Oh man... this is not the first time they're doing it. I've been their user and they have deprecated the plan I've signed up for. After a call with the CEO, we have come to an agreement of a custom plan that allowed my to keep one of the features I really needed (vanity name servers) at the time. That was in 2015. In 2017 I had another call with them at after that I decided to move away.
I was a happy customer for years, but felt they were not good on past promises about the pricing. Moved to GCP and slashed my monthly bill to a 1/5 of what I was paying to DNSimple. Still with GCP today (for DNS).
Founder and CEO of DNSimple here. I'd like to clarify a couple of things about our business that may shed some light on why we've ended certain legacy plans when we have.
There are two key parts to our business: domain registration management and authoritative DNS. These two parts have very different price models in the industry. For domains, you pay a fee for each year they are registered. For DNS, you pay for each zone and then for the DNS queries.
The price changes around domain registrations have not been coming from us, rather registry operators have been raising many of their wholesale prices repeatedly in recent years. The operator for .COM even showed up in the news recently when Senator Warren called for an investigation into Versign for the price changes around that TLD. We’ve either kept domain prices stable for as long as we could, or even reduced them, as long as we were able to retain some small margin.
The price changes around operational DNS stems from the rising prices of infrastructure as well as changes by our vendors for various services related to DNS operations. Last year we overhauled our pricing to try to remain competitive in the DNS operational space by reducing minimum requirements (you can register domains with us and use another DNS provider which is something you could not do with our previous pricing model) and by aligning to actual costs (we were not charging for queries for a long time, but we are being charged for queries for things like DDoS defense and edge caching, so we had to update our prices to reflect these changes).
Operating a business means you have to keep at least 3 groups happy: the customers, the team, and the owners. Many times I have to make a decision that will make someone unhappy, and it sucks, but I do it to ensure we can continue operating and keep providing service to those that see value in what we offer. This is one of those cases. From the operational DNS perspective, our Basic Reseller plan has been operating at a loss for the last few years, so it had to ultimately go.
To Cory and any other customer who feels we did not communicate well on the changes: I’m sorry. I assure you we have tried over and over through emails and one-on-one conversations to explain why these changes were necessary. I, and the entire DNSimple team, have always been very open with any customer that is frustrated with changes we’ve made, and we will continue to do so. If you ever want to talk to me about DNSimple, my inbox is always open.
I recently transferred all my domains and cancelled a DNSimple account I’ve had for more than a decade for similar reasons.
A couple years ago they migrated me to a more expensive plan with no notice, I had to catch the price difference on an invoice. I wasn’t happy but it’s a lot of work to transfer domains.
Recently I discovered they introduced a plan that fit my usage and cost 50% less, but (would you believe it) they didn’t bother quietly migrating me to that plan…
Seems a little odd to be surprised when a business that (by the author's own admission in this case) seems to have an established history of customer hostile actions.
I've been with DNSimple for years (personal and business accounts) and am watching closely to see whether I need to think about moving off in the next year or so. I've also started to feel like something is off … price hikes with no added benefits have me wondering if it would really be so bad to manage DNS for ≈ 30 domains at Hover or something.
Cloudflare handles domain registration at no price markup, the UX is solid once you figure out the slightly quirky process, and transfers have gone smoothly.
EasyDNS might be a few cents more (literally) than the alternatives, but they're a smallish company and have never pulled this nonsense. (Also their customer support assist in preventing domain hijacks and recovering, which is pretty important if your domain is valuable.)
Porkbun is pretty good, too, but their margin is smaller and domain protection is less of a thing for them.
Google and Cloudflare are very cheap (because it's hard to make money on a dollar profit margin per year) but they're very big companies, so customer service is not quite the same as at a small company.
I tried Porkbun after suggestions here. The symbols in my password caused a 403 error. Porkbun is terrible (although I'm not sure if there's a better other option).
Cloudflare also isn't a general purpose registrar - they won't let you point to external nameservers which makes migration bad.
EasyDNS doesn't support U2F.
Google... the usual risk of getting banned for some youtube upload and losing all your domains.
I switched to DNSimple after several Gandi fiascos. I'm not a reseller, and the fast that they charge a fee made me hope they wouldn't try to skim in other places, but I'd be happy to know of a registrar that checks all the boxes (box 1: u2f, box 2: no glaring technical issues).
> Also their customer support assist in preventing domain hijacks and recovering, which is pretty important if your domain is valuable.
I might be missing something here, but why do you feel that this particular service is worth highlighting? Genuinely asking because maybe there's something I'm not aware of. I was under the impression that most popular registrars have procedures in place to prevent this kind of things. To transfer a domain, I usually have to unlock it and/or provide some kind of transfer activation code, I get an email, then there's some transfer waiting period.
How do people get their domains stolen these days that would make EasyDNS's customer support particularly stellar in that regard?
I'm curious why they didn't communicate with DNSimple about the price hike. From the way this blog is written, it sounds like he didn't try to communicate with them at all, but instead chose to just walk away.
We emailed back and forth several times. CEO was on the thread, was aware of my concerns, chose not to do anything. The result of the back-and-forth was the proposal I shared in the post.
Interesting. I know to become a registrar it is something like 70k. Didn’t think that providing an api to register a domain would be a serviceable business.
They have a feature called ALIAS records, which is a non-standard DNS record type similar to CNAME, but it works with the root domain. The people I know using DNSimple were using it because it worked better with Heroku than other DNS providers at the time. They are not the only ones offering ALIAS records now, but it's still a non-standard feature that not every DNS provider has. A feature like this is needed for Heroku, since they do not give you IP addresses for your servers - you have to use CNAME or ALIAS records.
I used ovh for ~8 years, but it's getting more and more unstable ( not sure if only the web UI or their structure)
Domain registrations don't get through and must validate manually (no new customer and always paid invoices), especially if you buy friday and you must wait until monday)
Updating DNS records sometimes don't work (random webui errors, sometimes even in french)
I'm wondering what prevented the author from having the sales call and seeing what rates they are willing to offer. Best case they might even be better than the current rates.
Why did the change need to happen if this is a plausible outcome? Why add the risk to an existing customer that by all metrics is already loyal? Wouldn't an email with a % price increase and explanation been more acceptable? Why the drastic change in price?
It's someone trying to squeeze more revenues quickly and by doing so, damaging their brand / reputation.
Have you looked at FolioHD? It's geared towards photographers and artistic types that want a really nice portfolio website.
Paying an amount that is just-above-market-rate for a domain and not needing to understand how to configure DNS for someone non-technical seems like an absolutely worth-while reseller case.
The business in question isn’t hoarding domains. Customers explicitly request their domain and they register it for them. That’s it. The customers can also transfer their domains out and set DNS entries like they would with any webhost.
Why is this rent seeking? It seems like a reasonable service for their target audience, an easy way to create online portfolio. Reselling domains to be used with a portfolio is just an additional service which makes perfect sense in this case.
selectnull|1 year ago
I was a happy customer for years, but felt they were not good on past promises about the pricing. Moved to GCP and slashed my monthly bill to a 1/5 of what I was paying to DNSimple. Still with GCP today (for DNS).
aeden|1 year ago
There are two key parts to our business: domain registration management and authoritative DNS. These two parts have very different price models in the industry. For domains, you pay a fee for each year they are registered. For DNS, you pay for each zone and then for the DNS queries.
The price changes around domain registrations have not been coming from us, rather registry operators have been raising many of their wholesale prices repeatedly in recent years. The operator for .COM even showed up in the news recently when Senator Warren called for an investigation into Versign for the price changes around that TLD. We’ve either kept domain prices stable for as long as we could, or even reduced them, as long as we were able to retain some small margin.
The price changes around operational DNS stems from the rising prices of infrastructure as well as changes by our vendors for various services related to DNS operations. Last year we overhauled our pricing to try to remain competitive in the DNS operational space by reducing minimum requirements (you can register domains with us and use another DNS provider which is something you could not do with our previous pricing model) and by aligning to actual costs (we were not charging for queries for a long time, but we are being charged for queries for things like DDoS defense and edge caching, so we had to update our prices to reflect these changes).
Operating a business means you have to keep at least 3 groups happy: the customers, the team, and the owners. Many times I have to make a decision that will make someone unhappy, and it sucks, but I do it to ensure we can continue operating and keep providing service to those that see value in what we offer. This is one of those cases. From the operational DNS perspective, our Basic Reseller plan has been operating at a loss for the last few years, so it had to ultimately go.
To Cory and any other customer who feels we did not communicate well on the changes: I’m sorry. I assure you we have tried over and over through emails and one-on-one conversations to explain why these changes were necessary. I, and the entire DNSimple team, have always been very open with any customer that is frustrated with changes we’ve made, and we will continue to do so. If you ever want to talk to me about DNSimple, my inbox is always open.
paulddraper|1 year ago
What does this refer to? (It sounds like servers, and those are certainly not getting more expensive.)
spl757|1 year ago
bww|1 year ago
A couple years ago they migrated me to a more expensive plan with no notice, I had to catch the price difference on an invoice. I wasn’t happy but it’s a lot of work to transfer domains.
Recently I discovered they introduced a plan that fit my usage and cost 50% less, but (would you believe it) they didn’t bother quietly migrating me to that plan…
These guys can’t be trusted.
settsu|1 year ago
Seems a little odd to be surprised when a business that (by the author's own admission in this case) seems to have an established history of customer hostile actions.
velcrovan|1 year ago
badlibrarian|1 year ago
superq|1 year ago
Porkbun is pretty good, too, but their margin is smaller and domain protection is less of a thing for them.
Google and Cloudflare are very cheap (because it's hard to make money on a dollar profit margin per year) but they're very big companies, so customer service is not quite the same as at a small company.
rendaw|1 year ago
Cloudflare also isn't a general purpose registrar - they won't let you point to external nameservers which makes migration bad.
EasyDNS doesn't support U2F.
Google... the usual risk of getting banned for some youtube upload and losing all your domains.
I switched to DNSimple after several Gandi fiascos. I'm not a reseller, and the fast that they charge a fee made me hope they wouldn't try to skim in other places, but I'd be happy to know of a registrar that checks all the boxes (box 1: u2f, box 2: no glaring technical issues).
mekoka|1 year ago
I might be missing something here, but why do you feel that this particular service is worth highlighting? Genuinely asking because maybe there's something I'm not aware of. I was under the impression that most popular registrars have procedures in place to prevent this kind of things. To transfer a domain, I usually have to unlock it and/or provide some kind of transfer activation code, I get an email, then there's some transfer waiting period.
How do people get their domains stolen these days that would make EasyDNS's customer support particularly stellar in that regard?
EagleStance|1 year ago
corywatilo|1 year ago
rootsudo|1 year ago
Now it does.
physhster|1 year ago
devinparadise|1 year ago
tomschwiha|1 year ago
0x073|1 year ago
Updating DNS records sometimes don't work (random webui errors, sometimes even in french)
netsharc|1 year ago
"to 2x" = "to double"
"to 5x" = "to quintuple".
Just noticed his blog's tagline... I think terrible grammar is poor UX too. =]
jabiko|1 year ago
johnklos|1 year ago
Also, when someone is barely satisfied with the current offerings, something like this would be the impetus needed to do something new.
corywatilo|1 year ago
[1] posthog.com/sales
ganoushoreilly|1 year ago
It's someone trying to squeeze more revenues quickly and by doing so, damaging their brand / reputation.
sgammon|1 year ago
justplay|1 year ago
mcnichol|1 year ago
[deleted]
nathas|1 year ago
Paying an amount that is just-above-market-rate for a domain and not needing to understand how to configure DNS for someone non-technical seems like an absolutely worth-while reseller case.
hipadev23|1 year ago
They’re not reselling or licensing out domains.
grujicd|1 year ago
zelon88|1 year ago
[deleted]
tobinfekkes|1 year ago
Glad to have a family-member in this crazy tech world. Rising costs, worsening products, sorry to hear of your predicament.