Dear Users of DynDNS.org,
This message is being sent out to inform you of some important and
exciting changes which have taken place here at DynDNS.org this weekend.
We ask that you read through the following information, and corresponding
information on our web site, carefully, as it impacts your future uses of
our services. Please see the end of this e-mail for information on how to
remove your account from our systems if you no longer use our services.
Since 1998, Dynamic DNS Network Services has been providing dynamic DNS
and HTTP redirection services to the Internet community. In mid-2001, we
added full DNS hosting services to our repertoire, and all of these
services have been increasingly popular. In October of 2001, you may have
noticed the small shift as we formally organized into Dynamic DNS Network
Services, LLC, a Limited Liability Company organized in the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts. Little else but the name changed at that time.
Now the time has come for the change that started with the formation of an
LLC to continue, in the form of some evolutionary changes here at
DynDNS.org. We will continue to provide the same services we always have,
with the level of service, support, and reliability that you've come to
expect and demand from us. In fact, these changes will make things
better, expanding our offerings and support further still.
From our inception, our business model has relied on donations - voluntary
contributions from our users, which provided access to some added
features, but were given largely simply out of generosity. While that
model has served us well, we feel that it is time to move on. With the
introduction of the MyDynDNS range of services, we took some flak for
calling the setup fee a "required donation" - the first impact that you'll
see of these evolutionary changes is that it will now be called a setup
fee, and will be processed internally.
This change creates a number of benefits for you, our users. Instead of
waiting 24-48 hours for a human to process your donation after making a
payment through a third-party provider, these new payments will be
processed through our own credit card system in real-time, with credits
immediately appearing in your account, ready for use. You will also no
longer have to deal with third-party vendors for any billing issues you
have - all issues will be handled internally by our billing department.
We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who have
made generous donations in the past, helping us to get where we are today
- all of their names will remain listed on the donations page as a token
of our appreciation to them.
It is important to note that our free services are remaining free - this
has not changed, and will not change. We are simply making infrastructure
changes to improve access to services we already offer, and lay the
groundwork for some exciting new ideas we have in the works.
Changes have already been happening behind the scenes, as well - we
recently hired our first full-time staff members, responsible for
coordinating these changes, providing technical support, coding, and
running the business aspects of the organization. Due to our continuing
growth, we feel it is now necessary to have staff members to work during
business hours, without the pressures of a "real" job, to run the
day-to-day operations of the business. While our unorthodox hours of
operation (due to our status as volunteers) have worked in the past,
dealings with "real-world" suppliers necessitate more traditional working
hours.
We have also found that, to continue providing the high levels of support
which our users have come to expect, it is necessary to have some paid
technical support staff. These paid support staff members, working in
concert with others who still provide support on a volunteer basis, have
begun to provide telephone technical support for paying customers. They
will also work to improve e-mail support response times, despite
increasing volume.
Those of you who have been with us for a long time will, no doubt, be
thinking at this point something along the lines of "Are these the same
people who were practically begging me for money every month a year or
more ago?" Yes, we are those same people, but things have changed. The
continuing success of our premium services, particularly the MyDynDNS
Custom DNS service, has put us on a very stable financial ground. All of
these changes are being made with the long-term stability of the services
we provide in mind, and we continue to maintain a significant long-term
operating reserve. We are making these changes as investments in our
future, and we have some exciting plans in store for the next 6-12 months,
and beyond. We'd like to bring all of you along for what will be an
exciting, but safe, ride.
So, you ask, why should you care? The important thing to remember is,
nothing has changed with your existing service. All changes will be made
on a going-forward basis, and current users will be grandfathered into any
altered programs, as applicable.
All old donations have been converted into our new-style credits system.
Credits have been created to match up with old "required donation" amounts
- a Custom DNS credit costs $30, a Secondary DNS credit costs $10, and a
new Account Upgrade credit costs $10 (more information about this Account
Upgrade credit will come later).
We have attempted to perform the donation conversion in such a way as to
cause the least confusion possible. The credit previously used for any
Custom DNS or Secondary DNS domains has been converted directly to the
applicable credits. All old donators have been credited with one
"Permanent Account Upgrade" credit, which is equivalent to a normal
Account Upgrade credit (which expires one year after purchase) except that
it does not expire. Any additional credit remaining after these
conversions has been converted into an appropriate number of Account
Upgrade credits.
If you had made a donation in recent days for a new Custom DNS or
Secondary DNS domain, but had not yet created the domain in our system,
your credit will not have been converted properly. In this case, you will
receive an "insufficient credit" error when trying to enter the domain in
our system. At that time, you should e-mail billing@dyndns.org,
explaining the situation, and including your username, and the type of
credit(s) you would like to convert to. Our staff will make the
conversion and let you know when you will be able to enter your domain
into the system. Your patience during this transition period is
appreciated.
Account Upgrade credits have been created in response to demand for the
ability to add more than 20 hosts to our free services. In the past,
these services allowed for the creation of 5 hosts free, and 20 for
donators, no matter how much was donated. Now, you still get 5 hosts
free, but each Account Upgrade credit you purchase allows you to create 20
MORE hosts, and the credit lasts for a year. So, if you purchase one
Account Upgrade credit, you can have 25 hosts, two credits gives you 45
hosts available, in each of our free services. These credits also count
towards the benefits donators previously received, such as non-expiring
Dynamic DNS hostnames, advertisement-free cloaked WebHops, and access to
the MyWebHop service.
Another evolution we have made in the past month is the final turn down of
our Ithaca, NY colocation site. We first began colocating in Ithaca when
we moved off a modem connection in December, 1999, and we finally outgrew
the ISP that we were hosting with. Our first secondary DNS site, housing
ns2.dyndns.org and ns2.mydyndns.org, has now moved to Switch & Data in
Detroit, MI, with bandwidth provided by Verio. This move reduces costs
for this site, while increasing the connectivity available to it.
We have also added a new version of our WebHop HTTP redirection service -
the MyWebHop service is available to all users who have purchased any
credits, and allows for the creation of HTTP redirections on arbitrary
hostnames, not just those within our WebHop domains. This service is
designed as close partner with the Custom DNS service, but can be used
with hostnames not hosted by us as well. See
http://support.dyndns.org/mydyndns/mywebhop/ for information on using this
service.
The number of domains available for our Dynamic DNS, Static DNS, and
WebHop services has also increased. We have many new domains added in the
past few months, with very few hostnames yet registered, such as
is-a-geek.com, homeunix.org, serveftp.org, gotdns.com and many others in
Dynamic/Static DNS, and doesntexist.org, endofinternet.com, dontexist.net,
and others in WebHop. If you missed out on the hostname you wanted in one
of our other domains, or just want to grab your name in all of them, check
these out!
Thanks for taking the time to read through all of this. If you have any
questions regarding the new billing/purchase system, or need to have
credits converted, please contact billing@dyndns.org. For other
enquiries, please continue to use the addresses you have used in the past.
Thank you for choosing Dynamic DNS Network Services, LLC, for your DNS
needs!
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