How to Use a Custom Domain for Your Minecraft Server

Your Minecraft server already has an address, and a custom domain just points a name you own at it. That name has to be a subdomain — mc.yourdomain.com — because a bare yourdomain.com cannot legally hold this kind of record.

Buy the domain where you will manage its DNS

Buy the name where you will edit its records, and check the second year: registrars advertise a first-year price and renew at another, and the cheapest-looking extensions carry the worst multiples:

Porkbun's .com costs the same every year — "The price you see is the price you pay, year after year"¹ — while .fun goes from $2.57 to $31.41.² Checked September 2026.

Leave auto-renew on with a live card behind it: a lapsed domain stops resolving and takes the server address with it within about ten days.³

Records only apply where your nameservers point. Aim them elsewhere and your registrar's editor accepts a record that never takes effect — Namecheap's covers only domains "that are using our BasicDNS, PremiumDNS or FreeDNS."⁴

Type, Name, Value and TTL: what each field does

Every panel asks the same four things under different labels.

A CNAME excludes every other record type at that label, so delete any conflict first. Namecheap says to check for "any CNAME, URL Redirect … ALIAS or A records set for the same Host."⁴

The Name field takes mc, and never the bare domain

This is the most common way a correct-looking record does nothing. You want mc.yourdomain.com, so you type that into the Name box — but the panel appends the domain, and you have made mc.yourdomain.com.yourdomain.com.

Three panels document it, from different directions:

• GoDaddy calls it the short form: Name is "The hostname or prefix of the record, without the domain name, such as blog or shop."⁵
• Namecheap warns against the long form: enter "your subdomain just like mysubdomain and not like mysubdomain.domain.tld."⁴
• Cloudflare shows it: "use your subdomain (blog) for the record Name."⁷

For mc.yourdomain.com, the Name is mc.

It will never take the bare domain either. yourdomain.com with nothing in front is the zone's top node, which DNS reserves for the records describing the zone itself:

If a CNAME RR is present at a node, no other data should be present.

That is RFC 1034 §3.6.2.⁸ Neither it nor its 1997 clarification says "apex": the rule sits beside a separate requirement that a zone's top node carry NS and SOA records, and the two cannot share a name.⁹ GoDaddy's Name field simply "Cannot be the @ symbol."⁵

Cloudflare's proxy drops Minecraft traffic

If your domain sits on Cloudflare, one toggle decides whether anybody connects: new records default to Proxied, the orange cloud.

Their published proxied-port lists cover 80, 443 and eleven other HTTP and HTTPS ports.¹¹ Minecraft's 25565 is on neither — click the cloud grey.

A quieter version: CNAME flattening answers with the final IP, not the alias, so a host checking for the CNAME sees nothing — Cloudflare names both it and Proxied status as causes.¹² Players connect; the record simply cannot be seen.

The wait is the old record's TTL, not propagation

Nothing crawls across the internet after you save. Every resolver that already asked holds its answer until its clock runs out.

TTL

How long a resolver may keep an answer before asking again.¹³

Negative caching

The same for an answer that said no such name: ask a minute too early and the absence is cached, with its own countdown.¹⁴

The wait is set by what was cached before the change, not by how fast the registrar saved it. Cloudflare publishes globally "within 5 minutes, usually much less," yet warns "your local DNS cache may take longer to update."⁶ Check from a phone on mobile data — different resolver, different cache.

Hiding the port needs SRV, and only on Java

If your server is on the default port, stop here: the CNAME is the whole job. Java's default is 25565.¹⁵

On any other port a CNAME alone will not hide it: the record carries a name and no port. Java has read SRV records since 1.3.1 — the host is _minecraft._tcp. plus your domain, and the value is weight, port and target, like 600 25565 mc.example.com.¹⁵

Bedrock has no equivalent — minecraft.wiki lists it under the platform's limitations: it "Doesn't support SRV record for a domain name."¹⁶ Bedrock players get the hostname but type the port separately, so a non-default one must be told to them; their default is 19132.¹⁶

Pixly keeps checking, and keeps the old address

Turning on Use my own domain changes nothing about the server. It mints the target you point at, prints the record, and starts looking.

The check then runs on its own both ways: a record that appears is promoted with no further action, and one that later disappears keeps working through a 24-hour grace window before the address falls back. Your pixly.gg address is never taken away: the custom name is added beside it, so anyone who saved the original still connects. The setup walkthrough covers the server side.

What players see when it is not working

The server list distinguishes two failures, and the wording says which half to check.