Set up private nameservers as a DirectAdmin reseller

Private nameservers let your customers point their domains to ns1.yourbrand.com and ns2.yourbrand.com instead of your provider's names. It is a small detail that makes a reseller business look fully independent. In DirectAdmin it takes a few steps at reseller level plus one step at your domain registrar.

Before you start

• A DirectAdmin reseller account with permission to manage nameservers.
• A domain for your brand, for example yourbrand.com, hosted on the reseller account.
• IP addresses for the nameservers. Ideally two IPs; your provider may let you use one shared IP for both or assign extra IPs. See IP management (admin side).

Create the nameservers in DirectAdmin

1. Switch to Reseller Level.
2. Go to Account Manager → Name Servers (or Reseller Tools → Name Servers).
3. Select the IP(s) to use and your brand domain.
4. Enter the names ns1 and ns2.
5. Click Create. DirectAdmin adds A records for ns1.yourbrand.com and ns2.yourbrand.com to your domain's zone.

Set them as defaults for your customers

On the same page, choose Use as default nameservers (or set them in Reseller Settings). New customer accounts and domains you create will list your private nameservers in their DNS zones and welcome emails. If you sell through WHMCS, also put them in the server settings in WHMCS so welcome emails show them; see server module setup.

Register glue records at your registrar

Because the nameservers are inside the domain they serve, the registrar must publish their IPs (glue records):

1. Log in to the registrar of yourbrand.com.
2. Find Child nameservers, Register nameservers or Glue records.
3. Create ns1.yourbrand.com and ns2.yourbrand.com with the IPs from DirectAdmin.
4. Save, then set the nameservers of yourbrand.com itself to ns1 and ns2.yourbrand.com.

Glue records can take up to 24–48 hours to propagate.

Verify

dig +short ns1.yourbrand.com

should return the IP, and dig @ns1.yourbrand.com customerdomain.com should answer for a customer's domain. Use the WHOIS checker to confirm a domain's nameservers.

Redundancy

If both names point to the same server IP, DNS fails when that server is down. That is acceptable for many small resellers, because the websites are on the same server anyway. For more resilience, ask your provider whether their DNS cluster can serve your nameserver names; see Multi Server DNS.

Troubleshooting

• Registrar says nameserver does not exist: create the glue records first, then assign them.
• Customer domains not resolving: the customer domain's zone must exist on the server and its nameservers be set to yours at their registrar.
• Name Servers menu missing: your reseller package lacks the permission or IPs.

Next steps

• Create reseller packages.
• Manage customers.
• DNS records.