You changed a record, it looks right in your registrar, and Minecraft still cannot find the server. Nothing is broken — you are looking at a cached answer.
Why it happens
DNS answers carry a time-to-live. Every resolver between you and the record — your router, your ISP, your operating system, Minecraft itself — is allowed to keep the old answer until that timer runs out. Changing the record does not reach through those caches and clear them.
Checking what is really published
- Query a public resolver directly
nslookup play.yourserver.com 1.1.1.1on Windows, ordig @1.1.1.1 play.yourserver.comelsewhere. Asking Cloudflare's resolver skips your own caches and shows what the world sees. - Check the SRV record separately
nslookup -type=SRV _minecraft._tcp.play.yourserver.com 1.1.1.1. An A record can be correct while the SRV is missing, which produces «connects only with the port». - Flush your own cache
ipconfig /flushdnson Windows. Then fully restart Minecraft — the launcher keeps its own resolved addresses for the session.
If you know a move is coming, set the record's TTL to five minutes a day ahead. The change then spreads in minutes instead of hours, because the old answer expires quickly everywhere.
Two A records for the same name means clients get sent to both, roughly at random. Half your players reaching the server and half not is almost always this. Edit the existing record rather than adding another.
A query against a public resolver returns the new value, and a client that has never connected before reaches the server.