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Keith Palmer Jr.
Asked: 2009-09-24 05:46:43 +0800 CST

Reliable cheap or free DNS service?

  • 772

I'm looking for a reliable free or cheap DNS service.

I've used FreeDNS at FreeDNS.Afraid.org in the past, but it doesn't always seem reliable... sometimes people say they can't access my website (sometimes I can't access it either) by domain name, and yet if I type in the IP address it works fine, so I assume it's some sort of DNS problem.

Are there any other cheap or free DNS services out there? I need something reliable that I can manage via a web interface (or scripts if they have an API) that I can use to manage the DNS for ~100 domain names.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm looking for DNS hosting, not DNS servers to use for my WAN connection.

domain-name-system

20 Answers

  1. I've used zoneedit.com for 6 or 7 years now and never had any problem with them. I guess this should fit your definition of reliable whatever it is...

    Their pricing system is the following:

    You buy credits whenever you want (credits doesn't expire). Managing a DNS zone and using zoneedit.com dns for serving it for one year will cost you 1 credit by slice of 200Mb network traffic usage.

    The more credits you buy, the less it costs:

    • 1 credit = $10.95
    • 10 credits = $49.95

    You can have the details on their faq.

    • 7

  2. MyBind is a pet project of mine.

    • You can create unlimited zones and records for free;
    • You can edit the TTL for your zone and each record;
    • And, it has two geographically dispersed DNS servers.

    MyBind zone editor

    • 5

  3. For a few years, I used EveryDNS for free DNS service. They encourage donations by removing the limits on the number of domains and records, but the defaults are quite generous. At the time, they only offered the basic records: A, CNAME, MX, NS.

    I have since moved to using GoDaddy's DNS provided with my domain registrations, so I don't know if they've improved the service to include more record types.

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  4. Best Answer

    DNSMadeEasy was what we looked to for this purpose. No API (AFAIK), but a simple, if somewhat ugly, web interface does everything I need (lots of RR types, reverse zones, etc...). $60/year for 10 million queries/month. Check them out!

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  5. While not cheap, I use easyDNS. It is $35/year per name. But they really do have worldwide name servers that don't go down. They have easy to use Web pages for control. You can control all you need to control. The $35/year is for registration and name server hosting. It is less for multi-year. Look at http://www.easydns.com.

    • 1

  6. For around 100 domains you could run your own cheap primary server with all your DNS records and then get the Secondary DNS service from Gradwell.net to sync and serve?

    By a cheap primary, a virtual server host would work fine.

    • 1

  7. I've used ZoneEdit for years and been happy with their service. However, due to some recent hiccups, I decided to try out some alternatives.

    I tried Afraid and found (using Pingdom's very nice service) that they were down (DNS requests failed) over 80% of the time. Their service was down for 4 minutes out of every 19. Weird.

    So I spent a few months testing several DNS hosting companies that have a free option. It isn't definitive, but I tried all of these personally with my own domain.

    These results only represent a recent snapshot of 8 days. Things can and often do change over time. But at least for this month, I would recommend Namecheap or ClouDNS. I think Namecheap was better, but I loved the UI at ClouDNS.

    1. Namecheap (avg response: 82 ms, std dev: 175 ms)
    2. ClouDNS (avg response: 93 ms, std dev: 319 ms)
    3. Moniker (avg response: 114 ms, std dev: 248 ms, free with domain registration)
    4. ZoneEdit (avg response: 91 ms, std dev: 280 ms)
    5. GeoScaling (avg response: 103 ms, std dev: 332 ms)
    6. XName (avg response: 117 ms, std dev: 325 ms)
    7. DNS Exit (avg response: 256 ms, std dev: 1025 ms)
    8. FreeDNS (avg response: 187 ms, std dev: 530 ms)
    9. Afraid (avg response: 223 ms, std dev: 1022 ms, over 20% downtime)

    I have no affiliation with any of these services.

    • 1

  8. You may try Geoscaling

    Here is what they say

    GeoScaling offers both FREE and paid managed DNS services with unique features. Redirect your users by Country, AS number, uptime, server load and custom rules, at the DNS level. Standard Features

    • Redundancy and scalability assured by nameservers in three
      countries and two continents.
    • Easy to use web interface (Click here for a screenshot)
    • Add and edit DNS records without reloading the page
    • Changes propagate instantly to our nameservers
    • Low time-to-live (TTL) ensures updated records are propagated on the Internet in less than 5 minutes
    • IPv6 support - both IPv6 transport and the possibility to add
      AAAA records
    • Support for most types of records, including SRV
    • 1

  9. I'm using dynDNS for my primary nameserver. They actually have a nice package for static DNS despite being known for dynamic DNS service.

    It is not free, (~$24 if I recall) but it is cheap and good.

    I have been using it for a production site for 3 years, and no issues with resolution or changing host records.

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  10. We use http://www.nettica.com for $1/domain/year.

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