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Marketing wants a 301 redirect via DNS, cannot make it work at DNS level

DNS only maps name to IP. A 301 (Moved Permanently) is HTTP, so it belongs to a web server, CDN or redirect service. Some registrars offer 'URL forwarding', but that is a tiny web server on top of DNS, not a DNS feature.

Try this first

  1. 1For a real 301: put a minimal web server (nginx, Caddy, Cloudflare Page Rules, Vercel rewrite) that terminates HTTPS and sends a 301.
  2. 2On apex with IP-only: use Cloudflare Page Rules or a Workers function, or a cheap server (1 vCPU at DigitalOcean) with nginx.
  3. 3For SMB quick wins: Cloudflare Bulk Redirects (free) or Vercel rewrites in next.config for hundreds of redirects in one file.
  4. 4DNS-host 'URL forwarding' (TransIP, Versio offer it) works for one page but without an HTTPS cert on the source domain. For brand protection ok, for customer traffic not ideal.
  5. 5Document redirects with source, target, status code and date, otherwise they decay into unmanageable rules within a year.

When to bring us in

If you have dozens of redirects in a rebrand or platform migration and no home for them, we can set them up in Cloudflare or Vercel as one map with monitoring.

See also

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