What is an apex record?

The apex (also called the root or naked domain) is your domain with nothing in front of it - yourbusiness.com.au rather than www.yourbusiness.com.au. Apex records are the DNS records that live at that bare name, and they carry most of what makes the domain work:

• A / AAAA - point the apex at your web server’s IPv4 (A) or IPv6 (AAAA) address, so the site loads with or without the www
• MX - name the servers that receive email for @yourbusiness.com.au
• TXT - hold SPF, domain-verification strings and other policy text

The apex has one special rule: a CNAME (an alias pointing at another name) is not allowed there, which is why some DNS hosts offer ALIAS or ANAME records, or “CNAME flattening”, to achieve the same thing safely. Two checks worth a minute: confirm your site loads at the bare domain as well as the www, and ask your host about IPv6 - only 21% of Australian small business domains publish an AAAA record at the apex^*. If the apex is wrong, everything on the domain - website and email alike - is wrong with it.