Switching To The QUIC.cloud DNS

I’ve been excited about QUIC.cloud for a long time. I’ve often viewed them as a possible competitor to Cloudflare, and while I love Cloudflare, it’s always good to have competition. QUIC.cloud’s dynamic caching and integration with the LiteSpeed plugin was always superior to Cloudflare’s APO (Automatic Platform Optimization). But full integration with QUIC.cloud was always lagging because of a simple reason – no DNS. So imagine my delight when they finally introduced QUIC.cloud DNS integration! From here, it’s just the doorway to more services like Firewalls and other exciting tools.

The Benefits of QUIC.cloud DNS Integration

First, the most obvious benefit of using QUIC.cloud’s DNS servers is that CDN integration is extremely tight. There’s no longer a need to add CNAMEs to your records, which adds extra time to lookups and potentially slows things down. If you simply switch your DNS to QUIC.cloud, all the integration can happen automatically.

This is exactly how Cloudflare operates. If you set up your DNS with them, you can easily proxy all your traffic through their servers without needing to integrate from your host. It’s faster!

Faster DNS Lookups

Apart from easier CDN integration, your website will be faster, simply because QUIC.cloud’s nameservers are likely to be faster than the one your host uses. This is their specialty, and with distributed servers all around the globe, your customers in various parts of the world can receive responses to DNS queries quicker. This has a small, but measurable impact on your Time to First Byte (TTFB) metric, and therefore on your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) metrics for Core Web Vitals.

So with these benefits, how do you switch? Here’s a step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Add your Site to QUIC.cloud if you Haven’t Already

The first thing to do is to install the LiteSpeed plugin on your site and add it to QUIC.cloud – go directly to step 6. The process is simple and involves generating a domain key, adding it to your plugin, and activating the domain on QUIC.cloud after creating your login credentials.

The whole process should take less than 5 minutes.

Step 2: Setting up the DNS

Once logged into the QUIC.cloud dashboard and your site is visible, click the “DNS Zones” link at the top of the page on the right-hand side and then select “Add New Domain to DNS Zones” as shown here:

In the box that appears, enter the domain name that you set up in Step 1. Note that only domains that you’ve already registered with QUIC.cloud can be added to their DNS management page (for now).

Step 3: Verify the DNS Records

QUIC.cloud will then detect your existing DNS zone and records, and then after a few seconds, will present you with all the ones it found, along with notices if it made any changes:

If something is missing, you can add additional records later. For now, click “Enable and Add Records” at the bottom.

Step 4: Change your DNS Nameservers

This is the final step. QUIC.cloud will now show you a page telling you where to point your Nameservers:

The instructions for doing this will depend on your registrar.  With NameHero, you can just click “Domains” on the left-hand side of your dashboard, go to “My Domains”, and click “Manage Domain” from the drop-down list. Other registrars don’t necessarily make it so easy, so you’ll have to check with them. But the process shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

Once your nameservers have changed, you can refresh the status on the QUIC.cloud dashboard and when it turns green, you’re done! QUIC.cloud is now managing your DNS entries, and you can enjoy tighter CDN integration, as well as all the future benefits that they will surely provide.