Dynamic ninjas kill off free DNS service

Hundreds of thousands of EveryDNS users have been told that their free domain name system service will be cut off by the end of August. Dynamic Network Services, which acquired EveryDNS in January 2010, is now urging the owners of some 440,000 websites to migrate to its DynDNS-branded premium services. The migration also …

[Jonjonz]

Scumbags Get Just Rewards

This is your typical pointy hair boss who know nothing about or groks how the whole thing works. They think they are being so clever, but screw them, they just bought 100% ownership of zip. We get the last laugh. Eat red ink Scumbags.

[Shady]

Two points

1) Customers think it is outrageous that they have to pay for something?

2) If they weren't paying anything in the first place, then they weren't customers to begin with.

[Turtle_Fan]

Call me a schizo but...

I find myself agreeing with both posters above despite their seemingly contradictory arguments.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dyn admitted that it expects to lose some customers as a result.

They aren't customers. They are users, customers actually pay you something.

[petur]

Pay DynDNS?

Can somebody explain why they will need to pay DynDNS? I've been using DynDNS for years, never gave them any money. Always works too.

Anyway, if they force me to pay, I'll probably switch to the free MyCloudNAS that came with my QNAP NAS. Or find an affordable provider with fixed IP addresses and decent speeds (which, frankly, is not going to happen here in Belgium)

[DarkOrb]

You do have to pay, but...

Only for the custom DNS Service. Their subdomain one is free for anyone to use but if you want to use mygreatdomain.com with their DynDNS then you need to pay a yearly fee.

(I haven't read the info on their site but I'd assume this is what they are referring to)

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad situation

Although EveryDNS was a 'free' service they accepted donations and lots of people (including me) did donate. It was never going to make them rich but I believe it covered their costs.

DynDNS want $30 per year, per domain for their 'basic' service. This seems completely out of whack with what similar services charge. Ok, they have agreed to honour donator's 'lifetime' status, but my understanding is that will only apply to existing domains rather than the account as it was with EveryDNS.

With regard to EveryDNS only running on two servers, this is a little bit disingenuous. EveryDNS runs four nameservers and (until DynDNS took over) they were distributed across the globe (one was in the UK). It's the frontend that only runs on two servers, but then it doesn't need to do a lot.

As for the $4.95 'migration charge' I think this is more about getting payment and identity details out of the user base rather than paying for any significant new infrastructure.

[Anonymous Coward]

A title

"Dyn's own-brand services use between five and 17 data centers, von Wallenstein said."

Could he not remember how many they've got or something? Oh, there's about... fourteen of them.. i mean eight...

[Steven Roper]

I would assume

that means between five and 17 data centres depending on load and load balancing requirements. They probably only run five during times of low traffic, but when things peak they bring more data centres online from a pool of 17 total. It would be a poor service provider who was running their equipment on the redline all the time; you should have backup resources for those unexpected surges and spikes in traffic. Just as it would make sense to power down unused data centres (or at least run them in standby) to save energy costs when traffic is thin.

[Anonymous Coward]

ZoneEdit?

My personal domain is on their free service. Does everything I need it to.

[Jess--]

zoneedit not so good

Zoneedit just shafted their paying customers with their migration to a new system.

monthly rather than yearly charges, reminder emails that go out after they have re-routed your traffic to their own advert filled pages and then more than 48 hours to switch it back once you have paid to renew.

in my case my zones expired on 05/05/2011 (at 00:00:01) the first I knew of this was almost 12 hours later when I got a warning email. and went and paid the renewal fees (there had been no emails warning of the approaching renewal date)

by 9pm on the 7th dns was still pointing my domain at their pages rather than my servers so I moved dns for my domain elsewhere

[Steve Basford]

another free one bites the dust... see a pattern?

They did the same too... editdns.net

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatives

A few alternatives. I don't know if they are pay or not, but here are a few.

cjb.net dhs.org dnsmadeeady.com dnspark.com dtdns.com dyndns.org dyns.cx dynu.ca easydns.com editdns.net enom.com everydns.net freedns.afraid.org namecheap.com no-ip.com ods.org opendns.com ovh.com regfish.com registerfly.com selfhost.de sitelutions.com strato.com tzo.com zoneedit.com

[joe.user]

Did I miss something?

Or didn't DYN say that existing free customers of EveryDNS, would be allowed to stick to their 20 free domains account?

[irrelevant]

Free for life?

from Dyn Inc. [e-mail]

date 3 February 2010 20:52

subject What's Next for EveryDNS Users

"First off, anyone who has donated to David and EveryDNS since 2001 will be grandfathered into free Custom DNS hosting with DynDNS.com. Back in 2001 we made an announcement to our 19,000 free Custom DNS users that they would have service for life because of their early adopter loyalty. We promise to honor that same commitment to you. Have no fear."

[Anonymous Coward]

Charging? only for the personal information transfer.

Part 3 of a three-part saga.

"

Message-ID: <[e-mail]>

Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:38:35 -0300

From: "Dyn Inc." <sendlabs at dyn.com>

Reply-To: sendlabs at dyn.com

EveryDNS Transition - Making Progress!

As we continue to integrate EveryDNS with DynDNS.com, we wanted to make

sure you were up to date on our continued efforts. The biggest news to date

is that we have now successfully migrated EveryDNS over to the Dyn Inc.

infrastructure for better stability. We appreciate your patience during

this time.

"

...

"

While we would like you to transfer your account information over to the

DynDNS.com system, this will have no effect on your current services with

EveryDNS. Everyone with service on EveryDNS will continue with no changes

until December, 2010; past donators will be grandfathered in at no charge

permanently.

Thank you,

DynDNS.com team

"

This article is about the beginning of that last paragraph. Obviously Dec 2010 is past. Money is now at stake.

[Steven Roper]

Re: Free for life

Those grandfathered accounts in future are going to be like those fixed-rent apartments in New York - extremely hard to get your hands on and worth a lot on the open market, in the future when there are no free DNS services left!

[Sagari]

EditDNS "Lifetime Pro" members

JFYI, when the EditDNS takeover happened, all the EditDNS members having paid for the so called Lifetime pro status have been told their status will be honored and kept.

Now they are warned that only 50 of their zones at EditDNS will be granted free DNS hosting at DynDNS, and they should remove "unnecessary" zones.

When I tried to ask, in the message exchange with DynDNS representative, why DynDNS breaks its promise, I was told, among other things, that DynDNS, citing, "no longer are offering a free option for people over 50 zones".

That sounds like kind of a bad joke, I think, since there were no other messages warning of sites imminent shutdown, so I can't comprehend what is "no longer".

So now they force me to either remove 15 "extra" zones from my EditDNS account, or switch to their absurdly expensive paid services.

To those interested, EditDNS DNS servers (five of them), as far as I can recall, never failed and the response time was quite acceptable.

Sapienti sat.