Having total control over your domain names is something really important and being able to access and edit the DNS records for each of them is among the things you have to look for when you search for a registration or a cloud hosting provider. You might have heard about the so-called “name servers” that show where a domain is hosted, but below them there's a whole list of records, such as the A record, which is the IP address of the server hosting the website, and the MX records, which show the server that deals with the e-mails for a particular domain name. These records are used if you wish to have your site with one provider and the emails with another, as an illustration. You may also use a domain for a non-website service or forward the traffic to it using special records. A lot of companies ask for an additional payment to provide access to edit specific DNS records besides the name servers.