Do I need a Premium DNS hosting for my website?
Do you really need a Premium DNS hosting? Can you use a free DNS service, or do you need any DNS service at all? Honestly, it depends a lot on the size of your site and its traffic. If you have a really small size, light one, and you have very few visitors, you don’t.
Basics of DNS service
We can’t truly talk about a Premium DNS if we don’t mention what DNS is. In short, it is a global network of name servers that has the main purpose of indicating where domain names really are. They link the domain names to their IP addresses. Other than that, the DNS will have features like linking hostnames to other hostnames, additional instructions about services, verifications, and more.
So the DNS is a communication network that will orientate all your users, direct them to the right addresses or other hostnames.
When knowing all that, there are a few questions that will help you define if you need a Premium DNS or no:
- How many people need to connect to the site?
- How often will they connect?
- Where do these people live? Do you have an international audience, or almost all of your site visitors are from your country?
- Do you need any additional security features? How important is it for you to protect your visitors at every step of their website journey?
When to use a free DNS?
Various companies offer Free DNS plans with limited features or bandwidth caps. They can boost the performance of your domain resolving, and they can help you with multiple points of presence for international visitors. The thing to consider with them is their limits. How many DNS records can you create? Do you have a maximum amount of queries per month? Are they enough for you? Does the provider have all the security features that you need?
An important point is to check if these providers have paid options too. One day, you can grow your site, and you will need the boost. Can the provider give it to you?
When do you need a Premium DNS?
You need a Premium DNS if you have a bigger site, with many visitors per month often visit the site. You will need the Premium DNS if your site is international. Imagine if all of your visitors, no matter if they live in America, Asia, or Europe, need to connect to your name server in Amsterdam. It will take a lot of time for the non-Europeans. You can use the premium features like many points of presence as close as possible for your visitors. Create CDNs and make the experience a lot faster for the visitors. It is very important.
Also, if you have an e-commerce site, pay attention to security. You don’t want any risk for your users, don’t you? Add advanced DNS security with features like DNSSEC, add records for email servers like MX, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. Get your DNS on the top level of security.
In conclusion:
If you have a small static site, a blog, or portfolio site, with a small number of visitors, you are ok without any managed DNS service. You can improve it with a free DNS service. When you start to grow, it would be a good idea to start using a free DNS plan to speed up the domain resolving for your users.
When your site becomes bigger, you have visitors from around the globe, and you need to ensure excellent security. That is the time to start using a Premium DNS service. It will boost performance, speed, redundancy, and security.