What is DNSimple?

DNSimple is a hosted DNS service that you can use to manage your domains. Plans start at $3 per month. We offer both a web-based interface and an iPhone application for adding and removing domains and DNS records as well as an HTTP API and command-line tool.

How Much Does it Cost?

What's Included?

Every DNSimple account comes with the following features:

• Free 30-day trial.
• Easy to use web interface for managing domain records.
• Free iPhone App for adding and managing domains and records from your iPhone.
• Support for A, CNAME, MX, SPF, URL (forwarding), TXT, NS, PTR, SRV, NAPTR, SSHFP and AAAA records.
• Unlimited number of records for each domain.
• Wildcard DNS records
• Native support for DNS lookups over IPv6.
• REST API for creating and managing domains and records.
• Standard templates for services like Google Apps and Heroku.
• Custom templates for applying multiple records to a domain with one click.
• The ability to share domain administration with other DNSimple users.
• Vanity name servers at no additional charge.
• Optional domain registration or transfers starting at $14/year (for com, net and org). Prices vary for other TLDs.
• WHOIS Privacy Protection providing a proxy for email and snail mail for $8/year per domain.
• RapidSSL certificates for $20 for year and wildcards Comodo certificates for $100 per year, with the easiest certificate interface ever.
• The satisfaction of not having to use GoDaddy.

Why

We're tired of confusing, complicated domain management. We're tired of complex pricing. We're tired of constantly being bombarded by upselling. We want to register a domain and set up its DNS with as little effort as possible. We want to be able to automate everything. All of this is why we built DNSimple.

Who

We are two brothers, Anthony Eden, a 12-year veteran of the domain industry and Darrin Eden, an operations specialist.

The DNSimple Story

At the beginning of 2010 I was winding down my full time job in Hawaii and I started working as a freelance developer. While logged into GoDaddy to manage some of my domains I realized that I really disliked using their domain registration service and DNS. There were far too many useless steps while trying to register a domain and I couldn't help but notice the stream of up-selling attempts. Their DNS control panel was difficult to use and was slow and unintuitive. I knew there had to be a better way to register and manage domains.

It was clear that there was an opportunity to take the experience and knowledge that I had gathered over the last decade working in the domain industry and turn that into a product that I would enjoy using and that other developers and entrepreneurs would enjoy using as well. I called up my brother, who is a system administrator and devops guru, and I asked him if he would be interested in helping me with it. He said he was definitely in and I started writing the application. That was in the beginning of April.

We tackled the DNS portion first. I built a front end in Ruby on Rails and Darrin started building up the DNS infrastructure. After a few weeks we had implemented the basic functionality and I added on support for recurring billing, set up the bank accounts and Darrin set up the remainder of the production environment. On June 30th we launched the first version of the site that handled just DNS management. At this point I started working on domain registration and transfer. In August we started beta testing the domain registration and rolled that out shortly after. Throughout these 3 months Darrin and I were continuously tweaking both the application and the infrastructure.

Over the year that followed the launch we added support for a variety of DNS records, IPv6, API interfaces for most of the DNSimple functionality, SSL certificate purchasing and whois privacy protection. We've constantly worked to improve the web site to make it easier to use and as friendly as possible. We also work to innovate in DNS with the addition of DNSimple-specific features like domain alias records which make using services like Amazon Elastic Load Balancer and Heroku easier and more robust.

Our long term goal for DNSimple is to remain focused on DNS and domain registration and continue to improve the experience of the DNSimple site by making complex tasks, like domain transfers, easier to understand.

-Anthony Eden