Best and Fastest DNS Servers 2022 (2024)

As global society as a whole continues its evolution toward a more digitized world, it’s critical that your organization provide the best online experience possible. A large part of this experience involves the domain name system (DNS). Neglecting DNS has always been bad practice, but in 2022, failure to make DNS a priority in your domain strategy could be detrimental to your ROI and customer retention.

Think I’m exaggerating?

Every online transaction starts with DNS. Any time a person visits a website, performs a search, or accesses an application, it involves a DNS lookup. It is the DNS process that allows your website to be found. It is also how the internet is able to operate in the manner we’ve grown accustomed to today.

There are several factors to consider when looking for the best DNS provider for your domain. This blog focuses on the importance of infrastructure and overall speed and performance for domains.

DNS Server Network Infrastructure

Constellix runs on parent company Tiggee LLC’s Anycast+ network that consists of company-owned, bare-metal servers that are strategically positioned across the globe. Each of our DNS servers is hosted within major data centers, as close to the edge as possible. Because of its 3,200+ peers, 300 Gbps of peering capacity, 730 Gbps of peering capacity, and 23 points of presence (and counting), Constellix is able to provide unparalleled reliability in the industry—not a single outage since we first launched in 2013. We also offer 4TB of DDoS protection and a proprietary DNS analytics platform and provide ultimate scalability with our pay for only what you use model.

Outages are an unfortunate commonplace in the digital world. If you hitch your wagon to the wrong provider, your business could suffer hundreds of thousands—even millions—of dollars in revenue losses due to IT costs and lost customers. There are ways to avoid this. And the first step is choosing a provider with a strong infrastructure as well as one that supports redundant DNS.

Tip: To learn more about the importance of DNS redundancy, check out our article: Best DNS + CDN Provider Solutions and Examples for Redundancy.

DNS Server: Speed and Performance

Our infrastructure also allows us to provide top speeds and performance for every domain leveraging our network. As mentioned earlier, all things online start with DNS. This means your DNS provider may have more of an impact on your website’s overall performance than you may realize. DNS not only affects query resolution speeds but also affects domain latency. Reducing latency is crucial as just a one-second delay in page load times can lead to a 7% reduction in conversions. In fact, according to a study by Unbounce, approximately 70% of online customers claim that website speed affects their willingness to purchase from an e-retailer. Google cares about your site speed too. It is one of the factors the search engine uses to rank your website in search results.

A DNS provider with a fast, strong, and reliable infrastructure can and should make a meaningful difference for your domain. From network expansions to the development of services and products, Constellix’s key focus is on infrastructure and the needs of its customers.

Top 11 DNS Providers for 2022

If you search for DNS providers, the choices can be overwhelming, but it’s important to research providers and choose which one is right for you. Here is a list of the top 11 DNS providers for 2022 (alphabetical order). For determining our reliability rating, we went by provider outage history over the last decade.

1. Constellix

Reliability: Very High
Supports Secondary DNS: Yes (primary/primary*
*Constellix has integrated secondary support via API with Azure, Route 53, and Google Cloud DNS

2.. DNS Made Easy

Reliability: Very High
Supports Secondary DNS: Yes

3. Akamai

Reliability: High
Supports Secondary DNS: Yes

4. AWS/Amazon Route 53

Reliability: Medium
Supports Secondary DNS: No*
*Primary/primary configurations are possible with API

5. Azure DNS

Reliability: Medium
Supports Secondary DNS: Yes

6. Cloudflare

Reliability: MediumSupports
Secondary DNS: No*
*You can add Cloudflare as a secondary provider, but they do not allow you to add a secondary DNS provider if they are your primary.

7. DNSimple

Reliability: Very High
Supports Secondary DNS: Yes

8. Google Cloud DNS

Reliability: Medium
Supports Secondary DNS: No*
*Primary/primary configurations are possible with API

‍9. Neustar UltraDNS

Reliability: MediumSupports
Secondary DNS: Yes

10. NS1

Reliability: Very High
Supports Secondary DNS: Yes

11. Oracle Dyn

Reliability: High
Supports Secondary DNS: Yes

Did you know?: DNS Made Easy and Constellix have the longest-running uptime history in the industry—12 years and counting with zero outages.

What Makes Constellix Different Than Other DNS Providers

Constellix offers unique, highly customizable DNS services that allow you to optimize your web traffic unlike any other provider in the industry. Each solution was developed based on direct customer feedback and was designed to fill service gaps in the industry as a whole. Constellix provides IT teams the ability to design creative workflows and use out-of-the-box techniques alongside traditional DNS services to leverage optimal speeds, performance, and reliability for their organization. Here is a list of some of Constellix’s most popular services:

• Advanced, customizable API calls
• Multi-CDN management
• Advanced GeoDNS services:
  • GeoIP filters
  • Global Traffic Director
  • Geo Proximity

• DNS Failover
• ANAME records
• Primary/Primary DNS for redundancy
• Advanced DNS Analytics and query logs
• Real-time Traffic Anomaly Detection (RTTAD)
• Sonar Performance Monitoring
• Advanced and customizable Load Balancing
  • Latency Routing with Internet Traffic Optimization (ITO)
  • Round Robin
  • Weighted Round Robin
  • DNS record templates

• Vanity DNS (white-labeling)
• Advanced DNS Management
  • Version control
  • Rollbacks
  • Staged changes
  • Domain permissions
  • DNS permissions
  • Account audit with tracking
  • Multi-factor authentication
  

DNS Servers 2022: Network Infrastructure and Reliability is Key

No matter how you spin it, DNS is one of the most important factors of online business. Your organization should take every advantage possible to ensure your website has a competitive edge when it comes to speed and performance. Choosing a DNS provider with a rock-solid infrastructure, flexible services, and an outstanding history of reliability can not only help save your company from large revenue losses due to outages and slow speeds and at the same time, it can also actually help increase your ROI because of improved domain performance.

What are you waiting for? Schedule a demo with one of our DNS experts today. Our team will customize your demo according to the unique needs of your organization and you’ll be able to see what Constellix can do for yourself!