Over the past few years, as I’ve moved into VPS-based hosting, I’ve also started to use my VPSes as additional DNS servers, keeping the professional hosted-DNS for geographical and connectivity diversity.  As this incident has pushed me along in making sure that every domain I host has DNS from at least two different providers, I came to the conclusion that, given that I already have one commercial DNS host (giving me three nameservers), the best economics were for me to get a super-cheap VPS to run as only a nameserver.  While not the absolute cheapest, JustGotVPS.com is probably the best price-configuration balance, especially at their cheapest ($5/mo and $8/mo) plans, and they discount for longer-term prepayment.  There’s an entry for them, as well as numerous other VPS options around the $5/mo price point at lowendbox.com.

The tradeoff for this versus a commercial DNS host (since in both instances I’m paying about $60/year) is that the commercial host gives me three diverse nameservers but limits the domains, etc., whereas running my own VPS-based nameserver gives me only one host but substantially greater flexibility.  I would also note that I chose to get a cheap VPS box from some provider other than my primary VPS provider so that my new additional nameserver would not be in the same datacenter and on the same internet links.

I also have been using EveryDNS.com, a free DNS host, for additional backup (I’ve donated since I’m using them on several domains and they seem to provide a good service), but having used GraniteCanyon and others in the past, I don’t consider a free DNS host as a serious alternative to a commercially-provided option.

I have many friends who aren’t particularly techie types.  Actually, I have very few techie friends.  And they all figure I’m the go-to guy for their tech questions.  Hence, I get asked to “help out” with setting up web sites now and then.

At some point, it occurred to me that, while there were plenty of good vendors I could recommend to peope (I’ll even give a list of some below), if I suggested that a friend use one or more of these vendors, the friend would inevitably still have questions that were vague and not really tech-support questions, and they’d end up back asking me for help.  It’s much easier to help them if I don’t have to go digging through some hosting company’s control panel to find the one messed up setting that I could have fixed in 2 seconds with a command line…

So I should just provide these people with hosting.  This is how I entered the world of small, in some sense “boutique,” hosting.  I’m not a company with credit card processing and automated account setup and 24-7 tech support.  These aren’t mission-critical sites.  When I’m asked, “How do I go about setting up a web site for [X]?” I can explain the overall steps (get a domain name; get hosting; if these are separate, point name at host; make web pages; upload web pages), I can recommend commercial providers (list below), and I can add that while I can honestly recommend those vendors, I can also offer to deal with all the setup and hosting to the point where they have some control panel and can figure out page creation and uploading, and I’ll charge them something or other that we mutually agree is fair.

When things break, I can fix them on the server easily.  If they’re unhappy, I can help them move off to a commercial provider.  And, hopefully, what they pay me defrays the costs of the servers I’m already running my sites on.

Oh, and as a side note, unless you’re doing something fancy or getting a lot of traffic on your site, there is no reason to be paying more than about $1/month for hosting, and contracts longer than a year are probably a bad idea (except where the monthlies are so small as to make month-to-month impractical, say maybe under $5/month, or where there’s a deep discount for longer contracts, I strongly prefer month-to-month payment rather than yearly contracts).

Vendors I currently use:

• WorldWideDNS.net (DNS)
• No-IP.com (dynamic IP)
• RapidVPS.com (hosting)
• GoDaddy.com (domain names, SSL certs)
• LuxSci.com (email)

Vendors I have used in the past and think are generally good:

• ucvhost.com (hosting)
• No-IP.com (DNS, email)
• 5dollarhosting.com (hosting)
• hostrocket.com (hosting)
• fusemail.com (email)
• cheap-domainregistration.com (domain names)