Need better nameservers?

We know email; it's what we do. Nothing on the internet, nothing at all, is as dependant on DNS as electronic mail. Forwards and backwards, for "A", "MX", and "SPF" records, DNSBL lookups, PTR records, and more, the (e-)mail doesn't move if DNS isn't working. Good DNS is critical for email - and a lot of other things as well.

But what is "good" DNS? First of all, it's fast. Dot-com and dot-net domains hosted on our servers consistently score "A" or "A+" on the DNS speed tests at DNS Stuff. What's "fast"? Try 120ms to most of North America and 60ms or less to pretty much all of Europe. Consistently and reliably.

Good DNS is also redundant. You need two nameservers; there's just no way around it - it's required. However, the vast majority of "hosts" are lazy, and make their "two" servers the exact same physical machine, or, almost as bad, two servers side-by-side in the same datacenter. Is that redundant? Heck no, it's not even professional. At the moment, Redpin has three primary nameservers - one in the middle of North America, one on the East coast, and one in the heart of Europe.

Happily, good DNS doesn't have to be expensive. Get hosted on our DNS network - one North American and one European server - for just $36 USD per year per domain, with full control over your DNS zone.

Just want an European secondary for your existing nameservers? Get a fast, reliable presence in the EU for just $24 USD per year, per domain.

Maybe your forward DNS is fine, but your "reverse" DNS can't cut it. Normal nameservers are used by the world to find numeric IP addresses (and a lot more) for domain names. Reverse DNS servers are what your server - mailserver, webserver, or whatever else - uses to look up the DNS information it needs. They're middlemen, of sorts, performing the actual lookups, and cacheing the records for better performance. If you're not running your own on your own server, you're at the mercy of your hosting provider - who may well have cut a few corners where this decidedly unglamorous service is concerned. Only got one line in /etc/resolv.conf? Got two lines with sequential IP addresses? Don't panic. We can help.

In addition to our three regular nameservers, we run two dedicated cacheing "reverse" servers - one on the East coast of North America, and one in the UK. If you're using just one server for lookups, and want to avoid the unpleasantness - email delivery failure, strange httpd behaviour, logfile problems - that result from an inability to do DNS queries, peace of mind is at hand.

For the same price as our regular DNS services, we can let you use our resolving nameservers. One server - your choice of location - is $24 USD per year per server IP:

Or get maximum performance - and peace of mind - with both servers, for just $36 USD per year per IP:

For most, DNS is a "black box" technology - they don't know how or why it works, just that it does, at least most of the time. The nuts-and-bolts of internet mail are arcane and difficult to understand, but while DNS isn't rocket science, it frequently makes email look like child's play.

Yes, it's confusing, and frequently stressful. Why should you have to worry about it, though? Why stay up all night, pull half your hair out, and treat antacids as a food group, when - for a lot less than a visit to a therapist - you can pay someone else - that would be us - to worry about it for you? Tired of sacrificing chickens to the DNS gods? We can't take the bloodstains out of the carpet, but we can take the stress out of most things DNS.

So put down the machete, and call or email us today!