The popular third party DNS provider OpenDNS has been sending out emails in January to part of its customer base announcing an upcoming change in the company’s portfolio. OpenDNS Basic, which was used by home users and businesses alike, has been redesigned as a product for home use only. The product will remain free and offer the same functionality as before. The email was worded in a way that suggested that content filtering was removed from the product on March 15th.
Only businesses are however affected by this. If they have received the email, they will be without content filtering from March 15th forward should they not switch to the paid Enterprise plan. The email only mentions OpenDNS Enterprise as the alternative, and not the companies OpenDNS Deluxe service.
OpenDNS’s CEO David Ulevitch mentioned in a post on Reddit that OpenDNS decided to drop that product. This has consequences for businesses who paid $150 per year for the OpenDNS Deluxe plan as they are left with two options if they want to stay at the company.
The first option is to go back to OpenDNS Premium (which is OpenDNS Home but without the filtering for businesses). The second to subscribe to the Open DNS Enterprise plan instead. The starting price for the Enterprise product is set to $1500 per year for companies with 1-50 users. This could mean a 900% increase for companies who paid 150$ per year for the deluxe plan previously.
A 30% discount was offered to OpenDNS Deluxe customers, and even more for customers who complained loudly. The discount would still mean a price increase of of more than 300% for the product.
To paraphrase:
- Home users: OpenDNS Home, with filtering included, nothing changes.
- Businesses: Either OpenDNS Premium, which only offers DNS services, or OpenDNS Enterprise starting at $1500 with filtering and advanced malware and botnet protection services.
The biggest user complaint is the pricing for the Enterprise product. Smaller businesses with a handful of employees would have to pay as much as larger sized businesses with 40 or even 50 employees.
Businesses looking for an alternative should take a look at the comparison chart over at DNS Redirector which compares popular DNS services.
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