ClouDNS
- Free allowance
- Free Forever: 1 DNS zone, 50 DNS records, 500,000 queries per month, 1 mail forward, 1 dynamic DNS hostname, 4 unicast nameservers
- Verdict
- caveatusable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path
- Cost
- free tier
- Identity
- emailno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- per-object-cap1 zone and 50 records
- Evidence
- documented25 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-03checked 2026-11-02 (live); stale on 2026-12-03
| Free tier | Free Forever: 1 DNS zone, 50 DNS records, 500,000 queries per month, 1 mail forward, 1 dynamic DNS hostname, 4 unicast nameservers unit objects; metered on object-count |
|---|---|
| Price | none stated |
| Limits | |
| Identity | email a first and last name, an e-mail address, a password and an hCaptcha; no phone and no card on the signup form (https://www.cloudns.net/index/show/signup/); an identity verification can be requested after signup |
| Egress | 500,000 DNS queries per month on Free, the only published query cap in this class free allowance: 500,000 queries per month |
| Per-object cap | 50 DNS records and 1 zone |
| Retention | a zone with no DNS queries for over 30 days can be deleted without notice, the free plan named in particular (30 days) |
| Interface | unknown the HTTP API at https://api.cloudns.net/ (auth-id and auth-password) manages zones and records, but the plan table marks HTTP API access absent on Free and present from Premium S at $2.95/month; the free plan's programmatic path is the DynURL of its one dynamic hostname, https://ipv4.cloudns.net/api/dynamicURL/?q=<token> (the ipv6.cloudns.net host for an AAAA record), which belongs to one A or AAAA record whose Dynamic URL is activated in the panel and changes the address of that record; its interface term would be dyndns, which the vocabulary lacks, so interface carries unknown |
| Tooling | on Free, curl or wget against the DynURL from cron, and the wiki's DynURL guides for Windows, Linux, Synology, MikroTik and pfSense; the HTTP API needs a paid plan |
| Composes with | the plan table gives Free no secondary DNS zones and no zone transfers, which rules out an AXFR pairing with another provider but not a second provider whose records are mirrored by hand |
| Reliability | a zone with no DNS queries for over 30 days, or a Free zone delegated to non-ClouDNS nameservers, can be suspended or deleted without notice |
| Notes | The Free plan holds 1 DNS zone and 50 DNS records. |
| Evidence note | documented the managed-DNS page was read and states the Free Forever column explicitly. |
| Parsed numbers |
|
Evidence 25
| date | source | what it proved |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-22 | www.cloudns.net/managed-dns/ | Free Forever: 4 unicast DNS servers, 1 DNS zone, 50 DNS records, 500K DNS queries per month, 1 mail forward, 1 dynamic DNS hostname; a paid tier raises queries to 500M a month |
| 2026-10-30 | www.cloudns.net/ajaxPages.php?action=index&show=registerForm | not published |
| 2026-10-30 | www.cloudns.net/premium/ | the plan table marks HTTP API access absent on Free; the raw page shows it ticked on Premium S, M, L and Enterprise |
| 2026-10-30 | www.cloudns.net/premium/ | the HTTP API access row is '-' for Free DNS and ticked for every paid column, Premium S at $2.95/month the cheapest |
| 2026-10-30 | www.cloudns.net/dynamic-dns/ | each A and AAAA record gets its own DynURL; the page links guides for Windows, Linux, Synology, MikroTik and pfSense |
| 2026-10-30 | www.cloudns.net/tos/ | a zone with no DNS queries for over 30 days can be deleted without notice, the free plan named in particular |
| 2026-10-30 | www.cloudns.net/premium/ | the free plan has no secondary DNS zones |
| 2026-10-30 | www.cloudns.net/tos/ | a Free zone is delegated to ClouDNS nameservers only, and one delegated elsewhere can be suspended or deleted |
| 2026-10-30 | www.cloudns.net/ajaxPages.php?action=index&show=registerForm | the signup form carries an hCaptcha |
| 2026-10-30 | www.cloudns.net/tos/ | an identity verification can be requested after signup |
| 2026-10-30 | www.cloudns.net/wiki/article/42/ | the record-management API is at api.cloudns.net with auth-id and auth-password |
| 2026-10-30 | www.cloudns.net/wiki/article/255/ | the dynamic update is a GET of ipv4.cloudns.net/api/dynamicURL/?q=<token>, or the ipv6 host for an AAAA record |
| 2026-10-30 | www.cloudns.net/dynamic-dns/ | the free plan includes Dynamic DNS, whose DynURL is the free plan's programmatic path |
| 2026-10-30 | www.cloudns.net/premium/ | the free plan has no zone transfers |
| 2026-10-30 | www.cloudns.net/premium/ | the free plan holds 50 records in 1 zone with 500K queries a month, 1 dynamic DNS hostname, unchanged |
| 2026-10-31 | www.cloudns.net/premium/ | the Free DNS column of the plan table gives 1 DNS zone and 50 DNS records |
| 2026-10-31 | www.cloudns.net/premium/ | the Free DNS column of the plan table is '-' for Secondary DNS zones and for Zone transfers, so Free has neither |
| 2026-10-31 | www.cloudns.net/ajaxPages.php?action=index&show=registerForm | the signup form has a name, an e-mail and a password field and an hCaptcha, and no phone and no card field |
| 2026-10-31 | www.cloudns.net/tos/ | an identity verification can be requested after signup |
| 2026-10-31 | www.cloudns.net/index/show/signup/ | the free plan's signup link is https://www.cloudns.net/index/show/signup/ |
| 2026-10-31 | www.cloudns.net/ajaxPages.php?action=index&show=registerForm | the signup form asks for an e-mail address; it has no phone and no card field |
| 2026-11-02 | www.cloudns.net/dynamic-dns/ | each A and AAAA record gets its own DynURL |
| 2026-11-02 | www.cloudns.net/dynamic-dns/ | the vendor describes dynamic DNS as changing the IP address of one or multiple DNS records automatically |
| 2026-11-02 | www.cloudns.net/wiki/article/255/ | the Dynamic URL of an A or AAAA record is activated in the panel of its zone |
| 2026-11-02 | www.cloudns.net/premium/ | part of the text of Interface, above |
Unknown values 1
- interface: the access interface was not established