Primary DNS servers

For the server on which this web site runs, I used to use the domain registrar's (GoDaddy in this case) DNS servers. However, this caused a few problems, so I looked for another solution.

1. I couldn't convince GoDaddy's system to accept my own DNS server as the primary server, unless I gave up GoDaddy's domain control system altogether, which I finally did. Since the Plesk-controlled DNS server on this web and mail server gets most data automatically from Plesk (domainkey entries, to give just one example), I made this the primary DNS server.
2. GoDaddy doesn't quite give me full control over the DNS entries. My own server is more flexible.
3. GoDaddy's web interface is a bit on the slow side and not quite so good as my own.

Secondary DNS servers

What was still missing is secondary DNS servers. So I looked for those, and indeed there is a small number of companies who offer them as a free service. They do this on the side as an advertisement for their other services, like web and mail hosting and professional, large scale, paid DNS services.

I found a list of free secondary DNS services and tried four of them with the following positive results. (The fourth has meanwhile dropped out of the business.)

1. everydns.net – four servers, one of them ostensibly in Holland, but I only saw two or three working. Their web interface is poor and minimalistic. But their service definitely works, and you can get DNS for up to 20 domains for free. We are using them now.
2. twisted4life – this apparently British company offers the nicest web user interface of the bunch and a good, though very slow DNS configuration checker (see below). On the other hand their single server is slow and unreliable, and they take only 10 domains for free. Still we're using it now too.
3. afraid.org – I had used them before for primary DNS services, but their web user interface is so idiotic that I stopped trying before I even got the first domain set up.

All of the free services are slow. Some promise to update their servers hourly, but I found that this is usually a lie. These promises may have been kept when the servers were not yet heavily used, but all of the free services are apparently quite loaded. Still they all seem to be usable for secondary DNS server purposes, when you consider that they are only very rarely actually used.

Check your DNS setup

1. DNS Sleuth is an extremely thorough DNS checker and seems to be the best of the bunch as of late 2009.
2. – a simpler, but still very useful service to check your domain, DNS, Mail and Webservers
3. has this nice looking, but very slow DNS configuration checker

There used to be and still is DNSstuff, but they have long stopped offering their DNS checker for free, and so it is out of reach for the occasional user.