10 June 2011

Cloudns.net - additional experience & Godaddy Premium DNS comparison

Since March I have learned new things about Cloudns.net. First of all I have to say that I like it a lot. But there is one big problem. Reaction time. I don't know why is that but they seem to have periodic problems with the service. It might be DDoS attack, it might be technical problems or maybe something else. Really big issue is that it always takes more than few hours for them to even start to solve the problem. If you are using only and only Cloudns.net services you might be in for trouble.

The best practice for me over the time is to have one additional DNS server. With the prices so low for linux virtuals you can simply pick provider, setup any Linux (I prefer debian and bind combination) and create secondary DNS server. It should cost you really minimum but you will keep your NS servers alive all the time.

Once frustrated with the Cloudns.net service I have decided to use Anycast Premium DNS from Godaddy. But it was such awful experience that just after two days I have asked for refund. Few points I dont like about Premium DNS:

  • Only two Nameservers - this might be enough but I live by saying more is better
  • Vanity servers - this is really showstopper for me. You can use vanity servers only for domains hosted by GoDaddy.com. What is the point? Cloudns.net is not asking about domains and their registration. You have it, you setup Cloudns.net nameservers (or vanity nameservers) and that's it.
  • Unbelievably slow and difficult to use control panel - Where was the UX designer when they developed Godaddy.com control panel? It is really difficult to use. And I have been using them for over 4 years for domains. Showing control panel to my wife I realized she couldnt move there and find anything I asked for. Fail.
Overall, I like Cloudns.net and they have added new servers and promised to make sure they will completely stop service failures. We shall see, I have my own backup DNS server so I can sleep much better now.

1 comment:

Kimberly said...

May I know what is the provider of your backup DNS server?