We’re pleased to welcome back as a long-term sponsor easyDNS, the Canadian DNS registration and hosting company that we’ve relied on for over 15 years. Although easyDNS started out in 1998 as a reaction to the horrific DNS service provided by Network Solutions, the company has long been expanding its set of services beyond DNS, all with an eye toward providing options that are fast, reliable, and well-supported.
(Technically, we’re using Cloudflare for DNS now to take advantage of its caching capabilities, but I mirror all DNS changes in easyDNS as well, so I can switch back at a moment’s notice if I have to.)
easyDNS’s DNS plans now include its easyMail and easyOutbound SMTP services. easyMail is a hosted IMAP service that provides IMAP accounts, mail forwarding, backup mail spooling and backup MX records, SMTP port forwarding, and outbound SMTP. And if your ISP has blocked port 25 for outbound mail, the easyOutbound SMTP service lets you send all your mail through easyDNS instead. For each, you can choose how many mailboxes and how many outgoing messages per day you want to pay for.
When we switched our Internet infrastructure away from having a virtual private server at Linode, we lost our SMTP server. Our users have accounts on other email services so all tidbits.com addresses forward elsewhere. With easyMail’s forwarding and outbound SMTP features, we were able to outsource all email handling to easyDNS. With the insane amount of spam any email server takes, I was extremely happy to let experts take care of our email, and we haven’t experienced so much as a hiccup since making the transition 5 months ago.
easyDNS has also gotten into the Web hosting world, with easyWeb and easyPress. easyWeb is cPanel-powered hosting that provides access to over 300 Web apps and an interface for managing them. It’s a good middle ground between running your own virtual server and easyPress, which is a managed WordPress service. easyDNS is offering TidBITS readers 2 months of free easyWeb hosting, and I’d encourage you to keep an eye on their ad banners in the future for additional offers.
A few facts about easyDNS are worth calling out:
- They’re almost never the cheapest option. That’s intentional, since their goal is to provide excellent service and free support for the foreseeable future, and that requires revenue. I’m happy to pay easyDNS more for essential services because outages and misconfigurations are damaging to my business.
- easyDNS is located in Canada, which has stricter privacy laws than the United States, more on par with the UK and EU. That may not be a big deal, but if you’re concerned about the privacy of your email or data on your Web site, easyDNS is a good place to be. (Not the least because easyDNS’s CEO, Mark Jeftovic, comes down hard on the side of privacy.)
- I was surprised to see recently that easyDNS offers registration for 501 top-level domains. I had no idea there were that many now. Many have special requirements or are limited to members of certain communities, but you can now register domain names ranging from .actor to .zone.
- If you’re not entirely satisfied with easyDNS’s services, they say “you can cancel and leave with a 100% refund—no ‘conditions,’ no fine print.” I can’t say such a guarantee is unique, but it’s certainly not standard.
So if you’re looking for domain registration and hosting, email services, or Web hosting, I encourage you to check out easyDNS. I’ve worked with a lot of Internet companies over the years, but few for so long as easyDNS.
I’ve also been a very happy customer of EasyDNS for years, since they purchased ZoneEdit and kept the ‘wildcard’ email account feature that allows me to use email addresses ‘on the fly’ and forward all messages to one or more POP/IMAP accounts. Mark Jeftovic didn’t like that feature but he has done a great job of keeping it working well, as well as all the other standard features. You’re right about Mark’s serious concern for privacy and security. I believe that my data and domains are with a competent and caring company at EasyDNS.
I didn’t realize that you have been using easyDNS. I have too and have been impressed. For incoming mail their greylisting works a treat.
I’ve used EasyDNS for at least 10 years and they’ve been terrific. Their tech support is beyond all expectations. They answer phone calls and emails promptly, the staff are very helpful and knowledgeable, and they speak English (well, Canadian anyway, but that’s close enough). They also have a long track record and appear to be in business for the long term. I recommend EasyDNS enthusiastically.
As mentioned above, the “wild card” email feature is invaluable. I make up new addresses to register at various web sites (e.g. [email protected]), all of which redirect to a mailbox that I specify. If spam starts arriving I can assign that address to the bit bucket and assign the blame to the correct culprit. I also have created specific addresses @mydomain.org for my wife, children, grandchildren, and various special purposes; all are redirected to their respective email providers.
I’m merely a well-informed novice at networking and web site construction. Their user interface, help files, and tech support assume a level of knowledge and jargon that often exceeds mine. But they’re very patient and I’ve never failed to get a problem solved eventually.
My only complaint is their limit of 50 addressees in outgoing emails, which is way too low. It creates a significant hassle when I send my annual Christmas letter to a couple of hundred friends & family, and similar hassles with announcements at other times.