[thelist] hosting client sites and DNS

[Zachary Kent]

I work for a website design company and we host our clients websites on our
servers.  However, when launching a website, we often run into issues
associated to DNS.  The typical process is 1) getting their DNS login and
making the A record change ourselves, or 2) telling them what the new IP
address is and hoping they do it right (most of the time they do).  We try
to get good info in the beginning but things sometimes change between the
time we get the login and the launch.

I often tell them that we should insist that our clients domains list our
DNS servers instead so we can make IP address changes, balance servers (by
moving sites if needed), and make infrastructure changes (like moving to a
new hosting provider, which is what we are currently doing) without having
to having to go through all of the DNS circus.

Out of 100 clients that we called to get updated DNS info, in 5 cases, the
person listed on the domain had died in the last 2 years.

For those of you in similar line of work, how do you handle the DNS for
your clients?  Do you use your own DNS servers?  Do you give them a choice?

Thx.
Zach