A few months ago (May 2013) I had problems with Zerigo, their servers were being constantly threatened by denial of service attacks. They overcame those issues by partnering with network infrastructure companies to provide a more distributed system. This solution has worked well, but apparently it wasn’t the end of the changes for Zerigo. I received a notification today that Zerigo is moving all of their services to the Akamai platform. This change, in general, should be invisible to the end users (like me). Instead of making the change invisible Zerigo has decided that they are fundamentally changing their DNS hosting plans in an attempt to position themselves as a “world-class DNS provider.” Unfortunately for me, that move is a bit too optimistic given their history over the previous year. Also, their new market position would raise my rates by a minimum of 650% ($480/yr, compared to $79/yr). I can handle a little cost increase for the reliability of my domains, but $500 per year for something I can get for free from OpenSRS (or $60 through XpertDNS or $60 through DNS Made Easy) is absolutely insane. I am not operating a portfolio of corporate domains and don’t need their services in the same capacity as the type of customer they are targeting.
The problems with this transition get even worse, it happens on January 31, 2014, a mere 30 days away! At that time my account will be converted and the prorated difference (based on value of the service remaining, not the time remaining) will be applied to whatever “new” package they decide to stick my account in, whether its based on the 65 domains I’m allowed or the 20 I actually have in my account, they have given me no way of knowing which.
Now, after a little research I have selected what I hope will be my DNS provider for a long time, DNS Made Easy. I’m not crazy about the name, but there are many reviews that include empirical data to show that they are very reliable and that they have one of the best server response times in their particular niche. It took me about 2 hours to copy all of my domains using AXFR and to set up custom records for everything that needed to be different (web redirects don’t translate in DNS, obviously). My domains will make the transition between now and January 6th.