Hello Lobsters!
My current hosting provider is merging with One.com - the only feature I use them for, is the DNS resolution, which I pay around 2 euros per year for.
I don’t mind paying more, but I do mind paying the new rate that they are proposing, which will be 5 euros a month for webmail and a lot of online space that I do not need.
Do you have any recommendations for DNS providers, which are priced at a few euros/dollars a month?
check out he.net, free and rock solid DNS I think for up to 100 domains. I’ve been with them for years now and quite happy.
+1 for he.net. I run a PowerDNS master with he.net as a slave so that I can still use things like dnsupdate for certbot challenges.
Exact same setup here. I have been using HE for… two decades I think (and their website hasn’t changed in that time, hah).
First time hearing of he.net.(Edit: Apparently I’ve had them bookmarked since 2014.) Have been wanting to switch from Namecheap DNS as their API isn’t free. Found a few options to cut out the PowerDNS middle man:lexicon supports he.net, which is great since I can use that with the ACME client I already use, dehydrated.
A couple certbot hooks: one written in Python and one in BASH.
When I finish getting names.sr.ht up and running, it’ll be a part of your normal paid SourceHut subscription (as small as $2/mo) and offer domains at wholesale prices, no margin. Problem: it’s not ready yet. Here’s a screenshot from yesterday, though: https://sr.ht/YEBn.png
Are you basically building a whole new registrar or just reselling domains from someone else? Will you be offering just DNS hosting as well?
Reselling for now, but I might eventually become a first-class registrar. I also hope plan on supporting OpenNIC. I will offer DNS hosting, you’ll just push a zone file to a git.sr.ht repo and it’ll update everything on a webhook.
Here’s to hopefully supporting an API for setting A and TXT records :D
Cloudflare are free and fast, management interface is good, api is good.
There’s a certain amount of controversy about them as a business, though (hasn’t stopped me using their free stuff).
I use Cloudflare for DNS only these days. Hard to beat their their network for latency. I’ve used he.net, Route 53, Google Cloud DNS, and others and I come back to Cloudflare before too long for one reason or another.
I been a fan of https://dnsimple.com/ for years.
Route53 from AWS may be an option
I just recently switched from 1984hosting FreeDNS (buggy control panel) to deSEC.io (API-only). Both are free, the latter is donation-supported. Both support DNSSEC and all the cool hipster record types (CAA, SSHFP, TLSA etc.).
I actually like the API thing. Now instead of screwing around in some slow UI, I have a script that atomically (!) updates the whole zone.
I purchase my domains with name.com and they offer DNS with a pretty decent API. I’ve written a Ruby handler for it:
https://github.com/sumdog/bee2/blob/master/lib/name.rb
I’m not sure if it will work with domains you’ve purchases elsewhere though. I’ve really only used it for one project too; where we had physical servers hosted at a University that were donated to us. Usually I just use the Vultr or DigitalOcean API where I host the VMs.
I personally use DigitalOcean’s DNS features since it’s included for free if you ever used their service, I even used it for a while when I had no servers hosted there.
Another good recommendation is definitely CloudFlare, DNS hosting is completely free and they have some nice features as well.
I’ve been using AWS’s Route 53 recently for my personal hosting. For low volume DNS (<1 million queries per month) it’ll be less than $1/month per zone. Notably I don’t use any of their other services as they’re not exactly competitively priced, but Route 53 is pretty good.
Not to hijack this post, but I would love to hear about DNS providers that provide some API that can be used to automate DNS verification with Let’s Encrypt/ACME..
https://certbot.eff.org/docs/using.html#dns-plugins - at least cloudflare
Thank you! I’m not sure how I missed this before :(
See also: https://github.com/AnalogJ/lexicon (linked above)
If it’s feasible to host your own server, running authoritative DNS is pretty easy. Otherwise I use the free DNS provided by NameCheap which has been rock solid, or their paid solution is $5 or $10/yr.
Have been using NameCheap DNS as well. Only problem is that the API isn’t free.
Bonus points if they offer per-domain API keys, so I can automate renewing Let’s Encrypt wildcard certs without having the server have access to all of my domains :)
You should better specify your goals and requirements – then it would be easier to decide / recommend.
How I deal with DNS hosting:
a) DNS hosting is included in registration fee for the domain (most cases)
b) run my own DNS servers (only in some cases)
I personally found no reasons for option c), but maybe anyone can point to such reasons.
DNS is included in the registration fee for the domain, however, it’s only a redirect to another DNS server that’s included there. The reason I’m looking for a DNS hosting solution only, is that the few things I need on my homepage can be hosted off e.g. Netlify but I need the DNS for my email.
As such, I’m not terribly interested in an actual web hosting solution where I have to pay a bunch of money for a bunch of online space I’ll never use :-)
But it seems like I’ll go for Cloudflare, assuming they support all the DNS records I need to setup the email properly.
To me this sounds as if you still might want to have domain registration + nameserver management combined. I think that’s what franta means by option a) and what also I am using. This is a quite common combination. Similar to franta I am also able to define all NS entries I want (I currently use: A, AAAA, MX, TXT).
What you are describing (in the quote) is the combination domain + nameserver + web space, which indeed is not the best, because nameserver management in these packages can be quite limited and you are tied to the web space provider.
I understood your original question so that you want a provider for only nameserver management, i.e. you bought your domain already somewhere but that seller does not provide all NS management options you need (e.g. an API access or something). I think this option is indeed very rare, but there can be use cases. So, that’s how I understood your question.
But this also sounds as if you had exactly the problem that your domain seller does not provide the NS management options you need. So if this applies, just forget the rest of my comment.
Or he can transfer the domain to another registrar, which is usually quite easy.
This sounds really weird to me. I have experience with circa four registrar companies and all of them run their own DNS servers and allow me to configure any DNS records I want (A, AAAA, MX, CNAME…). Some of them provide also API to configure records automatically. None of them require paying for a separate DNS hosting.
I used to have small VPS for this, but now I just use Google DNS.
I host my own DNS and make use of a few third party providers to provide additional secondaries:
I register all of my domains with Gandi and they also provide a free secondary, as do a few friends who also host their own servers. FWIW, if any fellow Lobster needs a free secondary, happy to provide.
Another secondary DNS which you can use for free is BuddyNS.
I’m a big fan of luadns.com. They have a simple Lua based DSL for authoring zone data and the records are kept in Git. It isn’t so expensive, either.
Obvious one: https://www.cloudflare.com/dns/
I use Route53 and am happy, its pretty well featured but does lack some more modern features seen on CloudFlare and the like. It’s super cheap.
You can check out Cloudflare! Cloudflare is free and fast, also have DDoS protection for websites.
I’m in Europe, I use united-domains. They domain pricing is competitive (imho) and DNS is included.
I’m buying my domains from Namecheap usually, and and use their nameserversb even for domains I haven’t bought there. Quite reliable in my experience.
Gandi and namegear
I used to use BIND, then switched to GCP Cloud DNS, and now I just use what comes with domains.google