All blog posts

How DNSimple Handles Technical Debt

Explores how DNSimple handles tech debt as an investment rather than a burden.

Domain Delegation Improvements

Updates to make your domain delegation easier and more robust.

What is Technical Debt?

Explores what technical debt is and how DNSimple handles it as an investment rather than a burden.

New Password Reset Policy to Enhance Account Security

Protecting DNSimple accounts with new security measures, including mandatory password resets for users without MFA.

What's New at DNSimple — Fall 2024

A roundup of improvements and updates at DNSimple for Fall 2024

Improving DNS Resolution Visibility

We now run a series of verifications before any change is applied to your domain's DNS zone.

Legacy IP Address Discontinuation

DNSimple will no longer support legacy IP addresses starting November 20, 2024.

Expanding Our Second Cache Edge Network

Our journey to expand DNSimple's DNS cache edge network and future plans.

Export Domain Names to a .CSV File

Export your domains as a .CSV file to track registration, expiration, renewal dates, and delegation info.

What's New at DNSimple — Summer 2024

A roundup of improvements and updates at DNSimple for summer 2024

Domain Control Plane Improvements

We updated DNSimple's Domain Control Plane for an improved experience.

DNSimple Now Supports Null MX Records

Introducing support for No Service MX or "null" MX records.

What Was That asdf Email?

An explanation for the test email we inadvertently sent.

Deprecating Alternate TXT Records for ALIAS

Today we are announcing a change that will impact ALIAS records created or modified in DNSimple in the future.

Manage Domain Transfer Locking and Contacts in Terraform

Using DNSimple's Terraform Provider to manage transfer locking and contact changes.

What's New at DNSimple — Spring 2024

A round-up of additions and improvements at DNSimple

How to Restore Domains Registered at DNSimple

Use our domain restore function to restore domains in the redemption period.

Microsoft Azure as A DNSimple Integrated DNS Provider

Manage your Azure DNS in DNSimple with Azure as an Integrated DNS Provider.

DNS Analytics with DNSimple's New API Endpoint

Pull DNS query volume data for your DNSimple domains using our new DNS analytics API endpoint.

Use CAA Records to Prevent Issuing Unapproved S/MIME Certificates

DNSimple now supports using CAA records to validate email addresses and control issuance of S/MIME certificates.

Domain Name Management UX Improvements

UX improvements to your DNSimple account for simple, efficient domain management.

Introducing the DNSimple Domain Control Plane

Introducing the DNSimple Domain Control Plane, a single pane of glass for managing your domains.

Improved API Security with Scoped Access Tokens

How to manage your API Access Tokens in DNSimple and set restrictions to secure your company's digital assets.

Improved Pricing and Customizable DNS Hosting

DNSimple is updating our prices to make services less expensive for the majority of our customers.

What's New at DNSimple - September 2023

Google Domains Transfer Extension, GoDaddy Integrated Domain Provider, and CoreDNS Integrated DNS Provider.

Easily Transfer from Google Domains to DNSimple

Our Google domain transfer Chrome extension helps you move domains from Google into DNSimple.

Manage Your GoDaddy Domains in DNSimple

See your GoDaddy domains with contact information, name server delegations, and renewal details, all in DNSimple.

DNSimple's CoreDNS Plugin

DNSimple's CoreDNS Integrated DNS provider makes it easy to manage CoreDNS zones from your DNSimple account.

What's New at DNSimple — Summer 2023

Free WHOIS privacy with auto renew, integrated DNS providers, Terraform updates, improved record editor, and executing policy as code.

Manage Your AWS Route 53 DNS from DNSimple

Manage your AWS Route 53 authoritative DNS zones from DNSimple's web interface with our new Integrated DNS Provider.

Announcing Free WHOIS Privacy & Auto Renewal

WHOIS domain privacy protection and auto renewal are now available free across all plans.

Register and Manage Domains with Terraform

Register and manage your domains with Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.

DNSimple, Terraform & Sentinel — A Guide to Policy as Code

Policy as Code benefits, integration steps, and best practices for compliance with DNSimple, Terraform & Sentinel.

What's New at DNSimple

Okta SSO, new name server sets, 500+ TLDs, and improved domain management APIs & redundancy.

DNSimple's New, Improved DNS Record Editor

Manage DNS records more easily with UI improvements, better validation, and improved error handling.

Improving DNSimple's Domain Management APIs

Retrieve the status of your registrations and renewals from a dedicated API endpoint.

Introducing Okta Single Sign-On

Managing your DNSimple team members is even easier with Okta Single Sign-On.

Diversifying DNS for a More Resilient DNSimple

Diversifying our DNS edge to bring even more resilience to our anycast DNS.

Register & Manage Your Domains With DNSimple

Why you should register and manage your domains with DNSimple.

Introducing Name Server Sets

Name server sets simplify delegation changes by making it easy to apply groups of name servers to your domains.

Now Supporting ECC for Let's Encrypt Certificates

Let's Encrypt certificates will be signed using Elliptic Curve Cryptography Private Keys for improved security and performance.

Protection and Security for Your Domains

How to ensure you have the best security for your domains

Reliable Uptime and Security for Your Domains

How to make sure your domains are always up and secure.

Introducing Notes for DNS Records

New Record Notes allow you to record why you made DNS zone changes.

Elliptic Curve Cryptography Support for Certificates

Announcing Elliptic Curve Cryptography support for certificates.

Improving Validation Errors in API Clients

Announcing several improvements related to dealing with validation errors in our API clients.

Faster DNS for Faster Site Resolution

How to ensure your site is resolving as quickly as possible

Improving Delegation Changes in Secondary DNS and DNSSEC

We've recently improved delegation handling for both secondary DNS and DNSSEC.

Now Supporting IPv6 Endpoints for Primary and Secondary DNS Hosting

Provision IPv6 endpoints for your Primary/Secondary fault tolerant DNS operations.

Webhook Suppression Management

Monitor and control your webhooks' health with the new clear suppression feature.

Get Stronger Account Protection with Web Authentication (WebAuthn) Support

Protect your DNS assets and get stronger MFA with DNSimple's support for the Web Authentication API.

Simplify DNSimple Access with Google Single Sign-On and Social Login

Managing your DNSimple team members is even easier with our new Google Identity Provider integration.

Announcing DNSimple integration with Hashicorp Consul

The DNSimple Network Infrastructure Automation (NIA) Consul integration automates DNS record provisioning in response to changes in the service mesh.

Hosting Handshake domains with DNSimple

Introduction to the Handshake (HNS) project, a decentralized blockchain-based alternate DNS chain, and how you can use DNSimple to host HNS domains.

Expanding Data Centers for Fast, Authoritative DNS

Announcing support for two new European data centers in Frankfurt and Paris.

Introducing the DNSimple Netlify Connector

Connect your domains to Netlify simply and reliably. Our Netlify Connector automatically takes care of DNS setup and Netlify configuration for your Jamstack applications.

How We Simplified Your Domain Management in 2021

Highlights of our favorite new features and enhancements DNSimple released in 2021

Introducing the new Rust REST API Client Library

How we chose and built our newest REST API in Rust.

Introducing Domain Access Control

Use DNSimple's Domain Access Control to limit what each member can access on a per-domain or per-zone basis.

Introducing DNSimple's Terraform Provider

Use DNSimple's Terraform provider to efficiently manage your DNS.

Announcing DNSSEC General Availability

DNSimple is moving our DNSSEC out of beta and into general availability.

Let's Encrypt R3 Intermediate Certificate Expiration (30 September 2021)

Updates regarding the upcoming Let's Encrypt R3 intermediate certificate expiration and how to prepare for the change.

Announcing KEY-data support for DNSSEC

DNSimple now supports the KEY-data interface for notifying registries when zones are signed for DNSSEC.

Introducing Our Developer Advocate & Two New Open-Source API Libraries

Introducing Enrique Comba Riepenhausen as our Developer Advocate, along with two new open-source API libraries - PHP and Python.

.AU Registry Requirements and Renewals

Enforcement of .AU registry requirements, their effect on auto-renewals, and how we're addressing it.

Finding and Addressing Causes of Recent DNS Incidents

Explaining what caused the recent DNS incidents at DNSimple and how we've addressed those issues.

How to Avoid DNS Downtime

Increase performance, mitigate risk, and reduce DNS downtime with these steps.

Introducing the Heroku Connector

Our new Heroku Connector perfectly configures your domain's connection to Heroku.

DNSimple Now Supports Secondary DNS Hosting

Configure DNSimple as your secondary DNS provider to improve your domain's availability and redundancy with AXFR zone transfers.

API v2: Introducing Domain Price Endpoints

Announcing API v2 methods for retrieving domain prices.

How We Support Our Customers at DNSimple

Quality customer support is a cornerstone of DNSimple. This post discusses how we do it, what tools we use, and the challenges we've faced over the last few years.

Post Incident Report for Partial DNS Outage on March 2, 2021

On March 2nd, 2021, multiple regions of the DNSimple authoritative DNS network failed to respond properly to a portion of queries received. This post explains how we addressed this incident.

How we're using GitHub Actions to transform our error triaging workflow

We've started automating our triage process with GitHub Actions, resulting in great improvements.

How we modernized the legacy Javascript in our Rails app

We iteratively modernized our legacy Javascript improving the quality, stability, and developer-happiness of our code.

Post Incident Report for Partial DNS Outage on November 1st, 2020

On Sunday, November 1st, 2020, we experienced a partial DNS outage that caused some of our name servers to fail to respond to DNS queries in a timely fashion. This post explains the cause of the incident and how we have addressed it.

Post Incident Report for Partial DNS Outage on October 10th, 2020

On Saturday, October 10th, 2020, we experienced a partial DNS outage impacting four of our six datacenters. This post explains what the cause was and how we have addressed it.

Introducing the new Java API Client Library

Our new Java API Client Library is now in beta - available on GitHub and as a Maven artifact.

What Are Vanity Name Servers?

What a vanity name server is and why you should use one.

SSL Certificates Validity Decreasing to One Year

Beginning August 14, 2020, all new Sectigo certificated will be issued with a maximum validity of one year.

Celebrate 10 Years with a Free DNSimple T-Shirt

Get a free limited-edition t-shirt featuring the characters of howdns.works and howhttps.works with any new yearly subscription to DNSimple.

Incident Report: DNS Outage (July 17th, 2020)

On Friday, July 17th, we had a partial DNS outage that impacted several of our regions.

Introducing the C# API Client Library for .NET

Developers interested in integrating the DNSimple application into their .NET systems now have an official DNSimple C# client.

How to Automate SSL Certificate Installation using Chef and the DNSimple Cookbook

Stephen shows an example of how to configure a simple web server secured with SSL.

EDNS Client Subnet (ECS) support for ALIAS records

Announcing EDNS Client Subnet (ECS) support for improved latency.

API v2: Introducing New Endpoints for Transfer API

Announcing API v2 methods for retrieving and canceling domain transfers.

Sectigo Root Certificate Expiration Issue

The complete review of the Sectigo Root certificate expiration issue, including incident timeline, DNSimple response and DNSimple future actions.

Supporting Let's Encrypt & Virtual Conferences

Making the Internet better by supporting Let's Encrypt & sponsoring virtual conferences

Go API client 0.6x series, DNSControl, Terraform, and more

Go API client 0.6x series and updates on several existing integrations.

Advancing Privacy on the Web with Let's Encrypt™

Launching our 10th anniversary campaign to help Let's Encrypt

Incident Report: Amsterdam Data Center DNS Failure (April 14, 2020)

On April 14th, 2020 we experienced an ALIAS record resolution outage in our Amsterdam data center.

We Could All Use Some Confetti Right Now

DNSimple is ten years old this year and that's something to celebrate.

Issuing New Certificates to Address Let's Encrypt CAA Rechecking Bug

DNSimple will request new Let's Encrypt certificates for all certificates issued after January 1, 2020 that are impacted by the announced CAA rechecking bug.

How To Auto-Import DNS

Auto-importing DNS using DNSimple.

Announcing HTTPS Support for the DNSimple Redirector

Configure HTTPS redirects with our easy-to-use DNSimple Redirector and a certificate from your DNSimple account.

Which TLD is Right for Me?

Things to consider when selecting a top level domain.

How empathy is part of our differentiation strategy

Everything is part of your product. What we choose not to do is as important as what we do.

Is it DNSimple, eh?

Now and then we all need to flex our developer's muscles and build something fun and useful. Learn how to never miss if a website uses your favorite domain automation provider.

GDPR and WHOIS Privacy

With GDPR is WHOIS Privacy still necessary? Read on for our opinion.

Sponsoring Team Voltage for the Houston FIRST Championships

Our local high school robotics team is heading to Houston for the FIRST Championships, and we're going along for the ride.

Announcing Two-Factor Enforcement for Accounts

We've released two-factor authentication enforcement for accounts to make using DNSimple even more secure for your domains.

Script what you don't automate (so you can automate it later)

How we use continuous improvement to minimize maintenance and maximize repeatability.

Rockin' With Dokken

How and why we converted our Chef Cookbook testing to the kitchen-dokken plugin.

Using Elixir in DNSimple's API - A Toolkit Roundup

A round-up of DNSimple Elixir tools and posts.

Announcing CDS/CDNSKEY Support

DNSimple now automatically generates CDS & CDNSKEY records for every DNSSEC signed zone.

Is DNSimple the Right Choice for My Business Domain?

Exploring our business offerings

Controlling DNSimple with DNSControl

A dive in to how to use command line tooling to manage records alone or in teams.

Two years of squash merge

A retrospective of the last two years where we adopted --squash as our default merge strategy for git branches.

Let's Encrypt Wildcard Certificates Are Here

Starting today you can leverage DNSimple certificate automation to issue Let's Encrypt wildcard certificates.

Wishing You a Happy & Healthy 2019!

Thank you for an awesome 2018. All of us here at DNSimple look forward to bringing you even more in 2019.

Get away from the computer

On how taking time off and not touching a computer for weeks can help you be more productive and deal better with stressful projects.

Analyze Your Domains in Google Sheets

A showcase of how to use DNSimple's powerful API to enable everyone in your organization to answer the most complex questions around your domains.

Why Your Financial Institution Should Use a .BANK

If you're a financial instituation, then you'll love the mix of branding, exclusivity, and security offered by a .BANK domain.

Using GenStage with low volume data source

In our new Elixir project we needed to orchestrate various sequential processing steps. But does GenStage work for low-volume processing too?

.SE and .AI domain registrations now available

You can now use DNSimple to register and manage .SE and .AI domains. Read on for details.

Using Structs to Facilitate Dependency Injection with Go

Go doesn't provide tools or standard patterns for Dependency Injection, but we can use a simple trick to solve the problem.

Speed up Dialyzer in CI - PLT caching done right

Erlang's dialyzer is a great tool, but creating the PLTs takes a long time, so it is important to know what to cache and how.

Our Journey to Chef's Inspec

Modernizing your integration testing with Inspec and Test Kitchen is a solid investment in future maintainability, we'll show you how we did it at DNSimple.

API v2: Zone Distribution Check

Announcing API v2 methods for checking the distribution of DNS zones.

.APP and .PAGE domain registrations now available

Good news! You can now use DNSimple to register and manage .APP and .PAGE domains. Read on for details.

The four slides for an entire presentation

The minimum amount of slides configuration for a complete presentation.

Why Financial Institutions Migrate their .BANK Domains to DNSimple

Information about the DNSimple .BANK domain hosting service and why financial institutions uses DNSimple for DNS hosting.

How user feedback helped us redesign our account page

We listened to your feedback and redesigned the account page to better serve your needs.

Expanding into Australia

We've expanded into the Australia region with our new Sydney datacenter.

Everything about DNS, you never dared to ask. A Primer.

Get your pen and post-its ready. We've been to an open space conference lately and came back with this fun format to share knowledge.

Quick tips for practical Rubocop workflow

How to use Rubocop day by day for (code) sanity

Presenting code in Keynote

Showing code in presentation comes with a lot of challenges, and doing it right requires effort and experience. Here we collect our best practices by animating code to best showcase it.

Simple, Async, Map/Reduce queue for Ruby

How I implemented parallel requests in near real-time with a simple Ruby queue.

GDPR at DNSimple

The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, goes into effect this week. Find out what we're changing to help customers comply with the new regulations.

How HTTPS works

😽 We made a comic to tail you how HTTPS works. We have a good feline about this 😸

Put down that ENV; what you should know about ENV configuration

An exploration of the usage and limitations of ENV (environment variables) in configurations.

Recap: Ruby Unconference Hamburg 2018

A recap of the Ruby Unconf in Hamburg which was debuting the first weekend in May.

API v1 Shutdown: Last notice for May 10 and May 31

On May 10 we will shutdown the API v1 for 4 hours. On May 31, 2018 we will permanently shut down the API v1.

Welcome Corey Haines

Corey Haines joins the DNSimple team from Chicago.

Welcome Andrew Rabbitt

We have a new team member! Welcome Andrew Rabbitt to the DNSimple team.

Why we redesigned our header

A UX journey from copy confusion to a new header

DNSimple API v2 OpenAPI definition in depth

Let's dive deep into the OpenAPI v3 definition of the DNSimple API and see what lies within.

Elapsed time with Ruby, the right way

Elapsed time calculations based on Time.now are wrong. Learn why they are wrong and how to fix them.

A process to evaluating an User Interface

We ran our User Interface through an usability test and this is what we found out.

The Slack morning ritual

I used to ignore all that had happened on Slack while I was offline and consider catching up a waste of time... Until I changed my mind.

API v1 Shutdown Notice

On May 31, 2018 we will permanently shut down the API v1. Any API v1 integrations will no longer work.

Phoenix performance metrics within the browser developer tools

In this post we discuss how to measure basic performance metrics with Elixir Phoenix and display them in the browsers developer tools using the Server-Timing API.

Announcing Let's Encrypt API Public Beta

You can now request, download, install, and renew a Let's Encrypt certificate via the DNSimple API.

Adopting OpenAPI to describe DNSimple API v2

We're adopting OpenAPI as a way to define and document the DNSimple API. Read on to find out how and why.

Communicating progress on GitHub

How we use GitHub issues to keep track and communicate progress on long, big projects that expand over weeks, months or even years.

Sign Git commits

A short and simple step-by-step guide to sign your Git(Hub) commits with GNU GPG.

Perspective switch, the first step towards a good UX

Creating a product from the users perspective is our challenge, because we know what's behind the curtain. Inherited assumptions are our enemy.

Learn these 11 Tricks to get happier customers through amazing customer support

Running a business is about making your customers happy. Happy customers are more loyal and are more likely to recommend your service. Giving them a great support experience is key to making them happy. I've compiled a list of great tips and tricks on how to become a great customer support agent.

Building a distributed eventually consistent key-value store with DNS and Elixir

We build a proof of concept of a distributed, eventually consistent, key-value store in DNS using the DNSimple APIv2 and the Elixir API client.

Check out our Chef & DNSimple Webinar

JJ and Amelia are getting together to talk DNS and Chef

Introducing new speakers

Here is how I help introduce new speakers to the stage and you can too.

From the physical world to the digital world

What did I learn when I worked in a bakery as a salesperson and can apply everyday to my digital job?

Conference recap: fstoco 2017

We've been at Canada's one and only Fullstack Toronto, a *pretty good* conference in one of the most beautiful cities in Northern America. Here is our highlight reel.

What you can do with the DNSimple API

Before you start using the DNSimple API, it helps to understand how it is organized. In this post I will show you where you can find the various API services in our documentation.

Chef Summit 2017 Wrapup

DNSimple attended all three Chef Summits in 2017 for a whirlwind of community interaction

Conference recap: code.talks 2017

We've been to one of the biggest language-agnostic conferences in Europe. Here's our best of.

Why aren't you using the Chef Accumulator Pattern?

How we used a new pattern in Chef to avoid creating vast amounts of attributes in wrapping a resource.

Why we are starting with Vue.js now

We ran a little experiment and we are excited to improve your user experience with Vue.js

Paying Back Technical Debt

Systems grow and evolve over time, accruing technical debt at varying speeds. Here's what we are doing about our technical debt at DNSimple.

Automated green/blue deploys with Hubot

Shipping code is the most crucial moment in building things. That post outlines how we imporved the engineering experience in shipping code tough Hubot.

Bug Tales: An L that matters

L is nothing more than a letter but it can also be the source of bugs.

How to test Go HTTPS Services

An overview about how to write unit, and integration tests for Go HTTPS Services.

Welcome Maria Munuera!

Today I welcome Maria Munuera to the DNSimple team.

Uniregistry TLD price increases

Starting September 1st we'll adjust the domain registration, tranfer, and renewal prices for several TLDs, as a result of registry price increase.

Tales of a Chef Workflow: Keeping a tidy server

How we migrate and cleanup resources in our Chef cookbooks to maintain servers

Slack App Usage Tracking

How we did the simplest thing that could possibly work to track usage in the DNSimple Slack app.

Debugging DNS

In this post we share some tips and tools you can use to troubleshoot DNS issues on your own like a pro.

From code to server: A DNSimple operations workflow

An insight into the workflow we use for our chef code and server infrastructure changes.

Upcoming changes to domain expiration and notifications

We recently made some changes in the way we deal with expiration dates. In this post I'm going to explain the changes we introduced and how they affect you.

Writing composable community Chef cookbooks: learning the new cookbook DSL

This is what we learned when we rewrote our open source PowerDNS cookbook using the latest techniques.

Create the tools that you need

We scratch our own itch by scripting a small thing that let's us know if our freshly created DNS records are ready for us to access.

API v2 Architecture and Hanami

One of the goals of the API v2 was to develop a maintainable solution without sacrificing performance; this is how we use Hanami at DNSimple to achieve that goal.

JSUnconf

My first experience at an Unconf.

Writing open-source Chef cookbooks (part I)

Our experience while rewriting PowerDNS cookbook using custom resources to write composable, easy to extend community cookbooks.

DNSimple at the Pamplona Software Craftsmanship 2017

Javier and Sebastian spoke at the 2017 edition of Pamplona Software Craftsmanship. This is how the conference went for them.

Pushing Performance with Tuning

So you have troubleshooting theory down, but how do you fix what isn't actually broken?

Getting on stage – the definitive guide

The last post about speaking at conferences is about all the little and not so little details about giving a presentation in front of others.

The Silver Searcher, a better UNIX search tool

I've been using grep and find for 11 years as a systems admin, I'm writing this post to change these tools for a new faster, easier to use one: ag.

The first ever DNSimple blogging awards

Giving credit where credit is due...with a twist.

Using shared examples and shared context in infrastructure testing

How to use shared_examples and shared_context in ChefSpec.

Package all the things!

Make your software deployments with Chef a lot simpler by packaging all the things!

Migrating scheduled tasks from Clockwork to Sidekiq Enterprise

In this post I explain our decision to migrate from Clockwork to Sidekiq Enterprise, and how we used our application metrics to determine the success of the project.

The Power of the Pull Request

This is the story of how I used pull requests, a powerful tool for contribution, to submit a DNSimple adapter to the dnscontrol project.

When and how to use animations in slides

Animations when used correctly can dramatically improve your talk but when misused they make watching your slides cumbersome.

Bug Tales: Trust nothing but the real thing

A story of a bug, what we did to fix it and how we prevent it from happening again.

DNCrew ChefConf 2017 Wrapup

We here at DNSimple love the chef community and it's heartwarming to be reminded how much they love us back.

Revamping our referral program

A referral program is a powerful way to get new customers. We recently breathed new life into our referral program.

Writing Ruby gems with Rust and Helix

Learn how to write faster Ruby gems with Rust and Helix.

Using time tracking to improve your remote working habits

What we learned, individually, from our collective time tracking experiment.

Our commitment to Domain Management Automation

At DNSimple we truly believe in automation, here's some of our future plans.

8 domain management tips for everyone

Simple tips and good practices to make sure that you have a healthy domain management system.

Tales of a Chef Workflow: Data Bags

Data bags are a useful, but sometimes dangerous feature of Chef.

New Chef Cookbook Release

We've re-written our Chef Cookbook for Chef 12 and 13 compatibility and to use our domain management API v2.

CentralNic is sunsetting several second-level .COM TLDS

CentralNic has discontinued a number of second-level TLDs they offer, including .AR.COM, .GB.COM, .HU.COM, .KR.COM, .QC.COM, .NO.COM, .SE.COM, .UY.COM.

Finding your next TLD

We revamped our top-level domain pages to make it easier to find the information that you are looking for.

An Overview of DNSimple's Custom Records

We provide specific custom records such as URL, ALIAS, and URL to simplify some of the DNS pain points.

Registering a domain from Elixir

A step by step guide to successfully register a domain name using the Elixir language.

Tales of a Chef Workflow: Attribute Layering

Lessons learned about attributes from years of working with Chef.

Step Two: Electric Bogatoo

By month two things calmed down in dramatic fashion.

Tales of a Chef Workflow: Cookbook Organization and Maintenance

Lessons we've learned by organizing our cookbooks including proper naming and maintenance tasks.

Our time tracking experiment

How collectively tracking our time spent working gave us a bird's eye view on our operations.

Why Is WHOIS Important?

Everyone has it, but not everyone thinks about their WHOIS info. Read on to learn about the importance of WHOIS.

How to write a short comic

A quick walkthrough on how to write your very own comic.

Terraform 0.9 and DNSimple API v2

Terraform 0.9 has been released, and it contains important updates to the DNSimple Provider.

Create beautiful slide decks

A handy guide to create stunning slides empowering a great presentation to a (not only) technical audience.

Checking domain availability in Elixir with the DNSimple API

How to check if a domain name is available to be registered using Elixir and the DNSimple API.

The Value of Exit Surveys

Learning our weaknesses and our strengths, in the eyes of our customers, from our exit survey.

Why we ended up not using Rails for our new JSON API

After a few years of running our previous API in production, it no longer fit our domain management automation vision. This is the story of how we evolved the API to support our product vision.

Working in coffeeshops

Working remote means working from anywhere, we collected 5 tips to work from coffeeshops without getting kicked out or dying overdose of caffeine.

Using the Go language to guide development design decisions

In this talk transcript you'll discover why Go was so important to us and why it was used to guide the development design decisions.

Conferences: the ultimate team building event?

Attending a conference as a team turn out to be game changer.

DNSSEC Beta Launch

Beta support for DNSSEC at DNSimple is here! Read on to see how to enable DNSSEC on your domains.

Step One of Twelve

Following a year of adjustment with even more adjustment.

The mystery of Stunnel, ulimits, and maximum open clients

We use Stunnel to provide secure encryption to our redis instances. Recently we embarked on a voyage deep down the rabbit hole in order to fix an elusive error. This is the story of how fixed it.

Aligning Projects with Business Goals

Even with a small team it's easy to lose sight of the strategic goals of your business. Read on to how we are attempting to align project development with business goals at DNSimple.

Manage your domains like a ninja with these few keyboard shortcuts

Find out how you can quickly access any resource with a few key presses.

Inspiration from the offline world

What inspires us to do customer support the good old fashioned way.

Getting started with the DNSimple API in Elixir

A step by step guide to successfully make your first DNSimple API call from Elixir.

The Not-Your-Job Jobs of DNSimple

Making Standard Operating Procedures Great Again.

Welcome Ole Michaelis

Ole joins DNSimple helping with all things software.

Limiting the risks of SSL certificate mis-issuance

Learn about the most common techniques to protect against certificate mis-issuance and limit the impact of forged SSL certificates.

Learning to Fail Fast at DNSimple

We are reminded to fail fast and avoid the sunk cost fallacy in operations.

Tales of a Chef Workflow: Packaging

How to escape the anti-pattern of building packages from source in Chef Cookbooks.

Our Lanzarote winter meetup recap

This post is a recap of the DNSimple meetup held on the island of Lanzarote from the 7th to the 14th of December, 2016.

Changes to browser HTTPS warnings in Firefox and Chrome

Firefox and Chrome are now strengthening their warnings, flagging HTTP sites with forms as insecure. Here's how you can avoid the issue.

Ruby Coercion Protocols Part 2

What's the difference between `#to_i` and `#to_int`? How to sum two value objects? Let's learn Ruby Coercion Protocols in depth.

How we organized our presence at CodeMash 2017

My reflections on the preparation for CodeMash and how the conference unfolded for the DNSimple team.

The journey of simplifying our CSS

The steps that we are taking to simplify and ship faster projects with less CSS.

API Client Testing with HTTP Fixtures

As part of the development of the DNSimple API v2 we introduced HTTP fixtures as a way of testing behavior across multiple clients. Here is how it works.

Taking a vacation from writing code to write more code

The code-cation or how I learned to stop worrying and learn Golang.

Introducing CAA records

Let Certificate Authorities know if they are allowed to issue certificates for your domain with this new record type.

Secondhand Knowledge

Ask questions, listen to the answers, and study the trade-offs.

Crafting a Peer Review Process for a Distributed Team

Knowing how one is performing on a distributed team is hard. Here's how we've tried to address it.

Introducing activity tracking

The new activity tracking feature will allow you to browse the history of all the things that happened in your DNSimple account.

The idiomatic challenges of working for an English spoken, American company

Tales of a Spaniard evolving in an English environment

DNSimple API v2 is now Generally Available

Today we are making a big step towards providing services for domain management automation with the general availability of the latest generation of our domain management API.

How we organize our team meeting

Loin des yeux loin du coeur, what team retreats mean for our distributed team.

Ruby Coercion Protocols Part 1

Ruby has powerful protocols to coerce a type into another one. We'll learn how to take advantage of this mechanism to make our code open for extension.

Snapping a Polaroid Picture of Our Marketing Efforts

How do you get your whole team to achieve a shared vision for marketing? This is the story about how we ran through some exercises using the book Traction as the basis.

Redundancies in your domain name services

Talking about the redundancies in DNS and what you can do to help uptime of your services

Easier domain contact verification

We have implemented a new feature that alerts you when your domain is pending contact verification

Building the DNSimple Slack app

A few months ago we released the DNSimple Slack app. This is how we built it and the challenges we faced.

Announcing DNStudy

A place where we share our favorite learning resources.

Announcing Let's Encrypt Public Beta

The Let's Encrypt integration allows DNSimple customers to request a free certificate issued by the Let's Encrypt certification authority for any domain managed with DNSimple.

Understanding ICANN Accreditation

We went through the process of accreditation with ICANN some time ago. Here's what it does and why we did it.

Improve your Dev and Ops skills with Troubleshooting Theory

How to use basic troubleshooting theory to debug your code, your infrastructure, or your malfunctioning computer or router at home.

The Bullet Journal: when reliability and practicality outweigh technology

Sometimes, even the thousand year old legacy tool is still the best tool.

Purposes & Properties of Value Objects

What is and what makes a good Value Object? Learn how to implement their fundamental purposes and properties.

Lessons learned from growing a small business

Throughout the years I've watched as DNSimple has grown to the team we are now, and along the way I've observed what works and what doesn't. In this post I'll share 6 lessons I've learned while the company has grown.

The Three R's of Domain Names

Every domain name registration involves at least three entities: a registrant, a registrar, and a registry. We'll look at them each in this post.

The cavernous caveats of a digital nomad on the vanlife

Once you nail the basics, you're golden.

Overcoming Primitive Obsession

Ruby primitives are so powerful that we use them everywhere in our code, even when we shouldn't. Learn how to overcome this kind of maintenance problems.

The Villains of Remote Work

Remote work and small teams come with their own challenges, these are some of mine.

Alerting at DNSimple

Effective monitoring and alerting can be difficult; here is how we handle it at DNSimple.

Learn the DNSimple API by Bulding a CLI in Golang

Ready to automate your domain management? This post will walk you through connecting to the DNSimple API and performing basic domain operations with the official DNSimple Go API Client.

On remote working and finding a co-working space

Working remotely can mean spending a lot of time alone, a co-working space can help you alleviate feelings of loneliness and brings additional benefits.

The story of How DNS works

Everything you wanted to know about How DNS works (the comic) and never dared to ask.

Nil is a value

Lessons learned from a recent bug in our code, caused by nil not being handled as proper value.

Announcing the Node.js API client

JavaScript joins Elixir, Go, and Ruby as the fourth language to have an official client for the version 2 of the DNSimple API.

Announcing Elixir API client

Elixir joins Go and Ruby as the third language to have an official client for the version 2 of the DNSimple API.

ChefConf 2016 Wrapup

Discussing the experience of the DNSimple team at ChefConf 2016.

Redirects with HTTPS

Understanding how to properly redirects with HTTP and HTTPS sites.

Our open source Chef cookbooks

We develop and maintain a few open source Chef cookbooks, this post talks about them.

How I use the DNSimple Chef Cookbook

Amelia shows off some examples of the newly updated DNSimple cookbook.

The journey of DNSimple's first apprentice

One man armed with little experience and a bandolier of questions takes on DNS. And ghosts.

API v2: announcing filtering and sorting

With API v2 in beta, we're releasing new features requested by our developers community. Today we announce filtering and sorting.

Large redesigns and big rebrandings

We are releasing big visible updates to our UI and we launched a new logotype to match what's coming up this year.

DNSimple Slack app

A quick and fun new way to register domains and to update your account right from your team's Slack channel.

Announcing DNSimple Ruby Gem v3

After the beta release of the version 2 of our API we have updated the official Ruby client to support the latest version.

DNSimple at RubyDay 2015

A short coverage of the RubyDay 2015 conference in Italy.

DNSimple April 2016 Team Meetup Recap

In April 2016, the DNSimple team got together in Pomas, France for our team meetup. Here's what happened.

DNSimple at RubyConf.PH 2016

A short coverage of the RubyConf Philippines 2016 conference in Manila.

Auto-publishing a static site to CloudFront using Travis

Instructions to deploy a static-generated site (Jekyll, Nanoc, ...) to Amazon CloudFront or S3 using Travis.

Announcing DNSound

Every wondered what your domains sound like?

Publish DNSimple events to a Slack channel

Strillone is service that listens to incoming webhooks from DNSimple, and publishes them to a Slack channel or other chat service.

Announcing DNSimple webhooks

With the new DNSimple webhooks, you can now track events happening inside your accounts, improve your integrations, and make managing your domains even easier.

Incident Report - Partial DNS outage in Tokyo

Early Sunday morning we experienced a partial DNS outage due to routing issues in our Tokyo data center. Here's what happened and what we're doing about it.

Welcome Laetitia Eden

Laetitia joined the DNSimple team officially in January! Laetitia is in France and is working on customer onboarding and experience.

Announcing DNSimple API v2 Beta

The new version of the DNSimple API (v2) is now available in Public Beta.

New phishing emails sent to domain registrants

A new phishing attack targeting eNom has been identified. Here's what to watch out for.

Welcome Luca Guidi

Luca joins the DNSimple team from Rome, he has been working on the API and he created the Hanami Ruby framework.

Workflows in the wild – how we reinvented our onboarding emails using Drip workflows

Move over Walkman, there's a new cool kid in town.

A new dashboard

Find, and easily manage all your domains across your accounts from one simple place.

Incident Report - Partial DNS outage in San Jose and Tokyo

Three days ago we experienced a partial DNS outage due to SERVFAIL errors. Here's what happened and what we're doing about it.

Life lessons from Scott Hanselman to Millennials

Questions from a 25 year old answered by one of techs' most interesting men.

Using multiple accounts to segment the business

One possible use of the DNSimple multiple account feature is to segment your domains into different accounts depending on the level of service.

DS Records for DNSSEC

Today we take our first step towards supporting DNSSEC by enabling DS record management for registerd domains.

Phishing emails sent to domain registrants

As an advisory to customers, please watch out for phishing attempts claiming suspension of your domains. Here's what to do if you see something phishy.

How we hired our first Apprentice

Learn how we hired our first ever Apprentice, Mak.

OMG Thursday (aka Documentation Day)

The results of the first DNSimple documentation day, codename OMG Thursday.

Multi-year SSL certificates are here!

It's now possible to purchase or renew SSL certificates for more than one year.

Gregg Pollack on building Code School

Q & A with one of Rails original protagonists

WTF Thursday (aka Bug Squashing Day)

The results of the first DNSimple bug squashing day, codename WTF Thurdsay.

Corey Grusden – Building a consultancy by measuring twice and cutting once

Investing the time and money iteratively and treating the business side as a piece of software.

DNSimple Team Retreat in Avignon, August 2015

Summary of the 5th DNSimple team retreat held in Avignon at the end of August, 2015.

Rich Thornett on bootstrapping Dribbble

In this Q&A, Rich describes the early days and how a side project rose to become the Dribbble we know today.

Jeff Casimir – Giving education a run for its money with Turing School of Software & Design

Here's how a tuiton-based 7 month program that guarantees a $65k salary upon graduation is reshaping the way people learn how to code.

Corey Haines on growing and harvesting an audience

The man has done to so many cool things that all could not be included in this post.

Anthony's talk at So Coded 2015

Mr Eden was in Hamburg earlier this Summer to drop knowledge at SoCoded 2015.

Perfecting the freelance work-life balance à la française – Interview with Thibaut Barrere of WiseCash

Here's the story of a fine fella from France who elevated the freelancer lifestyle by opting out of the rat race and into the good life.

Announcing SSL Installation Instructions for Azure

We've just launched a new set of instructions for installing SSL certificates on Microsoft Azure.

Heliom – Leaving client services behind to focus on building great products

When killing the cash cow allows another one to spur.

Welcome Mak Arnautovic

Mak joins the DNSimple team as our first DevOps Apprentice

Welcome Antoine Meunier

Antoine joins the DNSimple team from Montreal to tackle customer acquisition.

New authenticator-compatible two-factor authentication

Today we are very happy to announce a complete overhaul of our 2-step verification system based on the TOTP specifications.

DNS Hosting per domain

With this new feature you can selectively enable/disable DNS hosting for a specific domain.

Multiple Accounts, Teams, New Plans and New Features

Today we are launching new features, including multiple account support and teams, as well as new plans with new features. We've been working on this for a while now, and we're excited to finally put in your hands. Read on for details.

Incident Report - European Outage and Application Errors

On Thursday, May 20th, our Amsterdam data center had a period of downtime due to a Denial of Service attack. Additionally, during the attack we were unable to execute DNS queries outbound from our application servers in Virginia. Here is what we know so far and what we're doing about it.

Announcing Zone Vision, A New Tool for Inspecting DNS Zones

Announcing our new web service for inspecting DNS zones and finding potential issues. Read on to see what Zone Vision can do for you.

Incident Report - San Jose Region and Redirector Service Outage

Last Friday our San Jose region and Redirector service suffered an outage along with our Europe region being under a Denial of Service attack. Here is what happened and what we're doing about it.

Incident Report - Redirector and Zone Server Outage

Today our redirector suffered an outage and zone changes were delayed. Here's what happened and what we're doing about it.

Common DNS records and their uses

We've looked at resource records in general. Today let's investigate the various types of DNS records.

The new face of the certificate page

We've just redesigned the domain certificate page to make it easier to see a certificate order, download and install an SSL certificate.

The DNSimple Team on Remote Working

Read on to Find out about what the DNSimple team love about remote working, what challenges we face, and how each of us deals with those challenges.

Customize your billing email

Now you can decide what email address DNSimple invoices will be sent to.

5 Years of DNSimple

5 years ago, today, the first commit for DNSimple was recorded in git.

Why and How to Use Google's Public DNS

We occasionally recommend people switch to using Google's public DNS resolvers. Here are some of the reasons why and how you can make that change.

Scaling UIs

How we reorganized the footer to make it more useful.

Should you keep your DNS management and domain registration together?

A closer look at the pros and cons of keeping domain registration & DNS management together.

Olympic Hopeful Antoine Meunier and DNSimple Team Up

Late last year I sat down with Antoine Meunier, 2014 canoe-kayak US champion and 2016 olympic hopeful, and over burittos we agreed to a sponsorship deal. Read on to find out more.

DNSimple at TropicalRuby 2015

A short coverage of the TropicalRuby 2015 conference in Recife.

What's in a DNS response?

DNS queries and responses fly across the internet all day, but we don't often take a look at what's inside of them. Today we do.

The benefits of using a managed DNS provider

Running a DNS server might not be too hard, but it's usually best not to go alone when maintaining an entire DNS infrastructure. Here's some of the reasons we think managed DNS is a great idea.

Making secondary DNS configuration simple

We have simplified the setup of Secondary DNS by adding pre-populated providers.

Top DNS Lookup Tools

Problems with DNS configuration come up all the time. Knowing about the tools to resolve them can really get you out of a bind.

How we support our customers at DNSimple

Quality customer support is an important cornerstone of how we do business at DNSimple. In this blog post I'll show you how we do it, what tools we use, and what kinds of challenges we face.

The Top DNS Servers And What They Offer

There are a lot of DNS Servers out there. We're looking at some of the top ones here and comparing their features and why some are chosen

Technical challenges behind the Secondary DNS

An overview of the technical challenges behind the implementation of the Secondary DNS server support.

Announcing Secondary DNS support

After several weeks of hard work we are very happy to announce that DNSimple supports Secondary DNS starting today.

Enhancing SSL Security

We're always improving security at DNSimple. Here is what we did for our SSL setup.

Welcome Sebastian Hermida

Sebastian joined the DNSimple team a few weeks back. Read on to find out a bit about him.

Incident Report - DDoS Attack (December 1st, 2014)

On Monday, December 1st, 2014, we experienced a major volumetric DDoS attack aimed at a customer's domain. Here is our full report.

SSL certificate installation wizard

The new SSL certificate installation wizard will guide you throughout the setup of the certificate on your server.

Supporting GitHub Student Developer Pack and Global Day of Code Retreat

We believe in the power of education and practice, and we believe in putting our money where it can make a difference. Read on to find out more...

Don't Lose Business - Transfer Your Domain Names Without Downtime

Transferring a domain name from one registrar to another is often complicated and mistakes can cause you downtime and result in lost business. Don't let that happen with our new guide.

Your domain management page has been redesigned

The domain manage page is your dashboard for everything about your domain. We're happy to introduce a new page that should make everything easier.

API v0 end of life and API v1 2FA timelines

On October 31st, 2014 the API v0 will be shutted down and two-factor authentication for v1 will be enabled by default.

Incident Report - DDoS Attack (September 19th, 2014)

On Saturday, September 19th, 2014, we experienced a significant DDoS attack aimed at one of our customer's domains. Read on for the full report.

Yes, we SHA-2

All DNSimple certificates are now using the SHA-2 (SHA-256) hashing algorithm.

SHA-2 and DNSimple

We're serious about improving security and you should be too. Here's our plan for issuing SHA-2 signed certificates

How CodeShip.io Continuously Deploys DNS Records

Benjamin Fritsch of CodeShip.io shows how they use the DNSimple API with GitHub to continously deploy their DNS zones as changes are made.

Migrating away from the old Heroku legacy routing layer

Heroku is closing their legacy routing system. For the new routing system you'll need a DNS provider that supports ALIAS records.

Disable Notifications on Expiring Domains

Getting notifications about domains you just want to expire about can be annoying. Now you don't need to see them anymore.

Two Factor Authentication Support for API

API now supports Two Factor Authentication, any API call will now comply with the 2FA settings of your account.

Welcome Joseph Caudle

Joseph joins the DNSimple team from Indianapolis and will bring his development skills to bear on the DNSimple app.

DevOps and Chef at DNSimple

Learn about how DNSimple manages changes to over 50 servers across 5 data centers around the world with a team of 5 developers.

PDF invoices now available

We have been working on our invoicing system a lot lately. Today we are finally releasing one of the most requested features: PDF invoices.

Switching from Authorize.net to Stripe

Switching from one payment provider to another is no small task, but it is possible. In this post I will explain how we did it.

Troy Hunt on Moving to DNSimple

Troy Hunt has captured the essence of why we made DNSimple in a pictorial blog post on why he moved to DNSimple.

Unicast Name Servers to Shut Down

If you use vanity name servers you should read this as you may need to make changes at your domain registrar.

Operating Distributed Systems at DNSimple

We operate DNSimple across 5 data centers, this post covers some of the challenges we face, how we handle them today, and what the future may hold.

Welcome Javier Acero

Javier Acero joined the DNSimple team a few weeks back. Read on to find out a bit about him.

Heartbleed and Getting New Keys and Certificates

Due to the Heartbleed SSL vulnerability, it's a good idea to replace your SSL keys and certificates once you've patched the vulnerability.

DNSimple iOS 3.0 now available

I'm extremely excited to announce a new major version of the DNSimple iPhone application.

Heartbleed Vulnerability Update

How DNSimple is reacting in front of the just discovered SSL Heartbeat vulnerability

Jacobo García joins the DNSimple Team

Jacobo García joins the DNSimple team to work on our infrastructure from European time zones. Read on to find out a bit about Jacobo.

Services vs Templates

Today we are taking one step further in the separation between services and templates by officially removing standard templates in favor of services.

Welcome Aaron to DNSimple!

Aaron Kalin joined the DNSimple team to help with all things infrastructure. Read on to find out a bit about Aaron.

The Next Break Through in DNS Technology

Today we're introducing a new technology that revolutionizes DNS delivery. Read on to find out more about this amazing break-through.

.computer .experts .in .sexy .pink .shoes .catering .coffee .today

We have expanded our DNS hosting so it covers all new gTLDs and private domains.

Incident Report: Amsterdam Data Center DNS Failure

On Thursday, February 20th, 2014, there was an outage in our Amsterdam data center. This post mortem describes the event, why it happened, what we did to recover, and what are doing to prevent similar issues in the future.

Improved support site

We updated our support site, leaving KBSimple in favor of a static site generator.

Incident Report: NTP Attack or Why We Switched to Anycast Faster than Planned

On December 23rd, 2013 we experienced an NTP attack that caused our unicast NS1 server to be taken offline for 24 hours. Triggered by this event we switched almost every one of our customers over to Anycast within a few days.

How We Work as a Remote Team

Inspired by a recent blog post from Travis CI, I'd like to share details about how DNSimple team members work together without offices.

Refreshing invoices

I've been silently working behind the scenes at DNSimple on the design of the app. Today I'd like to introduce the first of many improvements: refreshing the invoices we send.

Let's Talk About Security

Security is all about tradeoffs. The story of how Naoki Hiroshima's Twitter handle was stolen from him should cause us all to stop and take some time to think about security.

Technical reasons behind the ALIAS record

In this article I will try to explain the technical reason behind the ALIAS record and important limitations of the CNAME record you need to know.

Subscription Renewals Invoiced

Starting today we will send an invoice when your subscription is renewed, making it easier to track all of your DNSimple charges via invoices.

Announcing the Versioned API

Today we're marking an important milestone in our API development. We're officially announcing a new versioned API and a new dedicated API base URI.

Out with the old and in with the new

In the spirit of 'out with the old and in with the new', we're launching our redesigned blog and a new status page today.

New Services for the New Year

We've deployed support for two new services today and we've also improved the ALIAS record. Read on for details.

Happy New Year from the DNSimple Team

Happy New Year! As 2013 draws to a close, we would like to express our gratitude for your ongoing support. We've experienced an extraordinary year of growth.

Anycast for Everyone

As of yesterday, December 27th, we've replaced our Unicast servers with Anycast. All DNSimple customers now have access to our Anycast network at no additional charge.

PSA: New Rules for Domain Name Registrants Starting January 2014

Starting on the 1 January, 2014, a change in the rules for email addresses on your domain registrant information may cause your web site and email to be taken offline if you're not careful.

Scheduled maintenance (Sunday, December 1 at 10AM Pacific)

We have scheduled a one hour maintenance window beginning Sunday, December 1st at 10 AM Pacific time (1800 UTC).

Resending an SSL Certificate Approval Email

You can now resend an SSL certificate approval email using the link in your certificate page.

Moving Domains within DNSimple

We often receive requests about moving domains from one DNSimple account to another. The good news is that you can accomplish this easily, without going through the domain transfer process.

Understanding IO Renewal Policies

IO domains do not follow the same renewal procedures as normal TLDs like com, net and org. IO domains must have auto-renewal enabled to be renewed.

Reset domain token from UI and API

Starting right now, you can reset the domain token from the application.

Contribute One-Click Services via a Github Pull Request

Suggesting a one-click service is now very simple. Fork our DNSimple Services project on Github, develop your service integration and issue a pull request.

Scheduled maintenance (Sunday, September 8 at 10PM Pacific)

We have scheduled a one hour maintenance window beginning Sunday, September 8 at 10 PM Pacific time (0500 UTC).

New Resolution Status widget

We silently rolled a completed new version of the Resolution Status indicator with real-time results.

Keyboard Shortcuts

When you use a site on a regular basis it is nice to have keyboard shortcuts to make navigation easy. A week ago we added support to DNSimple for various keyboard shortcuts to make your life easier. Here is a short explanation on how to use them and how we implemented them.

Scheduled maintenance (June 30th)

We're moving our write enabled Postgres cluster to a new data center. As such we've scheduled a one hour maintenance window starting at 8am Pacific time (1500 UTC) on Sunday, June 30. The DNSimple app and API will be unavailable for roughly twenty minutes.

Record deletion confirmation

By popular demand, we added a confirmation dialog when trying to delete a record from the advanced editor.

Incident Report - DNS Outage due to DDoS Attack (June 3rd, 2013)

Several days ago we detected the start of a DNS amplification attack. This attack was nothing special until the morning of June 3rd when it changed in a manner causing an outage for DNSimple name servers.

Incident Report - DNS changes blocked (May 20th, 2013)

On May 20th, beginning at about 11:30am Pacific time (18:30 UTC), we experienced a partial service outage. A component failure blocked our customers from updating their DNS records.

Application maintenance window (May 15)

We have scheduled a one hour maintenance window beginning at 6pm Pacific time on Wednesday, May 15 (Thursday, May 16, 2013 at 0100 UTC). This will be used to update network routers at each of DNSimple's data centers to increase overall availability. We expect the DNSimple application and redirection service to each be unavailable for less than five minutes. Name service will not be affected. We apologies for any inconveniences this may cause our customers.

Announcing Advanced Editor v1 end of life

Today we're officially deprecating our advanced editor v1.

Heroku Service - Specify Your App Name

Today we deployed a change to how the Heroku one-click service works. Heroku recently released their European region, and with that change they deprecated the "proxy" subdomain for Heroku apps. To make DNSimple's one-click service compatible with this change, we now require your Heroku app name, as it appears in your herokuapp.com subdomain. When you add Heroku just enter your app name part of the herokuapp.com domain and you should have an ALIAS for your apex domain and a CNAME for "www". You can always add or change these later.

Application maintenance window (April 21st)

Sporadic ALIAS record resolution failure

Post mortem of the ALIAS record resolution failure on April 6th.

Advancing DNS Into the 21st Century

Modern web applications benefit from fast DNS responses. DNS response times may still add anywhere from 10s to 100s of milliseconds to your applications overall latency. DNS providers are constantly working to reduce lookup times using technology such as caching and the use of BGP protocols. Even web browser makers like Google have joined in with fast public resolvers and even improvements in web browsers. You may have already heard of this term: pre-fetching. Well we've gone one step further…

NS3 IP Address is Changing

We will be moving NS3 from its current IP address to a new IP address.

A Go Redirection Service

An overview of how we switched the implementation of our redirector from Ruby to Go.

Partial DNS outage

On Friday, March 8th we had a partial DNS outage. Available and well performing DNS is a critical utility for the businesses our customers are running.

Improving Visibility With System Records

Starting today all of those records which used to only be visible by querying our DNS servers will now be visible through the DNSimple site as System Records.

Simplify Your Accounting with Yearly Billing

By popular demand, you can now switch to yearly billing for your DNSimple subscription and benefit from 1 month of service for free.

2012 in Review

As we close out 2012, I'd like to take a moment to reflect a bit on the year that is about to end.

Extended DNS Hosting to All IDN Domains

We're now supporting DNS hosting for all IDN TLDs.

Planned System Maintanence, January 7th, 2013

We will be disabling the DNSimple web application and API starting at 6:30 AM UTC January 7th, 2013 for approximately 1 hour for a planned system upgrade. We will be posting updates on Twitter during this period if the maintenance window needs to be extended.

Improved Renewal Notifications

Today we are happy to announce a brand new email notification system that makes it even easier to see what domains and certificates are nearing expiring, all in a single glance.

New Country TLDs Added

I'm happy to announce that we've added several new country-code TLDs for registration and transfer at DNSimple.

Domain Pagination

Today we shipped an update to our domain list page that adds domain pagination and improves the existing searching and filtering capabilities.

ALIAS records now respect the TTL

All ALIAS records will now respect their TTL value set at DNSimple.

New API documentation and Other Updates

Please welcome our new DNSimple API documentation.

DNSimple acquires RoboDomain, Inc.

We are pleased to announce that RoboDomain Inc. is now a part of DNSimple!

Protect Your DNSimple Account with Two-Factor Authentication from Authy

Today we've launched two-factor authentication support in DNSimple to give you an extra level of protection against unwanted access to your account.

Post-mortem for DNS outage on July 23rd

From approximately 09:35 UTC until 10:00 UTC, July 23rd 2012, DNSimple experienced an outage across four name servers. This outage appears to be the result of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Due to the attack we were unable to respond to DNS requests in a timely fashion. Our job processing queue simultaneously stopped due to a failed deployment. The backup in the job queues resulted in new subscriptions timing out and impacted customers updating DNS records.

New DNSimple Knowledge Base

DNSimple has a new Knowledge Base, available today. The knowledge base has questions and answers about DNS, domains, SSL certificates and more. We've tried to do our best to provide useful answers that can help beyond DNSimple.

Ignite Talk from 2011: Everything You Need to Know About DNS in Five Minutes

Last year I gave a talk at Ignite Boulder titled: "DNS in 5 Minutes". I've been remiss in not sharing this, so here you go.

DNSimple iPhone App v2 is Now Available

Thanks to the hard work of Florin T. Patrascu, DNSimple now has a brand new version for its iPhone app, and it's awesome. With version 2.0 you can now register and transfer domains right in the app. It also possible to manage all of your various record types now as well and has a bunch of performance enhancements too.

Introducing the POOL Record - A new virtual record providing a pool of CNAME records

I'm pleased to announce the general availability of a new virtual record type called POOL record, that lets you create multiple CNAME records on the same subdomain.

Retiring old ns4.dnsimple.com IP address

On April 10th we will be retiring the old IP address for ns4.dnsimple.com.

How The ALIAS Virtual Record Works

Late last year we introduced the ALIAS virtual record type at DNSimple. Since then we've had numerous people ask us how we implemented the functionality. While we are always making incremental changes, here is an overview of how it works:

Post-mortem for Name Server Performance Degradation

Today all of our name servers experienced performance degradation that in turn caused customer sites to fail to resolve. This was especially evident to customers who are using our ALIAS record type.

Things to Know About Transferring a Domain

Here are a couple of things that you should know about before transferring a domain.

GoDaddy, SOPA and You

We at DNSimple oppose SOPA and any attempt by the US government to try to rule the Internet. DNSimple vehemently opposes any attempts to censor the Internet or to provide the facilities to do so.

Introducing the ALIAS Record - Naked Domain Aliasing that Works!

Today I'd like to introduce a new record type that we've added to make pointing to dynamic hosting services a little less painful.

DNSimple Maintenance Sunday, September 18th

This Sunday, September 18th, 2011, we will be performing a short maintenance on the DNSimple web site and API server. This maintenance will take approximately 5 to 10 minutes during which the web site and API will be unavailable.

Whois UI

DNSimple's WHOIS lookup interface allows you to lookup WHOIS information for a domain.

Advanced Editor v2 and New APIs

I'm happy to announce that the DNSimple Advanced Editor has gotten a refresh.

Statements by Email

Starting with the current billing cycle, all DNSimple customers will now receive a statement via email with details about charges made through their DNSimple accounts.

Pricing for More than 500 Domains

If you've been looking into using DNSimple for hosting your DNS and you have more than 500 names, we now have you covered. As of today, any Reseller customers will pay a smaller per domain for domain management when you exceed 100 domains.

API Enhancements and Fixes

I'm happy to announce that we've now made SSL certificate purchasing, sharing and vanity name servers enable/disable functionality available via the DNSimple API.

DNSimple Service Level Agreement

We know how important DNS is to you. Whether you have selected DNSimple because of the easy to use domain management and registration or because of our comprehensive API or because you know that we care deeply about providing an awesome DNS and domain registration service, we want you to be confident that we will also work diligently to keep your DNS service stable and operational so you don't have to worry about it.

Vanity Name Servers and Record Notes

We've just rolled out two new features for DNSimple that we'd like to share with you.

Automatically updating your IP with DNSimple

Jason Seifer has a simple bash script that you can use to discover your current IP address and then use the DNSimple API to update an A record. Awesome!

Refer a Friend, Get Free DNS

Update June 2024: This referral program is being discontinued, but we're exploring new ways to reward referrals in the future.

DNS Simplified: SPF Records

SPF stands for Sender Profile Framework. DNSimple provides an easy interface for creating SPF records so you don't have to manage those records on your own.

SSL Certificates and Lower Prices on Registrations

We've been hard at work here and have some exciting announcements.

Preparing Domains in GoDaddy for Transfer Out

If you have more than a few domains with GoDaddy then preparing them for transferring away can be a time-consuming process. To help, we've put together this guide.

Sharing Domain Management Responsibilities

We've released a new feature today to all DNSimple customers that provides a way for you to share management functionality with other DNSimple customers without sharing credentials for an account.

All of Your DNSimple Transactions in One List

Just in time for this year's tax season, you can now get a list of your transactions with DNSimple on the web site and show and print receipts for each charge transaction.

Announcing 'Services' and other UI Enhancements

We're very happy to announce the roll out of an improved DNSimple web interface today to all DNSimple customers. Staying true to our name, the updates to the web interface are all about making DNS simple. Here is a rundown of what has changed and how it will make your experience with DNSimple even better.

ns3.dnsimple.com and ns4.dnsimple.com

As of today we've added two additional NS names to the name server names you can and should use for domains hosted with DNSimple.

DNS Simplified: MX Records

MX stands for Mail eXchange. MX Records tell email delivery agents where they should deliver your email. You can have many MX records for a domain, providing a way to have redundancy and ensure that email will always be delivered.

WHOIS Privacy Protection

NAPTR and Domain Registration through the API with extended attributes

As of yesterday, DNSimple now supports NAPTR records and domain registration and transfer of TLDs that require extended attributes through the API.

DNSimple Maintenance

The DNSimple web site will be taken offline tonight for a short maintenance. DNS resolution should not be affected, although new records make take a few minutes longer than normal to show once the system is reactivated. We will post updates here as they become available. Thank you for your patience.

DNS Simplified: CNAME Records

What a CNAME record is, and how to use CNAME records with DNSimple

Edit Domain Records

A new deployment of DNSimple has gone live, bringing with it the ability to edit records. Previously you had to delete the old record and add a new one in order to make a change, now you can simply click the Edit link and make the changes you need, save the record and the DNS servers will be updated.

DNSimple API Update - Manage Contacts

I've just pushed an update to the DNSimple API that adds support for listing, describing, creating and deleting contacts.

DNS Simplified: A Records

Today I’m starting a new series of regular blog posts called “DNS Simplified”. In these post it is my goal to describe DNS and domain name concepts so they are easy for anyone to understand.

DNSimple Knowledge Base

We've begun work on the DNSimple Knowledge Base. If you have questions about DNS in general or about DNSimple's offerings, please contact us and we'll answer your questions in the Knowledge Base. We look forward to hearing from you.

DNSimple API Update - Domain Registration and Transfer

I've just pushed out a release of DNSimple that updates the DNSimple API to add support for domain registration, domain transfer and a variety of template and template record manipulation actions.

Domain Registration and Transfer

DNSimple is now providing domain registration and transfer services to all of our customers.

From Beanstalkd to Resque

Yesterday I switched over DNSimple from a home grown background processing solution based on beanstalkd and custom code for handling queue messages as jobs to one using Resque.

Welcome to the DNSimple Blog

Given all of the awesome stuff that keeps coming out for DNSimple, I've decided that I need to be able to write longer posts.