ZoneEdit.com has led a long history in free DNS hosting service. It is reliable, feature rich and free for the first 5 zones you hosted with them. They do quite a bit more than simply returning you the DNS records. Here’s a description from their FAQ page:
What services does ZoneEdit provide?
ZoneEdit hosts reliable DNS servers, e-mail servers for email forwarding, and web servers for URL forwarding and parked domains. ZoneEdit provides a convenient single-location, integrated, web-based domain manager for configuring all of the services provided.
I have been using ZoneEdit since late 2002, and currently have 2 domains delegated to their servers. In one stage (~2 years ago) the web front-end was giving me hard time, but the DNS itself has been flawless. If you like free services, has less than 5 domains to manage, want features like backup MX and automatic failover service — then ZoneEdit might be the provider for you.
Service Basics
ZoneEdit is a commercial paid service, but offers hosting 5 domains/zones free of charge. You can then buy credits to host more domains, or purchase features like extra name servers, backup MX, etc. Signing up is easy, but it seems to require more than just your email address and password — you need to provide your address and phone number. Probably a strategy against fraud, but seems unnecessary.
Your username and temporary password will be generated and emailed to you, and you can get onto all the fun zone-editing stuff within minutes.
User Interface
ZoneEdit.com does not have the most fancy user interface. Actually, I consider ZoneEdit.com’s web UI harmful to your eyes because of that tiled background image. There just seems to be something wrong with their layout and choice of colours that makes me want to finish up what I am editing as quickly as possible. Fortunately, DNS is something that you update and forget — until you switch servers or add new sub-domains, etc.
Otherwise, the UI is intuitive and easy to use. Your existing zones are listed on the left-hand-side column. Select a zone to give you a brief overview of this zone — a list of records grouped by the record types. Clicking on the group-type header and you can start editing those records.
Commonly used records, A, CNAME and MX, have their own pages, where as no-so-common records can all be edited on the “Advanced” page. On most of the pages you can turn on “Show FAQ”, which will append frequently asked questions associated with functions on that page, and links to the answers. I found useful when you are starting out to use their service, and you can hide those links once when you are familiar with the functions and terminologies.
Extra Features
ZoneEdit is full of extra features that are not part of your typical DNS service. Some of them are free, and some of them require you to purchase some credits.
First of all, there are more DNS record types than you’ll normally need. Need IPv6? Use AAAA. Need to add text (or SPF) to your domain? Use TXT. There’s also LOC to add latitude and longitude of your domain and RP to add responsible person or organisation. You can even use ZoneEdit for PTR records if you have an entire class C…
It has also got all the other basics — dynamic DNS, secondary NS, web forward, etc. ZoneEdit can do mail forward for you by taking over the MX records of your domain. Secondary/backup MX is missing from the free account, but can be purchased from ZoneEdit.
One interesting feature is their failover service. It is like an integrated site monitor, which “pings” your website every 10 minutes over HTTP. You can then provide a list of IP addresses for that domain, all of them configured to serve that site. ZoneEdit will only return back the IP addresses that is responding to its HTTP ping. That effectively provides a cheap redundancy service.
ZoneEdit does lack TTL setting for each of the records. It does, however, allow you to edit SOA info which applies to the entire zone. The minimum TTL in SOA however is limited to at least 20 minutes, which might not be useful in some circumstances.
Not sure whether it can be classified as a “feature”, but there is also an affiliate linking program that pays you USD$0.50 for each free account sign up, or 10% for each paid customer. It does create incentive for others to advertise and recommend them. Well, don’t worry. There is no affiliation link in this article :)
DNS Servers
For each domain you added into ZoneEdit, it provides you two name servers ns<number>.zoneedit.com, where <number> is randomly taken out from a list of its servers, currently up to 19. You can then use these name servers with your registrar. There is an option to add an tertiary name servers to your domain to provide more redundancy. At a cost of course.
Most of their name servers are based in US and Canada, however I found ns10.zoneedit.com that is New Zealand based.
Summary
| Name: | ZoneEdit |
|---|---|
| Server Locations: | All over North America, New Zealand |
| Servers per Zone: | 2 |
| Free Domains: | 5 |
| Free Records: | - |
| Record Types: | A, CNAME, MX, NS, RP, TXT, LOC, PTR, AAAA |
| Min. TTL: | 1200 seconds (apply to entire zone) |
| AXFR: | Yes (IP, TSIG key) |
| Secondary NS: | Yes |
| Dynamic Domain: | Yes |
| Web Forward: | Yes (Cloak, Redirect) |
| Mail Forward: | Yes |
| Secondary MX: | No |
| Extra Features: | Failover Service |
Conclusion
ZoneEdit is reliable, and if you only have five or less domains and don’t need the extra features, it is free. It has been working quite well for me over the last 4 years, and I recommend them.
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Comments
I’ve been using Zone Edit since January 2002 and I love it. It was the best & simplest service of it’s kind back then, and it still is.
I’ve been using zoneedit for many years and use to love it. But as of the past month or so the lag on email forwarding has been as long as 12 hours. I just found out about at least two messages that were sent to me within the past couple days that still have not been forwarded.
Zoneedit has been really good for a long time, but things have changed.
I have been with zoneedit for about four years and used paid and free services (mail backup is paid) today 12/19/2006 their ns1.zonedit.com and ns2.zonedit.com stopped responding to DNS requests for my domain. This is the only glitch in the whole four year period.
I too have used ZoneEdit for four years. I’m having the same problem with ns1 and ns2.zoneedit.com, for nearly 24 hours now. I sent a message to support, who replied that they are working to resolve the problem; and if I were to require greater reliability, I could purchase a third or fourth nameserver for my domain, which would be guaranteed to be geographically remote from the first two.
I suppose this is a reasonable stance. The affected domain is fortunately not a critical one at the moment, but I may consider doing this for some other domains.
Nosmo
I’ve used zoneedit for almost two years but moved away from them earlier today. All my three nameservers went down least 4 hours ago. According to their network status page there are 4 servers that are currently down.
So, kalle, where did you take your business instead?
I notice that this outage coincides with ZoneEdit’s inauguration of domain registration service. Hmm…
ZoneEdit is obviously not a free service anymore, they simply turned off some servers and hope everyone should start pay money for their service. Cannot recommend anyone to use their service…
ZoneEdit is obviously not a free service anymore, they simply turned off some servers and hope everyone should start pay money for their service.
Is it a speculation or fact that can be verified? My zone on ZoneEdit is on NS3 and NS7. NS3 is still dead, but my zone is resolving because NS7 is up the whole time.
Still, their attitude is still about moving their customers to paid services, an evidence from their status page. On the other hand, there are free DNS services that offer more than 2 geographically isolated name servers. I shall recommend these two:
I paid for three nameserver last time this happened and, of course, NS1, NS2 and NS6 were all down for more than 48 hours this time. I didn’t have time to get a new service, so I had to pay for a 4th server. By Monday we will be on a new DNS as it is kind of hard to run a company when the DNS host can’t get servers back running within a decent time frame.
Here is the mail their support sent me… When I saw this I quickly moved to EveryDNS, works fine!
Dear Sir,
We are already working on these servers. Our engineers are diligently working to resolve the problems. We should have the issue resolved shortly.
If you require greater reliability than two servers can offer, we recommend that you purchase a third, or even a fourth nameserver. The cost of this service is minimal (only $10.95 for a year per extra nameserver), but the value you receive is huge. Each extra nameserver you add increases the reliability by 10 times.
You can click on the link “Purchase an Extra Backup Nameserver” on the nameservers page on the ZoneEdit web site to take advantage of the extra reliabity we can offer you.
i was using zoneedit and always recommending it to my friends and staff, but lately its gone crap. their ns has become very unreliable and that i wont pay for an extra nameserver because at them their service has become very unreliable. if you give free to try, make it best, otherwise people my think paid service is the same crap and WONT SUSCRIBE FOR PAID SERVICE!!!
I have used Zoneedit for at least 4 years with several domains and have always been extremely pleased and 100% satisfied with the functionality …. until this month. [I’m a paying customer BTW - email forwarding bandwidth and zones, not extra nameservers though.]
My domains have had significant outages this month and I’m not happy about it. Mail forwarding has been slow (>24hrs in some cases). A friend who’s also with ZE thinks messages are disappearing. Web pages simply aren’t accessible at times.
I’m really disappointed because it has been such a good service until now.
AFAICT, Zoneedit was sold this year to Dotster, a domain name registrar:
I noticed this some time ago and have been waiting to see what sort of shenanigans it might cause. I expected preferential treatment to Dotster customers or pressure to move your domains to Dotster or some such crap (which I wouldn’t want to do because I’m extremely happy with my current registrar). Owning Zoneedit gives Dotster a lot of info about domains registered with other registrars. I expect this recent addition of name registration is just the start.
All this talk of ‘purchasing’ extra nameservers is utter rubbish. Two nameservers should be enough. ZE’s previous reliability is proof of that. (And other providers too.) If they’re going to push this line then they’ve lost all credibility in my view.
IMO, it’s a classic example of a corporation ruining something was working just fine. I suppose the return on investment just wasn’t high enough, they had to go and ‘monetize’ it. It’s a real shame.
I am also feeling very queasy about Dotster’s purchase of ZE - I’m also a paying ZE customer - and had even used Dotster in the past. I moved to 1&1 for the low cost registrations (comparatively), and during several of my transfers received promises of lower prices from Dotster (still higher than 1&1’s). This made me sick - that they would charge around 15.00 to register a domain, and then lower it to around 9.00 as you were leaving. So, I was even less inclined to stay (not that I was staying in the first place, it just pissed me off), and now that they own ZE (of which I like the above, was a very happy customer), I am contemplating alternatives; can anyone comment on ultradns, dyndns, or another alternative to ZE.
Recently I have been getting many more notifications from ZE to buy zone credits, many more than in the past. I feel Dotster is trying to squeeze “their” new customers …
I’m planning to leave when there’s a viable alternative. I also was shocked when a response from ZE’s “support” was blocked from my mail server because they are listed by a DNSBL as being Spammers!
This is not good if you use Dotster to have email forwarded, etc.
In any event, please comment on alternatives to ZoneEdit.
Many thanks, Anonymous
I’d been very happy with ZE, but after the purchase I found that my sites were getting pop-up adds. I traced the source, and found that they were no longer pointing to my server directly, but bouncing off of two of their own, where they are injecting pop-ups. When I put two and two together, and sent thier support and email, they said their new owner was performing this for those who use web forwarding and don’t pay for any upgrade. A single upgrade, in any way was to remove the pop-ups, but they seem to remain. The don’t seem to do it to all accounts, but I’ve been hit on 2 of 6, so far.
” From: support@zoneedit.com To: ********** Subject: [zoneedit.com #93470] Date: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 1:00:49 PM Dear Sir,
The popup ads are a recent addition to our free web forwarding service.
ZoneEdit was recently purchased by Dotster, and it’s their policy to include popup ads on free accounts that use web forwarding.
With the purchase of one zone credit, popup ads are disabled. One zone credit is $10.95, and quantity discounts are available.
Let me know if you still have any other questions. Thank you.
Best Regards, Grace ZoneEdit Support “
Damn… I found this page because I was flailing about on ZE trying to find the registration fees. I’ve used ZE for several years - 20+ domains - and been very happy. I also experienced some extremely slow mail forwarding in December, but only on one specific domain… now I’m guessing it was one of the five freebies.
I was getting ready to transfer registration to ZE, because my original registrar who was a local ISP with his offices a block from me has sold his registration business to, uh… lessee… “awesomenet” I think their name is, and they suck big time, even lost me a good name because in renewing five domains I had to re-enter the payment card each time and typo’ed one, then got an email saying they were renewing all five… a week later I got an email from some asshole offering to sell me back my domain for $250 - turned out the charge was denied - obviously - and so the payment on that one domain didn’t go through, but the notice of denial was so nearly identical in format to the notices of renewal that I didn’t notice. Was it my fault? Mmmmmaybe, but you know, it should have processed and notified me before leaving the )(*&@#$ page in the first place… They, of course, denied any responsibility of any sort whatsoever, duhhhh.
Having read the preceding mss, I believe I’m gonna pass on ZE’s domain registration. I did put a couple on 1+1, but they fluffed them up, and tried to bill me for hosting, too… took hours to get it straight, and I’m not sure it is completely straight just yet.
Thanks for the info, folks…
Boooooo… Bad Bad Zoneedit. I love Zoneedit and have used it for many years, but this stinks. I don’t mind paying for their service but to slip in pop-ups is no good. Although it is not totally Zoneedit I am still pissed.
I just wanted to add my experience to the flood of disappointment in ZoneEdit. I, too, had used them for quite a while with satisfaction, then suddenly my domains stopped responding. It took some investigation to find out that their dns servers ‘were down’ as they never notified me, nor did their site mention anything about the downtime.
The response from support was that I should buy more zones — folks this is clearly a bait-and-switch scheme of the highest cynicism. If they knowingly provide lower service to their free clients (without clearly stating that) in order to get them to pay for service, that’s fraud, plain and simple.
Last night they shut off my DNS service claiming that I had expired credits. First off, the warning came on Sunday night at nearly 11pm. Secondly, by their accounting I was short just one credit but yet all my dozen or so names were shut down. Thirdly, this expired credit was their error, since I had cancelled the order for it weeks ago and their clueless support folks couldn’t figure out how to square up the account.
One clue that I should have recognized and I recommend everyone look out for was that there is NO SUPPORT PHONE NUMBER. If you can’t talk to someone immediately, you can’t have the problem addressed immediately now, can you?
I can tell you I lost significant money, time and credibility using ZoneEdit. I strongly recommend using a professional, reliable service that you pay for. You’ll sleep much better at night.
I also love zoneedit dut have also had issues with e-mail fowardnig, many emails dissapear or are resent to sender as an error.
I also use mydomain’s servises and have had the same issues (I also notices zoneedit and mydomain were linked together)
actually I found this page googleing to find an other alternative to zoneedit and mydomain,
I’d researched zoneedit before as very good, and was about to change to using them. Now having read the comments first, i know to proceed with caution. Thankyou.
I’ve been using ZE since the 90s and was very very happy with it. It was very flexible and free. The problem is that their terms and billing methods are incomprehensible. The four free domains thing is a gimmick. You get 4 free domains for the lifetime of your account. Over the years i’ve registered a couple additional domains like .name and .info for personal use, but after a while I had dropped them. I’m now still at only using 4 domains, but ZE still counts the two that I dropped and make me pay for them. A while ago asked for an explaination and got some BS back. Two years ago, they started charging me twice a year ($10 at a time, but still). So I finally got fed up a few months ago and tried to figure out why. They are yet to return any my inquiries.
Their customer service is crap, their technical service is unreliable. Don’t use them if you can help it.
Lovely to find this tirade. I’ve been with zoneedit since around 2000, it used to be such a great simple service, and there used to even be a phone number for contact!
No more. Bad service (multiple outages in the past year), incomprehensible billing system (blocked from paying by paypal for reasons unknown, had to wait 5 days to be “reinstated”), slow email, and now site shutdowns (without a SINGLE warning note, unreal) due to “balance” issues that don’t actually appear on my account page (had to send them screen shots, what fun!).
Seems like goodbye is overdue…
LOOK OUT … I “had” been with zoneedit for 5 plus years. For the most part it has been acceptable until today.
WITH NO NOTICE, 3 of my domains dns were changed to a generic search page with competitive sites to mine. An hour or so later I get an email from them saying My credits have expired and say if I pay now it will take 24 to 48 hours to get it back on-line. Phone numbers are now unlisted.
Within 15 minutes of that email I moved all my domains DNS away from zoneedit.
I haven’t been this angry with anyone in years.
By the way, a friend had a site and had zoneedits normal 2 DNS servers and also had purchased a third. All three went down at the same time leaving him dead for several hours. The additional name servers just a way of sucking money out of you.
They are not what they used to be.
Phil
This is all very worrying…
I’ve been with ZoneEdit for a number of years now and never had reason to have any concern - indeed quite some time ago I had some issue with an account and they were extremely quick to resolve it. More recently I was receiving e-mails warning me that one of my update clients was attempting too frequent updates and hence needed reconfiguring. The client in question was actually zeDyn on Windows - written by ZoneEdit. So, I asked them for further details on how to reconfigure it (there was nothing really available to change) and they admitted that the client was broken and that they were currently fault-finding it. This was several months ago and the same things has happened - still the same line about fault-finding. Now, I’m no software engineer but a program as simple as a DNS update client should not take months to debug hence I can only assume they’re not looking at it at all. Indeed, they keep recommending I use a particular client - whose name escapes me - but this is a commercial product.
I can’t feeling they’re going down the pan so I may jump ship before it sinks….
Mathew
http://www.zoneedit.com was down all this morning. Wonder when it will come back online…
I’m disappointed to learn that Zoneedit sold out to Dotster — now, I AM a dotster customer for my domain, and that’s all well and good. no problems there.. but now I cannot log into the zoneedit site and disable one of the mailforwards that the spammers found over the weekend.
Nothing on the dotster press pages to detail the purchase of zoneedit, and no where I can go to fix my problem.
and then reading all this …
I may have to rethink my patronage of zoneedit, who has long (more than five years) enjoyed a favored position with me. disappointing, to see that dotster is trying underhanded things like pop-ups/unders in order to ‘monetize’ zoneedit.
The last bastions of “The Internet as we knew it”(tm) are failing, and this is a sad sad thing.
FWIW, I’ve used ZE (free) for mail redirection intensively for at least the last 4 years, and it’s been a great service.
Occasionally it may have a day where my emails are mysteriously held up for up to 12 hours - and also it sometimes bounces mails to me back to their senders for reasons I’ve never been able to deduce - but with all that I’m still extremely happy with this service. :-)
Ian - New Zealand.
It depends on several factors
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