10 Best Free DNS Hosting Providers

CDNify runs using 2 different DNS providers, a primary and secondary, this ensures that the website is always up and running, but this usually isn’t the case. Generally, sites rely on 1 DNS provider to do all the heavy lifting, which as we’ve seen can cause all manner of problems.

With the rise of Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS), I thought it would be good to quickly cover the importance of Domain Name Systems and why it’s essential to have more than 1 provider.

Using high quality DNS is so important to the redundancy of a website. We recommend using 2 different DNS providers (primary and secondary) to ensure your website is fully redundant. Here are 10 DNS providers (in no particular order), we’ve tried and tested on our own and our clients’ websites.

1. Hurricane Electric Internet Services

   Internet backbone Hurricane Electric provide a 100% free DNS service. They have incredible connectivity all over the world making them an ideal host for your DNS infrastructure.

2. Namecheap

   Domain registrar Namecheap have a great offering with solid infrastructure DNS servers all over the world, you dont even have to have registered your domain with them (although we use them for name registration too!)

3. BuddyNS

   One of the friendliest and easiest to use DNS providers out there – They provide reliability, performance, and security whilst staying simplistic for anyone to use.

4. Rage4

   Supports Anycast DNS to allow for domains to be served from their own dual stack anycast network. Boasting a rich feature set, Rage4 is a provider for all kinds of sites, supporting high traffic or CDN’ed domains. Free trials are offered for smaller sites.

5. pointhq

   Cloud developers rejoice! pointhq offer a pointDNS service that comes with an API so you can integrate DNS management directly into your own apps and systems.

6. Nsone

   A new concept in data-driven DNS. Nsone offer an anycast network, great API and advanced functionality such as powerful traffic management algorithms suited to todays cloud based environments. This one is definitely one for the developers looking to scale and take things to the next level!

7. DNS4.PRO

   A new free anycast based DNS provider – Anycast means it’s a solid, fast, and redundant network. For those needing their domain served across the globe, edge servers are located in the USA, Europe, and Asia, meaning domains are served faster on a much grander scale.

8. FreeDNS

   Used by thousands of websites with global architecture, FreeDNS is one of the longest serving DNS providers with a good track record. Definitely want to use if you’re a developer looking for a free provider.

9. EntryDNS

   Another good and reliable DNS provider that offers unlimited domain hosting, dynamic DNS record updates, and subdomain hosting. Just recently they launched a decent API and control panel, with more features like IPv6 support coming soon.

10. Rackspace

    Cloud and server provider – Rackspace offer a no cost DNS service which is solid and reliable for small businesses or startups looking for automated and simplistic DNS management.

All of these providers are either free, or have a decent free plan. Another of our favourites that we’d recommend is Softlayer who are a giant datacentre operator recently acquired by IBM (Softlayer does offer totally free anycast DNS and their infrastructure outweighs the scale of a lot of the above providers, but only to clients that have other services such as servers with them.)

Hopefully it doesn’t come down to your website being unaccessible, but if you have a horror story to share about your experiences then feel free to leave a comment below.

Also, be sure to check out some of our posts over on the CDNify Blog.