mac, open Terminal. On Windows, open PowerShell and use nslookup -type=NS instead of dig NS. Replace the domain with yours.

dig NS yourbusiness.com +short

ns12.wixdns.net.
ns13.wixdns.net.

The nameservers name the DNS host. wixdns.net is Wix. squarespacedns.com is Squarespace, registrar-servers.com is Namecheap. ns.cloudflare.com is Cloudflare. awsdns is Route 53. Whatever it says is where your records live, regardless of where the domain was bought or where the site runs.

dig TXT _dmarc.yourbusiness.com +short
dig TXT google._domainkey.yourbusiness.com +short

If the first command returns a line starting v=DMARC1, you have a DMARC policy; p=none means it only reports, p=quarantine or p=reject means it enforces. If the second command returns nothing, the record your email provider told you to add is not being served, wherever you added it.

Why a record in the wrong account does nothing

A DNS record is only real in the zone the nameservers point at. Squarespace and Wix each keep their own copy of a zone for domains they think they manage, Framer hands you records to add wherever your zone lives, and none of these copies talk to each other. Adding a TXT record inside Squarespace while the nameservers point at Wix edits a document nobody reads. There is no error, no warning, and the platform's own status page will happily show the record as "added."

Write the register once

One page, four lines: registrar and login owner, DNS host and login owner, site host and login owner, email provider and login owner. Add the nameservers as they are today. Every future "add this record" instruction goes to the DNS host line and nowhere else. This document is the single most useful thing a small business can own about its website, and almost none have it.

Domain:        yourbusiness.com
Registrar:     Squarespace Domains    (owner: you)
Nameservers:   ns12.wixdns.net, ns13.wixdns.net
DNS host:      Wix                    (owner: former designer)  <-- records go HERE
Site host:     Framer                 (owner: you)
Email:         Google Workspace       (owner: you)

When to consolidate

If the DNS host is an account you no longer use for anything else, move the zone: point the nameservers at the registrar or at Cloudflare, re-create the records there, and close the loop. Do it in a quiet week, copy every record before you switch, and expect up to two days for a nameserver change to settle. If you would rather someone did it and wrote it down, that is what website management is.