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In SaaS (software as a service), your online presence is more than your website and social profiles. It’s how your customers and potential customers perceive and interact with your brand.
It’s essential to be accessible, satisfy expectations, and keep your business running smoothly.
That’s where DNS (domain name system) comes in to either save or ruin the day.
Good DNS management ensures less downtime and more earning opportunities for your platforms. With strong, secure DNS servers, customers avoid slow loading times, and you maintain high customer satisfaction.
The benefits of DNS management are just the tip of the iceberg. We’ll cover why DNS matters (especially in SaaS), common pitfalls, and how to avoid them.
Let’s dive in.
Why DNS matters for SaaS platforms
Let’s start with DNS and explain why it’s so important for your business.
- Website uptime and reliability
Your website is the hub of your SaaS business. It’s the digital storefront where users learn about your offerings, sign up, and engage with your product.
Meanwhile, DNS is on the backend, acting as a translator between the site’s domain names and the IP addresses of your servers.
If this translator fails or slows down, so does your website. This eventually means that if your DNS settings are outdated or not properly configured, people won’t be able to find you. A complication like this would lead to lost sales, increased downtime, decreased lead generation, and even damage your brand reputation.
Each time your website experiences downtime, your customers experience frustration. Statistics show that over half of customers will leave a brand after just one poor experience (Zendesk).
- SEO and search visibility
The role of DNS doesn’t end with website uptime, downtime, and reliability. Google’s Core Web Vitals now prioritize user experience metrics like load time and interactivity, which hinge on DNS efficiency.
Search engines are alerted if users complain about or reject your website due to unavailability or slow resolution. They penalize such platforms by downgrading their search visibility as they cannot satisfy users.
While building backlinks, creating high-quality content, and other search engine optimization (SEO) are still worth the effort, you can’t ignore the user’s experience. DNS servers must come from an authentic provider, and you must properly configure your DNS records.
Your best bet is to use a DNS record checker to verify all the settings on your SaaS platform.
- Email deliverability
For SaaS businesses, email marketing is a key channel for communication. It provides the best ROI ($36 for every $1 spent, according to Litmus) as it helps your company to deliver personalized promotions directly to users’ inboxes. Emails help establish effective and long-term relationships with clients.
However, if SPF, DKIM, and DMARC DNS records are misconfigured, the emails may be flagged as spam.
This can have a substantial negative impact on your marketing campaigns, email list, and brand reputation. Therefore, it’s vital to maintain accurate DNS records and keep your emails out of spam folders.
- Global user experience
SaaS companies often serve a global audience. However, a poorly optimized DNS setup can lead to inconsistent performance for users in different regions, degrading the global user experience.
Users expect websites to load quickly. How quickly? Within two seconds (StanVentures). If your site doesn’t load fast enough, users will bounce — probably to a competitor.
The result? Lost revenue and reputation.
- Security and trust
SaaS marketing strategies thrive on customer trust. However, when you have flaws in your DNS system, you invite cyber attacks on your system, like DNS hijacking, DNS cache poisoning, and more. Like other cyber attacks, these threaten to compromise your website, disrupt services, steal data, and damage your brand’s reputation.
DNS security is crucial for an effective SaaS marketing strategy.
- Scalability
As your SaaS business grows, DNS needs to scale to handle increased traffic and demand without compromising performance. Elastic DNS architectures automatically adjust server capacity during traffic spikes. This feature ensures seamless scalability during product launches or viral growth.
However, if you try to scale without implementing dynamic DNS solutions on your website, you’ll probably experience performance issues.
To avoid this situation, install an appropriate DNS system in preparation for your growth. That way, your business can scale painlessly, and your customers will never see or feel a decrease in speed.
Common DNS pitfalls for SaaS businesses
Now that you understand why DNS is so important for SaaS marketing strategies, let’s look at some common mistakes so you can avoid them.
Ignoring TTL (Time to Live) values
Setting TTL values too high slows DNS propagation, especially during migrations from one domain to another. On the other hand, TTLs that are too low can overload servers. So, the appropriate TTL value changes from case to case and from one business type to another.
Shadow IT DNS changes
Marketing teams often create landing pages on unauthorized subdomains without IT oversight. This creates security gaps and invites dangerous cyber attacks, such as DDoS.
Mismanaged CNAME records
Incorrect CNAME flattening can break third-party integrations like payment gateways and CRMs. Therefore, SaaS businesses must avoid such practices when setting up these platforms.
These are just a few examples of how mismanaged DNS systems can lead to more significant problems for SaaS businesses.
It’s always advisable to consult a professional team before making major decisions about your platform’s DNS settings. You can also hire relevant talent or train them to resolve the issues (more on this in a bit).
What are the solutions to uphold your SaaS marketing strategies?
Now, let’s take a peek at some potential solutions to keep your DNS system and SaaS marketing strategies running smoothly.
Solution # 1: Choose a reliable DNS provider
Invest time and money in buying DNS hosting services from authentic, reputable providers. Look for providers offering DNS-as-a-Service (DNSaaS) with API integrations, which enable programmatic DNS management for agile marketing campaigns.
When it comes to selection criteria, there are a few things to keep in mind:
- Does the provider have ‘Anycast Routing’ enabled? Anycast routing can help distribute queries to the nearest available server for higher availability and smooth functionality of the SaaS platform.
- Does the provider offer built-in DDoS mitigation services? These services will protect your website from attacks and avoid unwanted system downtime.
- What resolution speed does the DNS provider offer? Find out what resolution speeds the DNS provider facilitates. Make sure the hosting prioritizes low-latency resolution with global infrastructure.
- How many QPS (queries per second) does your DNS provider offer? Knowing about QPS is crucial to deciding whether you can scale your business aptly with the provider.
Ask these and other pertinent questions before you base your entire SaaS framework on hosting-provided DNS servers.
Solution # 2: Regularly audit DNS settings
To maintain your email reputation, set a schedule to regularly audit your DNS settings and verify and monitor email-related DNS records. Keep a standardized record of all your changes so you can revert to a previous version if things go wrong.
If you have recently tinkered with any records, immediately use the Online DNS Checker to see if they propagate properly to the worldwide servers. Highlight the issues you find and fix them to avoid any trouble.
In addition to this tool, you can automate your DNS audits using tools like DNS Spy or DNSFilter to flag issues such as dangling records or expired SSL certificates tied to domains.
Remember, a complete DNS audit is time-consuming. But it’s worth it considering the value it will bring to your SaaS business in the future.
Solution # 3: Enable security
A few tips and tweaks can improve DNS security, ensuring your SaaS platform is safe from DDoS, cache poisoning, and other related cyber attacks.
First, enable DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) at your domain registrar or through your DNS service provider’s dashboard.
Second, discourage unauthorized devices from entering your network and limit access to specific DNS servers using Web Application Firewalls (WAF) and IP filtering.
Third, use DNS-layer threat intelligence technologies like Cisco Umbrella to prevent access to bad domains before they access your network.
Finally, you must use smart tools such as SolarWinds NPM or Wireshark to identify strange activity or traffic to your servers for better monitoring.
With these cybersecurity strategies and resources, you can help identify and minimize possible threats. Then, you can provide consumers with a safer browsing experience, further boosting your SaaS platform’s popularity and reputation.
Solution # 4: Train your team
You should train your technical team to do proper round-ups on DNS settings and records and fix problems.
Teach employees through workshops, classes from industry experts, online courses, or otherwise to conduct apt DNS management. Instruct them to prepare automated failover mechanisms for redundant DNS servers so that you have a backup plan in case of an emergency.
Moreover, run quarterly “DNS drills” with cross-functional teams like Marketing, DevOps, and Support to simulate attacks or outages. This will ensure better communication between the teams, and your business will be able to respond quickly in an emergency.
Alternatively, you can hire a reputable DNS management team to handle this instead.
By following these steps, you ensure that you stay afloat and competitive in the SaaS industry.
The future of DNS and SaaS marketing strategies
The following DNS trends are a small sample of what the near future holds in the SaaS industry. Staying informed of what’s new is one of the best ways to remain relevant and help your brand stand out from the crowd.
- AI-Driven DNS Optimization: AI isn’t limited to content generation and optimization — it’s also advancing DNS optimization. Tools like NS1 Connect use machine learning to predict traffic patterns and optimize real-time routing.
- IPv6 Adoption: With IPv4 addresses nearly becoming exhausted, IPv6-compatible DNS ensures compatibility with next-generation network infrastructure, allowing scalability for your SaaS business.
- Decentralized DNS: Privacy-focused customers require censorship-resistant domain management. Some groundbreaking blockchain-based systems, like Handshake, provide this. However, further developments in this area have yet to be made.
- Zero Trust DNS: Zero Trust DNS requires authentication for every query first, regardless of the device or connection. This significantly minimizes insider threat risks, leading to a more secure SaaS platform.
That said, the pros and cons of implementing Zero Trust DNS in SaaS businesses are still unclear and require further study.
Final thoughts
Your SaaS platform hangs in the balance until you decide to improve your DNS management. This single entity impacts your website’s uptime, SEO ranking, email deliverability, global usability, and scalability potential.
From our standpoint, these are enough reasons to consider the answer to the question of why DNS matters for your SaaS marketing strategy.
This post highlighted some ways to improve your DNS practices. However, it’s up to you to keep exploring new solutions that suit your business type, goals, and needs.
What will you try next?