OpenDNS is probably the most popular DNS Service in the world. The service offers Free DNS Service to the public, and also has some paid plans in place to use their DNS servers. But then, if you were one of those who use their free DNS Service, then whenever you tried to access a website that never really existed, you get a page, showing a very tiny error message, engulfed with ads on it. Right?
Well, today, the company has made it clear that they are turning off the ads that appear on their free service. OpenDNS is now a security company, who’s revenues are coming in directly from the businesses associated with them, making them less reliable on the revenue that comes in via their advertisements on these pages.
In an official blogpost, the company has exposed their revenue model, and here’s what they said:
And I’ll say that the relationship between us and our customers is stronger, because we are building a service for the people who are paying for it. We’re not in some weird three-way handshake that is difficult to balance where we want a great user experience on the one hand, but we get paid by advertisers on the other hand. The cognitive dissonance was getting unwieldy. And frankly, nobody loves ads. At best, ads are a thing you have to do, and you make them as good as you can, when there isn’t a better business model. And for consumer services, there rarely is anything that performs better than ads.
What’s interesting is that, OpenDNS has put up a dedicated page, where there is a countdown running, telling that their Ads will be shut down. Personally, I don’t see a point in running a countdown, and bidding goodbye to the ads that always affects the user experience. But still, they are doing this, and you can see that countdown here.
Good choice OpenDNS. Is this because your user base dropped heavily because of GoogleDNS?
