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ClouDNS vs Bunny
Hi All,
Current ClouDNS user here. Revisiting DNS hosting for my roughly 30ish zones. Overall I have been happy with ClouDNS, but the one point of contention I have is how long it takes for them to propagate DNS changes across all of the PoPs.
Using ACME and DNS-01, I have to allow a minimum of around 3 minutes, sometimes closer to 5 minutes, before validation can safely happen. I finally decided to test it instead of just complaining about it.
I compared ClouDNS against Bunny DNS using unique TXT records created through each API and checked them locally and from several regions worldwide.
Bunny, over 10 rounds, had a median authoritative propagation time of about 3.6 seconds and a worst case of 5.5 seconds. Worldwide authoritative checks were 120/120.
ClouDNS, over 5 rounds, had a median of about 27 seconds and a worst case of 35.5 seconds just from my local perspective. More concerning, after the local authoritative servers were returning the new record, a number of ClouDNS anycast locations around the world were still returning NXDOMAIN. Worldwide authoritative checks were only 72/120 at that point.
So that pretty much explains my ACME propagation delays.
Bunny is looking interesting. The DNS product has matured a lot since the last time I looked at it, with a proper web UI, DNSSEC, API support, etc. My hesitation is reliability. ClouDNS advertises around 65 DNS PoPs while Bunny has 36+ dedicated DNS PoPs, and Bunny has had a few notable DNS/platform outages over the last couple of years.
On the other hand, Bunny also seems much more transparent about outages, so it is hard to know how much weight to give that.
What is everyone using these days? Anyone using Bunny DNS for production? Any other ClouDNS users seeing the same slow propagation?
Comments
I use Bunny for DNS, CDN and some storage, it's great in my experience.
Have been loving Bunny. No issues had yet and support is insanely fast.
I use Bunny for PTR for my IPs, no problems and good service. I've never used Cloudns.
I no longer use ClouDNS, but they by far had the best worldwide latency times, especially in SEA. For propagation, I was never very concerned but I remember many times where for some of the last PoPs it was over a minute to finish. I last used them ~1 year ago.
Bunny's DNS is also very solid, better pricing, zone limits are better, although routing isn't as good and SEA is rough. I last used them ~2 months ago.
Currently on Gcore's DNS free tier, routing is better and unlimited zones/queries, no idea what the paid version gets you any better.
As much as I like ClouDNS's offerings, they're pricing models aren't competitive and have only gotten more constricted. I once had a DDoS protected plan, 'Medium', which had unlimited queries for $72/y, now for the same amount of queries it's more than $39/m.
What made you switch from Bunny to Gcore? Gcore did pop up on my radar with integration into lego. I never heard of them before, but even the paid offering is not expensive; it's cheaper than CloudNS. Right now I am super sensitive about propagation across the pops.
Since you're sensitive on propagation, I can't speak to that too much, I recall waiting for a TXT record to show up and it was <20 seconds, not very scientific.
The reason I switched was the routing for PoPs just wasn't good for me, I would be routed somewhere 40+ ms away rather than the one that's <10ms away, even checking ping[.]pe, I saw that the routing was just going anywhere. That might not matter too much for you if propagation is your deciding factor, Bunny is ok for each PoPs relative region, although do your own testing of course.
Gcore for me was simple: it was free and beyond decent as I could park 10+ domains on it without worry and not need to think of going beyond my query allocation tier.
Also with ClouDNS but I am also self-hosting my NS, with auto failover and things, so kinda wanna go this way but may not have enough time to test fully, so may migrate to bunny.
Does bunny advanced their “revolutionary edge containers” which are essentially glorified docker?
What do you mean? Also, "glorified docker" is an oversimplification. It does more than just spin up a container somewhere.
Never used Bunny, but ClouDNS has been rock solid for us for many, many years and I can 1000% vouch for them!
I was a CloudNS user for 5 years on their Personal DNS plan (22 USD/year), which, if I remember correctly, included unlimited requests, unlimited records, and about 40 zones. Then they changed the plan and forced us to migrate to one that had fewer zones, limits on DNS records, limits on requests, and was more expensive.
About three years ago, I transferred my domains to Bunny, and so far it's worked without any problems. I'm currently using their DNS and CDN services, and I'm very happy with them so far.
Been using ClouDNS for 6 years, no issues.
I use both Bunny and ClouDNS and I am very happy with both. On ClouDNS I have the old 2018 plan with unlimited requests, if I had to move to a new plan I would just move everything to Bunny as it is free now. I do prefer the API system from ClouDNS though.
Previously was using cloudns prem, but cancelled it because for pure dns, desec.io and he.net are superb for $0. Bunny is fine for cloudflare alternative since it got fancy cdn, waf, edge etc.
just curious - how are these options better than simple cloudflare free plan? Is it because you need features that are only in cloudflare paid plans?
bunny DNS is free, no contest
Free with an asterisk, I think they charge $1/mo as a minimum.