Purchase a Public Zone instance to provide your business domain names with a highly available, high-performance, and secure authoritative resolution service.
Why choose a paid edition
Alibaba Cloud offers both free and paid public authoritative resolution services. The Free Edition is suitable only for testing and development because it does not meet business requirements for availability, security, or fine-grained management. For production environments, you must upgrade to a paid edition. To upgrade, purchase a Public Zone instance. The advantages are as follows:
Feature | Free Edition | Paid Edition | Paid Edition advantages |
Service-Level Agreement (SLA) guarantee | None | 100% monthly availability | Provides a 100% monthly availability guarantee for core business domain names. This prevents service interruptions caused by a single point of failure. |
Resolution lines | Basic | Smart DNS resolution | Uses smart resolution lines to optimize access speed for global users. It also supports many DNS records and a higher API call frequency. |
Security protection | None | Optional DDoS protection | Protects against high-traffic DNS DDoS attacks to ensure stable domain name resolution services. |
Technical support | None | Expert support | Access advanced O&M features such as DNS logs and health checks, and receive expert technical support. |
For more information about the differences between editions, see Edition comparison.
Purchase guide
Purchase entry points
Method 1: Go to the Public Zone purchase pageAuthoritative Hosted Domain Names (Subscription).
Method 2:
Go to Alibaba Cloud DNS - Instance Editions and select the Public Zone tab.
Click Buy Now.
Form item descriptions
Form item | Required | Description |
Instance type | Yes | Authoritative Hosted Domain: Provides stable, high-quality public authoritative resolution services for a specified number of domain names. Keep the default setting. |
Edition | Yes | Personal Edition: Suitable for individual developers. It meets basic domain name resolution needs and is cost-effective. Enterprise Ultimate Edition: Suitable for enterprises and organizations across various industries. It provides more fine-grained O&M capabilities and expert consulting services. Exclusive Edition: Suitable for enterprises and organizations across various industries. It has no upper limits on multiple metrics and provides more fine-grained O&M capabilities and expert consulting services. For more information about the differences between editions, see Edition comparison. |
DNS Security | Yes | Personal Edition: Optional DNS Security Defense Enterprise Ultimate Edition: DNS Security Defense is required Exclusive Edition: Includes DNS Full Defense by default |
Number of domain names | Yes | The number of domain names that can be bound to the instance. The default is 1. The maximum is 10,000. |
Initial domain name binding | No | Enter the domain names, separated by commas. After the purchase is complete, the system automatically binds the entered domain names to the corresponding package. You can enter up to 10 domain names here. To bind more domain names, go to the console to perform a batch binding after purchase. |
Subscription duration | Yes | You can select 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, or 3 years. |
Auto-renewal upon expiration | No | Select Auto-renewal upon expiration to prevent service disruptions caused by instance expiration and release. If you select this option, the auto-renewal cycle is one year. The fee is automatically deducted at the real-time price before the instance expires. You can cancel auto-renewal at any time. |
Pricing
Plan 1: Personal Edition + DNS Security Protection (Optional)
Personal Edition can be purchased with optional DNS Security Protection. The billing formula is as follows: Total fee = (Unit price of Personal Edition + Unit price of DNS Security Protection) × Number of domain names
Billable item | Price | Description |
| 7 USD/domain name/year | Personal Edition: 7 USD/domain name/year Basic Protection: 86 USD/domain name/year Full Protection: 429 USD/domain name/year |
| 93 USD/domain name/year | |
| 436 USD/domain name/year |
Plan 2: Enterprise Ultimate Edition + DNS Security Protection (Required)
Enterprise Ultimate Edition requires DNS Security Protection. The billing formula is as follows: Total fee = (Unit price of Enterprise Ultimate Edition + Unit price of DNS Security Protection) × Number of domain names
Billable item | Price | Description |
| 167 USD/domain name/year | Enterprise Ultimate Edition: 81 USD/domain name/year Basic Protection: 86 USD/domain name/year Full Protection: 429 USD/domain name/year |
| 510 USD/domain name/year |
Plan 3: Exclusive Edition
Exclusive Edition includes Full DNS Protection by default. The billing formula is as follows: Total fee = Unit price of Exclusive Edition × Number of domain names
Billable item | Price |
| 4287 USD/domain name/year |
Post-purchase configuration
1. Add a domain name to Public Zone
Domain names registered with Alibaba Cloud: Ensure that the domain status is normal (not locked or expired) and the domain name is not already bound to another instance.
Domain names not registered with Alibaba Cloud:
If no DNS records have been added for the domain name, you can simply add the domain name to Public Zone. For more information, see Domain name management.
If DNS records already exist for the domain name, you must migrate them to Public Zone in Alibaba Cloud DNS. For more information, see How to smoothly migrate domain name resolution to Alibaba Cloud DNS.
2. Bind a domain name to an instance
Find the target instance and click Bind Zone.
On the Bind Domain Name page, in the Basic Information section, click the Bind Zone button and enter the domain names that you want to bind. If your purchased instance supports multiple domain names, you can enter multiple domain names on this page.
3. Switch the DNS server addresses for the domain name and verify the switch
Go to Alibaba Cloud DNS - Public Authoritative Zone. Find the target domain name and copy the system-assigned DNS addresses from the DNS Server IP Address column. The addresses assigned after a domain name is attached to an instance are typically
vip(1-8).alidns.com.
Go to the console of your domain name registrar to change the DNS server addresses. The following steps show how to do this for a domain name that is registered with Alibaba Cloud:
Go to the Domain Names console. In the Domain Names list, find the target domain name and click Manage in the Actions column.
In the navigation pane on the left, click DNS Server Change, and then click the Change DNS Server button.
Enter the server names for System-assigned NS, such as
vip1.alidns.comandvip2.alidns.com. Then, click OK.
For more information about how to change DNS servers for domain names registered with other providers, see Change the DNS servers for a domain name.
Verify that the DNS change is effective
After you change the DNS server addresses for a domain name, the changes can take from a few minutes to 48 hours to propagate globally. The exact time depends on the settings of the top-level domain (TLD). You can verify the result in the following ways:
Go to Alibaba Cloud DNS - Authoritative Zones, and check whether the status in the DNS Server IP Address column for the target domain name is Available.
You can also use the command line to verify that the change has taken effect.
# Check whether the NS records are effective dig yourdomain NS # Check whether the resolution is normal dig @vip1.alidns.com yourdomain A
Instance management and upgrade
An expired instance can cause service degradation or resolution failure. To prevent this, configure auto-renewal for your instance in advance. For more information, see Instance expiration and renewal.
Only non-full refunds are supported for instances. For more information, see Unsubscribe from an instance.
For more information about how to unbind a domain name, change the instance to which a domain name is bound, or upgrade or downgrade an instance, see Instance upgrade, unbinding, re-binding, and downgrade.
FAQ
Q: Is monthly payment supported? A: Yes, it is. On the purchase page, in the Subscription Duration section, select More Durations to view more billing cycle options. The minimum duration is one month.
Q: What do I do if I purchased a quota for more domain names than I need? A: You cannot reduce the number of domain names in your quota after purchase. We recommend that you purchase a quota that reflects your actual needs.
Q: What do I do if I fail to bind a domain name? A: Common causes and solutions:
The domain name is already bound to another instance: Unbind the domain name from the other instance before you try to bind it again.
Incorrect domain name format: Check the domain name for special characters.
Insufficient permissions: Verify that your account has the required permissions.
Q: How long does it take for an NS record switch to take effect? A: After you change the DNS server addresses for a domain name, the changes can take from a few minutes to 48 hours to propagate globally. The exact time depends on the settings of the top-level domain (TLD).
For more information, see Instance-related FAQ.