DynDNS.com Acquires EveryDNS

funfail writes in with the news that, five days ago, EveryDNS was sold to DynDNS.com. From the announcement and e-mail from EveryDNS's founder, David Ulevitch: "Since starting EveryDNS in June of 2001 while a freshman in college, my goal has always been to provide simple, reliable and secure DNS services to the Internet community. I'm proud to say that we've lived up to that mission and delivered robust DNS services to over 400,000 domains. Nearly 9 years later, it's now time to put the service in more capable hands and I'm happy to announce that I've found a great home for EveryDNS. I have sold the EveryDNS service to Dyn Inc., the operators of the immensely popular DynDNS.com service." EveryDNS has been one of the most popular free (or one-time donation) DNS suppliers. From the FAQ at the link above: "Will the service remain free? While we don't 100% have the answer to that yet, we will not be making any changes to the service you are currently receiving for the foreseeable future. We will be discontinuing signups in the near future but existing accounts will remain active and fully functional."

Comments

Re:As a current free DynDNS user...

[athakur999]

EveryDNS is more like the "custom DNS" feature in DynDNS which uses their servers to provide nameservers for your own domain. DynDNS's custom DNS service is $30/year if you aren't hosting with them, while EveryDNS is/was free.

Re:Easy answer

[radtea]

we will not be making any changes to the service you are currently receiving for the foreseeable future.

Yeah, and I bet they are telling the soon-to-be-former employees of EveryDNS that they don't have any staffing changes planned "for the forseeable future" either, the "forseeable future" for the average PHB being about 4 seconds.

DynDNS honours their own one time donatations

[Rix]

Even though (I think) they no longer take them. I gave them $10 some time in the early naughties, and they still provide what they said they would then. It's hard to complain about that.

Re:DynDNS honours their own one time donatations

[chrisgeleven]

Those who have lifetime service on DynDNS will not lose it. We take providing that service very seriously, since some of our biggest fans are our longtime customers.

Chris Gonyea
DynDNS Support

nerd fail

[jollyreaper]

I used to smugly think I caught people being redundant saying DNS server. Comic book guy voice: "Do you say Persional Information Number Number? Do you say Automatic Teller Machine Machine? Fools." And then I found out that DNS is Domain Name System or Domain Name Service, never Domain Name Server. Domain Name Service Server is perfectly acceptable usage. Haven't felt so n00b since I called Wine an emulator.

Re:Easy answer

[Idbar]

I've had a DynDNS account for more than 5 years now and they haven't charge me for their dynamic dns service yet. Where did you learn that, and how did you arrive to that conclusion?

Re:Easy answer

[plague3106]

DDNS is still available for free, and you can sign up. I don't recall them ever offering anything else for free.

Why you feel they should offer a free service is beyond me; its not like offering the service is free for them, and I suspect the easydns guy sold to make back the money he's invested (and them some).

There's nothing wrong with profit.

blah @ DynDNS

[TypoNAM]

I originally started using DynDNS.org back over a decade ago when it started out as a service running off of a dedicated dial-up modem with a static IP address. Over the years I had just a few .dyndns.org addresses which were basically setup as static. About two years ago I decided to log in after ages of not touching it to change IPs on one of the addresses cause my ISP was making everybody on a specific subnet switch over to another. Well little did I know that free users must log in every three weeks or so, else the account will be dropped. By logging in I triggered their timeout service to begin.

I was checking my email one morning and found a notice that I should log into DynDNS else my account will be dropped within 4 hours. That email was sent three days ago by the time I read it. So, after having an account after so many years it just gets dropped like that without any warning what so ever except an email to alert me that I have a four hours notice. Since then I have avoided DynDNS and recommended others to go else where when asked about it since I thought that was just absolutely wrong.

Re:blah @ DynDNS

[chrisgeleven]

I work for DynDNS Support, so I can clarify what happened here. Our free accounts (ie: no paying services) will expire every 30 days unless you either 1) login to your DynDNS.com account on our site or 2) send an IP address update for one of your hostnames using an update client. Each login or IP address update thus resets the 30 day expiration date on the account. We send out a warning 5 days before the expiration date of the account, giving you time to login to the account to save it. If you do not do that, the account and hostname will be deleted but you can simply sign up again if you lost the account by accident.

For most customers, #2 above will keep their free account active since most ISP's do change their customer's IP addresses often.

Re:blah @ DynDNS

[clone53421]

It’s worth mentioning that some update clients will automatically force an update in time to avoid the account expiration even if your IP hasn’t changed in that time.

I like 'em.

[hideouspenguinboy]

I've paid for DynDNS service for the last few years - I fell I've received good service at a fair price. I'm happy to see them expanding their business, and I hope they profit enough to continue making me happy.

Re:Easy answer

[chrisgeleven]

I work for DynDNS. Our basic Dynamic DNS service has always been free when using one of our hostnames (such as example.dyndns.org). DynDNS has never stopped offering our free Dynamic DNS service and will not stop offering it.

I recommend reading our CEO's welcome letter for information on our plans for EveryDNS. http://dyn.com/dd-welcome-everydns

Possible Replacement

[dlgeek]

Since there were several people asking about possible replacements for hosting a DNS zone for free, I thought I'd give a shoutout to zoneedit.com. They do managed DNS, but your first 5 zones are free. I know the website looks like a relic from the 90s, but I've been using them for years and years (hosting 2 domains) and have never had a single issue.

Oblig Disclosure: No relation to the company other than being a satisfied user.

Re:Easy answer

[chrisgeleven]

If you have an update client that sends us at least one IP address update every 30 days, that will also prevent the account from expiring. Otherwise, it will require a login every 30 days onto our web site.

Chris Gonyea
DynDNS Support http://www.dyndns.com/support/

Re:As a current free DynDNS user...

[raju1kabir]

I've found ZoneEdit to be frustratingly quirky. Getting new domains working is a PITA and always takes an extraordinary amount of time. The interface is clunky and weird. The name servers seem to work, but EveryDNS was such a pleasure to use by contrast that I'd long ago moved everything off ZoneEdit.