A time comes when it makes more business sense to outsource DNS. While one can use a domain registrars to manage and host dns they do not always offer best performance or even offer SLA’s. We will compare a couple of companies that specialize at DNS hosting only.

DynDNS

• comprehensive services offerings
• no downtimes since inception (2001)
• worldwide DNS cluster
• multiplatform dynamic update clients with excellent documentation
• 29.95 per zone per year
• web interface
• SLA offerings options
• Bind based architecture

easyDNS

• unknown reliability
• worldwide DNS cluster
• multiplatform dynamic update clients
• priced at $19.99 per zone per year
• web interface
• no SLA offering
• Bind based architecture

Nettica

• unknown reliability
• mostly US based DNS cluster (1 location in UK)
• priced at $10 per zone per year
• 100$ SLA offering
• no linux update client, however dynamic ip updates can be done with curl call to their website
• web interface
• windows only API’s

Zoneedit

• Pioneer of hosted DNS
• Bad recent reliability
• Bind based architecture
• mostly US based DNS cluster (1 location in Germany)
• multiplatform dynamic update clients
• wide range of dynamic update clients (java, python, perl, direct calls to their website with wget), clients hosted on sourceforge with limited documentation
• host 5 domains for free, limited to 200meg query limit per domain(approx 1 million queries), additional options cost “zone credits @ $10.95 each” for services like additional domains, load balancing, monitoring, additional queries.

UltraDNS

• Very comprehensive list of offerings
• 15 worldwide nodes on 5 continents
• Protection against DNS based DDOS
• cross platform XML based API
• web portal
• 100% uptime SLA
• directory based architecture, using Oracle database replication technology. Not based on BIND
• $15 per month for 1 domain with 5 records and 5000 queries, overage costs are $1 per 1000 queries and 0.50 cents for per additional record.