Hetzner DNS Hosting.
_MS_
OG
They now have a dedicated DNS subdomain (DNS Console) for DNS management in their Cloud dashboard.
I pointed one domain there on the 8th of April. I'm not really sure if the DNS Console was available before or not but there were no domains hosted on their (new?) name-servers that day, and now they have almost 400. And, I don't remember anyone recommending Hetzner for free DNS Hosting so I think it's a recent addition in their Cloud suite.
More here: https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/DNS_Overview#Who_can_use_Hetzner_DNS_console.3F
Happy Easter 
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Nice find! Looks like they also got a nice API in preparation: https://dns.hetzner.com/api-docs/
Will have to follow this, could evolve to a pretty powerful service.
Could also double as a pretty DDNS service with IPv6 support, always bugs me that Namecheap can't get that sorted out!
Are the servers all in EU? That would be a minus for some of us, I'm sure.
Let me forward this question to @Hetzner_OL
Yes.
Yes, all three name-servers are hosted in Germany.
Hmm, I actually wouldn't mind a proper alternative to Cloudflare for my DNS needs. But why do DNS providers always limit the RR types you can use? Or am I the only one who appreciates SSHFP?
EDIT: Probably because they don't support DNSSEC to begin with. WTF?
Isn't Hetzner well known for removing inactive accounts?
Asking because this service is being offered to non-customers and DNS is the kind of service which you can set up and forget.
Still nice to have this new service, there aren't many free and reliable authoritative DNS offerings.
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Digital Ocean also has DNS. It does not seem to be distributed or anycast though. Also, most domain registrars have free DNS for domains that you register through them.
If I'm not mistaken Digitalocean and Linode using cloudflare behind the scene
edit:
Hetzner name server
hydrogen.ns.hetzner.com
oxygen.ns.hetzner.com
helium.ns.hetzner.de
Linode and DigitalOcean use Cloudflare.
https://www.linode.com/docs/platform/manager/dns-manager/
https://www.cloudflare.com/case-studies/digitalocean/
I remember watching Cloudflare's orange symbol in front Linode and Digital Ocean's names at DNSPerf indicating that they use Cloudflare's DNS or their infrastructure in some capacity.
Vultr have their own complete DNS infrastruture.
https://www.vultr.com/news/Set-up-your-domains-with-Vultr-DNS/
Out of these three, Linode doesn't let you use their DNS service unless you have an active paying account.
I don't know about if UpCloud offers DNS hosting or not.
Was going to say Vultr would be probably the best choice in terms of big VPS providers with free DNS offerings. I believe theirs is also globally distributed. With that said it's great hetzner is offering free dns. Several of the popular domain registrars have very poor uptime like Namesilo for example. Great registrar, poor DNS.
There is also dnsmanager.io. Been using it for years, very solid
Very good panel but new registrations are not open to the public. You have to request for a new account.
I believe asking on https://t.me/dnsmanager should suffice
Great.
I have an account there. I contacted the developer through ticket to get my account created.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I was about to mention Linode's free DNS, but this changes things a little.
It's certainly different infrastructure internally at CF. One is a paid product with different internal SLAs (presumably), vs their 'free' DNS.
I can only guess at this point.
Out of curiosity, if you are not self hosting your dns /with your web hosting provider, or using special stuff like cloud flares protection, any specific reason why most people don't use their dns registrars dns hosting?
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I do use my domain registrar dns, but most of them don't have api's that are useful for letsencrypt dns authentication, which is required for wildcard certs.
Run an uptime monitor on their DNS probably won't be great or multi noded even.
Additionally if you dns is hosted with your registrar or web host and you change providers you have to change dns host which comes with potential downtime and also annoyance in putting all the information back in.
Independent DNS provider gives you flexibility in changing registrar and web hosting along with potentially multi noded support with better ping times and even Dynamic DNS dependent on the dns provider.
Pretty sure most major registrars supports those by default these days?
YES! This is prem!
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Argument I read in some other forum or chat:
Registrars run DNS as an added bonus/afterthought, and not all are as good/stable as a dedicated DNS provider would be. (Porkbun was mentioned as a nice registrar, but with semi-recent downtime for DNS.)
My experience with dnsmanager.io is great so far. Not sure if they still provision free accounts (might do). I just love their templating system.
The Hetzner DNS doesn't support ANAME as far as I can tell.
(Wonder how their auto-discovery of existing records work, as it found quite obscure hostnames/records I have in one of my zones. And zone transfers/AXFR are not allowed.)
In case of > @seriesn said:
A few reasons why I prefer using a third-party DNS hosting provider:
There are other benefits as well like support for reverse proxy, more records, etc.
I haven't found this: the new registrar seems to pick up the info. I usually leave the old DNS running til after the transfer is complete and the new DNS is set up. It hasn't been an issue so far. The old registrar hasn't seemed to turn off the DNS service when the domain is transferred out, at least immediately. A day or so of grace is plenty for this purpose.
For those that ignore TTL, or run broken caching nameservers, you're causing it to die.
My pronouns are like/subscribe.
It's been a number of years since I've used a registrars name servers but it depends on who your using.
Namesilo and porkbun for example back when I checked didn't have an anycast dns and were pretty slow, not to mention prone to downtime.
There should be ZERO downtime on a DNS in my opinion.
Hi guys, I hope that I have understood the question correctly. Here's some info I have from a colleague on the Support Team:
1. Yes you can use DNS entries for domains registered with other registrars (as long as no other customer is using it already at Hetzner).
So if the "provider" (maybe reseller) is also our customer then he might already have a DNS entry for that domain and it would not be possible to create/recreate a new one as long as the initial one has not been deleted. But I am guessing that the domain is registered with a different registrar and there is no DNS entry yet on your end.
2. Starting now, DNS entries are free. We won't invoice you for them. (And we won't invoice existing customers either.)
3. There are still some bumps in the rollout for our new DNS Console and API, so if you have questions, please write directly to our support team via a support ticket. The wait times for these tickets might be a little bit longer than usual. --Katie
We're Katie and Lea and we'll do our best to answer questions you have about Hetzner Online. We and not our employer are responsible for any horrible puns and dated cultural references.
Thanks for the official reply.
Hetzner usually removes inactive accounts after a while, am I right?
Wouldn't this happen if a non customer otherwise uses the DNS service or if a previous customer migrates his paid services away while keeping the DNS entries?
With DNS being a critical service, I just wanted to ask. Big providers like Rackspace have this issue for example.
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When I stopped renting their auction servers, I got an email about 6 months later saying they were going to remove my inactive account - I said I still liked to check prices and I might still purchase later.
That was like 2 years ago and I can still login despite not purchasing a service in that time.
My pronouns are like/subscribe.