Every domain has to point at a set of nameservers, and you have two options: use the default nameservers NameBright assigns automatically, or point the domain at a custom set of your own instead.

NameBright's default nameservers ( ns1.namebrightdns.com and ns2.namebrightdns.com ) are what your domain uses out of the box. With these in place, you manage the domain's DNS records directly in NameBright's dashboard, and features like NameBright's DNSSEC auto-signing apply automatically.

Custom nameservers point your domain at a different DNS provider entirely, often because you're using a third-party DNS service for its own tools, or because a web host or platform requires you to use its nameservers to manage your site. Once you switch to custom nameservers, DNS records for the domain are no longer managed in NameBright's dashboard; they're managed wherever those nameservers live. NameBright still handles the domain's registration, but it's no longer the authoritative source for that domain's DNS answers (see Public DNS vs. Authoritative DNS for what "authoritative" means here).

Switching between the two is reversible: you can move to custom nameservers and back to NameBright's defaults at any time, though DNS records don't carry over automatically between the two, since each nameserver provider keeps its own separate zone file (see What Is a DNS Zone File?).