Good, solid, affordable DNS service?

sneakyimp

I register a lot domains through a particular registrar. Their site lets me specify my nameservers, but doesn't appear to offer any additional DNS services which would let me create A, CNAME, or MX records.

Does anyone know of a third party which I can specify as the primary nameservers for my domains which will let me create whatever DNS records I need? For instance, I could create an SPF record to make sure mail can be sent from google apps. Or I could point a subdomain at some other server.

bradgrafelman

Which host do you use for your sites? Most web hosts offer DNS as well.

sneakyimp

Therein lies the problem. The hosting company I really like because it is affordable, the servers have all the right PHP extensions installed, I have ssh access with extended permissions, etc. -- but the DNS sucks. It is both unreliable and I don't have much control.

They're working on it, but I was hoping for something more flexible.

bradgrafelman

Out of curiosity, what exactly is "affordable" ? I have what would appear to be the same feature set you mentioned plus the control over custom DNS entries.

sneakyimp

Well I'm hosting a number of sites for free because I'm cozy with the sysadmin. I recently set up a VPS on rackspace.com (which is about $11/mo for a tiny VPS), but I don't want to install BIND and all that crap. I've done it before, but it's a pain. I was rather hoping for something simpler and more convenient, but which will let me have control to create subdomains, add MX records, and create TXT/SPF records.

I HATE Plesk and Webhost Manager and all those control panels because they are so finicky and result in these crazy-long file paths and stuff. I like having a lot more control over the system without worrying about fighting Plesk later.