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.