Adding a Custom Domain to Your Minecraft Server

By adding a custom domain to your server, you are replacing your Minecraft server’s IP with a domain name allowing your players to connect to your server YourDomainName.com instead of the raw IP address, which is just numbers. 

With this, it will make it a lot easier to share your IP address with other players, and players will be able to remember the IP address a lot easier. 

Lastly, we do want to note that SimpleGameHosting doesn’t sell domain names, so you will need to purchase a domain through a domain registrar in order to use a domain for your Minecraft server. 

🔗 Google Domains, Name.com, GoDaddy, and NameCheap are all popular. The choice is up to you, but you will need to access the DNS settings of the domain in order to use it as the IP address of your Minecraft server.

Once you have purchased your domain, we can setup to act as the IP address for your Minecraft server.

Step 1: Access The DNS Settings for Your Domain

This is going to be different for everyone as it is dependent on what domain provider you choose to purchase your domain at.

With that being said, most domain providers have great documentation on accessing their DNS settings, Googling “Change DNS on YOUR PROVIDER” should yield very good results. 

Step 2: Create Your DNS “A” Record

Once you have found the DNS settings, we can create a new DNS A record. Below is what each section of the DNS A record needs to be set to. 

• Record Type: “A” Record
• Host/Name: Enter a subdomain that you want to use as the IP, for example “play” for “play.yourdomain.com”. If you want to use the room domain, you will use “@” as the Host. Using @ will make your IP yourdomain.com.
• Value/Address/Answer: This is your server’s IP address. Note that this does not include the port, so if your IP address in the control panel is 192.168.1.123:25568, you would only enter the first string of numbers, which in this case would be 192.168.1.1.123.
• TTL: Set this to the lowest value allowed by your domain registrar. In most cases, this is 300 or 3,600. 

Step 3: Create Your DNS “SRV” Record

We will also need to create a DNS SRV record in order for your domain to work as your IP. Below, are the settings for the SRV record. 

• Record Type: “SRV” Record
• Service Name: _minecraft
• Protocol: tcp
• Name/Target: Enter the same subdomain or root domain used in your A record. (e.g., "play", "mc" or "@").
• Priority: 0
• Weight: 5
• Port: Enter the port of your Minecraft server. This is the second set of numbers in the IP you get from the control panel. So in this case, with the IP address 192.168.1.123:25568, you would enter 25568 as your Port. 
• Target: Enter the full domain or subdomain you used in your a record. For example, play.yourdomain.com or simply yourdomain.com. 
• TTL: Set this to the lowest value allowed by your domain registrar. In most cases, this is 300 or 3,600. 

Step 4: Wait & Test

It can take up to four hours for DNS changes to take effect. For this reason, we recommend waiting a few hours until you try to use the new domain in Minecraft. 

Once that time has passed, you can either use the subdomain (play.yourdomain.com) or your domain (yourdomain.com) in the IP address field when joining your server. Other players can do this as well!