BuddyNS is a free secondary DNS service. When you register a domain name and run the DNS yourself, you use BuddyNS to replicate your DNS service.

BuddyNS is the fastest-to-synchronize DNS service on the Internet. Whenever you add or modify records for your domain name, BuddyNS synchronizes within 10 minutes, or immediately with SyncNOW!. As a comparison, most alternative services synchronize in one to twelve hours.

BuddyNS is not a public DNS cache such as OpenDNS. BuddyNS is meant to assist domain name owners, not end users.

BuddyNS strives for ease of use and reliability. Here are the features in a nutshell:

• automatic synchronization with master within 10 minutes, or immediately with SyncNOW! and NOTIFY
• 4 geographically sparse servers in USA and EU
• full support for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)
• outstanding security and reliability, 100% uptime since inception
• native IPv4 and IPv6
• free up to 0.3 Million queries/month
• unlimited domains, records, and updates allowed
• BuddyBoard for monitoring configuration and state of your zones
• responsive and competent support

BuddyNS's DNS replication service (secondary DNS) is free for all users, for both personal or commercial use. However, users who require advanced features or produce high volumes of traffic (advanced users) are required to perform recurring donations.

Here's the details for each account type:

Free User

• up to 0.3 Million queries/month total traffic (per-account)
• cannot refer BuddyNS with custom names in NS records (no Vanity DNS)
• monthly account validation (click account link in e-mail reminder)
• support requests deferred 24 hours

Advanced User

• mask BuddyNS nameservers as ns*.yourorganization.com in your zones' DNS records (Vanity DNS)
• run any amount of traffic with traffic quotes
• no monthly account validation required
• 2 $/month each 10 zones (e.g. 4 $ for 18 zones)
• access extra services like smart stats and SMS monitoring

BuddyNS grew from an experimental technology for improving DNS consistency into a top-notch service with a rock-solid, dependable distributed infrastructure serving many thousand zones.

We intend to keep our fundamental service free to make it available to as many users as possible. Our running costs we support by three means:

• spontaneous donations from enthusiastic users
• advanced user accounts running over 0.3 Million qr/mo
• additional paid services for advanced users

If you like BuddyNS, consider making a donation.

Better DNS consistency

BuddyNS dramatically improves the consistency of your domain data by ensuring your secondary DNS servers are always updated shortly after you perform any modification at the primary DNS.

Free

BuddyNS is free to use, and provides advanced services at low price.

Ease of use

BuddyNS is built with the ease of use in mind. Check out the BuddyBoard for a taste.

Better support

All inquiries to support@buddyns.com get answered.

BuddyNS offers free accounts for all users, personal and commercial use, regardless of number of zones, records, or monthly updates.

Our free accounts are limited to 0.3 Million queries per month. If you operate an account totalling more than this traffic, we require you to open an advanced user account to support our operation.

We do not offer a web panel where you can edit the records of your domain, because our current focus is improving DNS replication (secondary DNS) over the Internet.

However, you can still use all-and-only BuddyNS servers to serve your domain: you just need to provide your zone to BuddyNS via AXFR.

Traditional service providers use software off-the-shelf. BuddyNS employs an ad-hoc infrastructure designed from scratch exclusively for fast zone synchronization. This tackles three improvements:

1. more efficient update checks
2. distributed system
3. separate DNS updaters, checkers, and publishers

Here's how it works. Inside BuddyNS, multiple checkers poll domains for updates. Each can issue hundreds of checks per second, so domains can be checked frequently. Checkers relay which domains need update to two transfer systems. These fetch up-to-date zone data and transfer such data to publishers. Publishers are only concerned with answering client queries about your zone.

BuddyNS splits a traditionally all-in-one system in three levels, and optimizes each individually. This dramatically improves robustness and performance.

PDQ updates and SyncNOW! are two alternative ways to request immediate update for your zones.

SyncNOW!: Bulk account update from the Web

Log into your BuddyBoard and push the SyncNOW! button. BuddyNS will start a synchronization procedure shortly for all zones configured in your account.

PDQ updates: Individual domain update via e-mail

Send an e-mail to mydomain.com@pdq.buddyns.com using your BuddyNS username as source address. BuddyNS will synchronize mydomain.com shortly.

With SyncNOW! and PDQ updates BuddyNS cuts DNS synchronization habits from many hours to few seconds. In its simplicity, this fixes a problem that annoyed DNS administrators for two decades.

Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)

BuddyNS supports IDNs natively.

DNS notify

BuddyNS supports NOTIFY invocations. Transfers are initiated with a random delay up to 60 seconds for improved security.

DNSSEC

BuddyNS does not support DNSSEC because it exposes to some vulnerabilities unsuited to a high-volume DNS service.

Outward AXFR

Since BuddyNS is a secondary-only service (you cannot edit your zone from BuddyNS), you already have an AXFR in your control.

Anycast DNS

BuddyNS does not support anycast routing because it introduces major network complications to bring negligible performance improvements. Most DNS clients today pick the nearest server to query themselves anyway.

BuddyNS strives for ease of use. If you understand basic DNS terms, the BuddyNS guides you through a copy/paste configuration procedure, and helps you troubleshoot and fix arising problems with the BuddyBoard. For several configuration mistakes at the primary, BuddyNS will send you automatic notification e-mails with a problem brief and fixing instructions.

Always start as a free user by activating a domain on BuddyNS. If your traffic qualifies as advanced user, you will receive an e-mail explaining you when and how to upgrade.

If you want to upgrade to Advanced spontaneously (e.g. because you want Vanity DNS), you can do so from your BuddyBoard (Account pane).

Advanced users contribute a monthly amount. This is paid via PayPal with 2, 3, 6 or 12 months periodicity. After the first donation, BuddyNS sends you a PayPal donation slip for easy renewal.

If you own more than 30 domain names we can perform bulk activation for you.

Send an e-mail to support@buddyns.com with the following data:

• the IP address of the primary server for these domains
• the e-mail address to register as admin for these domains
• the list of domain names

We normally process bulk activations within 24 hours.

BuddyNS has DNS publishers at these locations:

• Central & North America: Arizona (IPv4 + IPv6)
• Europe: Germany (IPv4 + IPv6)
• North America: New York (IPv4 only)
• Europe: Switzerland (IPv4 + IPv6)
• Asia: Singapore (IPv4 only)

We instruct users to refer all servers as NS records for your zones. This improves reliability and resolution time, since most Internet resolvers pick their destination based on response time.