Smash Notes

Back to Making DNSimple (Changelog Interviews #637), with Anthony Eden.

How Did DNSimple End Up Half a Registrar?

On the show, domain registration at DNSimple is now mostly equal to operational DNS. Anthony Eden always wanted to be a DNS company first and treated the registrar as an afterthought, because the registrar business has no margins and is cutthroat. Customers kept pushing for DNSimple to be a registrar.

Over the last couple of years the team put more time into making the registrar component a first-class citizen. Anthony Eden now splits DNSimple almost evenly between the registrar and operational DNS, with little slivers left for the certificate side and email forwarding. Most registrars open on a text field, suggest alternatives when a name is unavailable, and then run the registration flow. DNSimple flipped the order. A customer has to have an account first, has to put a credit card on file, and only then can register as many domains as they want.

On Changelog Master Feed, for as long as the show has been a customer, the show has never registered a domain through DNSimple.

Transcript

Making DNSimple (Changelog Interviews #637) ·

Changelog Master Feed

More from this episode

  1. How Did No Outside Money Let DNSimple Win Big Companies?On the show, DNSimple has never grown a ton aside from the very early days.
  2. How Did a Language Model Never Run the Rails Test?On the show, a weekend try to get a language model to run the test on a fresh Rails project failed.
  3. How Did a Forgotten Domain Make DNSimple Demand Proof?DNSimple requires a person to prove they actually have the rights before a domain that used to be with DNSimple comes back into DNSimple.
  4. How Did Let's Encrypt Turn Certificates Into a Click?On the show, Let's Encrypt solved one of the biggest gaps in the internet security space and changed the world of the internet.
  5. How Did Tailscale and Raycast Make Cineplex Login Easy?On the show, Tailscale installed on everything replaced a memorized home address with a network-friendly name that search can reach.
  6. Why Won't DNSimple Start Generative Domain-list Search?DNSimple is small enough that the company has not applied machine learning to all the data coming through. The generative part is not so interesting.
  7. Why Are Name Availability Checks So Hard for DNSimple?The hard part of suggesting domain names is not coming up with words to string together and suggest.
  8. Why Do Attacked Registries Get Paid While Registrars Innovate?On the show, the domain business is lopsided. Innovation happens at the edges, at the registrars, and the money gets sent to the core, at the registries.
  9. How Did DNSimple Grow Slowly With Costly Domain Keywords?On the show, DNSimple stays in business and continues slow growth by focusing on positioning and how the team uses words.

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