OpenDNS Deluxe Dropped, Price Increase by 900%
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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I’m one of those “small” business users that’s been stung by this news.
With a company of just two people using Deluxe, they wanted to charge me $1000/yr, but when I complained they offered $750/yr. Yeah, that will help a cash strapped SMB – morons. They even reckoned without telling them we were a company of two, that our DNS traffic was that of a 25 user company.
Looks like I can only hope someone else will take over offering a similar facility or maybe after OpenDNS realise what a bunch of numpties their business strategy team are, they’ll bring back Deluxe.
OpenDNS – one big #FAIL! Took us all for a ride.
Just sign up for their home service if you’re two people. That’s still free and has content filtering.
The free service is for non-commercial use plus I subscribed for the extra services which aren’t in “free”.
Like I always say about cloud computing: Here today, gone tomorrow. Just like clouds. Exciting, isn’t it?
Get them in through the door for a free buffet, lock it from the outside, and then tell them the cost to get out.
They aren’t the first company to use this tactic; unfortunately they didn’t look at how well this has worked in the past. Look for a change in their policy soon :)
I always wondered how opendns monetized their operations. I know they show ads on non-existing domains, but it always seemed to me that wouldn’t be enough to keep them afloat. I guess they’re running low on their VC and being pushed towards monetization at all costs now.
Technically, a rise from $150 to $1500 is a 900% increase, not a 1000% increase. Just like a rise from $1 to $2 is 100% increase.
@Ross Presser
Please rethink your “technical” statement.
Or use any calculator available ;)
OpenDNS has probably seen lot of increase in data traffic since more ISP are filtering content.
Looks like money rules.
Don’t reward them for this B.S.
There are free alternatives: Dyn, Comodo, Norton, etc.
@Peter
Actually, Ross Presser is quite correct (and wherefore the title to this article is misleading)
Simple Algebra; solve for the multiplier:
Change in price = ( Initial price ) ( multiplier )
multiplier = ($1500-$150) / $150 = 9 = 900%
@Peter:
1500 is 1000% of 150.
However, the rise from 150 to 1500 is only a rise of 1350, so it is a rise of 900%.
If it rose from 150 to 151.50, it would only be a 1% rise. Not a 101% rise. Yet 151.50 is 101% of 150. See the difference?
@Q: Thank you. You give me hope for the mathematical education of humanity. :-)
@ ‘the boys’ ;)
I agree with your statements there is a nine fold rise.
The technical part is the use of percentage.
A percentage is ‘technically’ based on a fraction of 100.
Per – cent.
Therefore we would have used
The price was 10% of the current ridiculous 1500 USD
The former price $150 was 10% of the current price $1500.
The current price $1500 is 1000% of the former price $150.
The price has by 900%.
Just 3 words – used in another thread today as well – “goose”, “golden” and “eggs”.
There is NO content filtering in the free versions of opendns.
This is just typical of companies these days. Make something free, then screw you over and make useless unless you pay.
opendns are a disgrace and they will fail soon.
I’m currently using CyberPatrol’s SiteSURV to get around this price increase from OpenDNS. They are offering free one year trials if you sign up by April 30th. There is a link on their home page at Cyberpatrol.com. Saved us a ton of money this year and they offered us a 50% discount on next year’s renewal! Still learning the ins and outs of the product but the interface and product are working great for us! Food for thought that I though I pass long.
Squid proxy server on a Linux box is the to go
check out alohadns.com, its free right now, but eventually will be $19.99 / month … Its does a nightly log scan for you and emails results… better than OpenDNS. DynDNS only allows for 200 blocked domains, AlohaDNS.com will give you 1,000+ or whitelist mode only with fine tuning emails nightly.
at this point we probably will never charge.