DNS redirection - Results
Over the past few months I have been testing out various DNS redirection services. I would say overall they are much of the same and generally worked with popular sites (such as Hulu and Netflix) based in the USA. Some did cover popular non US sites, namely BBC iPlayer, while a small minority covered a wide variety of sites. Naturally in all cases the the main sites covered by these services were for streaming services.
One annoyance / downside with all these services was that none of them allowed me to stream Pandora on my Squeezbox Boom. I had previously not had such an issue with Unblock-us* but it now seems that Unblock-us is in the same boat as the other DNS redirection services: pandora on squeezebox not working via unblock-us.
Before I go into a summary of the sites I have tried out, I am listing links to my other postings on this topic. Previously I had used Posterous for my postings, but Posterous is shutting down at the end of April, so I’m now linking the postings from Blogger:
- Which DNS redirection service? (30 November 2012)
- Updates - DNS redirection service (10 December 2012)
- DNS redirection - further update (20 December 2012)
Here is a summary of the services I tried out (I have been trying these services out from around January 2013 till April 2013). In all instances I would update the DNS addresses on my router, rather than on individual machines. Where possible I would sign up to a free trial:
- Free service, still in Beta
- Works on a limited selection of US sites
- Worked without any major issues
- Not bad at all for the price (i.e. free)
At this point I should also mention another free DNS redirection service called Tunlr. I did not bother testing it out because Tunlr suggests you do not set your DNS permanently to Tunlr. Their FAQs are quite clear that they are not a professional service, but more of a hobby project. For my purposes I need something more solid.
- Had a few service problems, it would sometimes just stop working
- Generally OK for US sites, however Hulu Desktop would sometimes stop working
- Very slow with UK sites and the BBC sites did not work at all
- Seems you can only select one region at a time [i.e. if you select US region you can only unlock US sites]
- NOTE: since I tried Blockless out they have updated their website and offering, so things may have improved
- Limited range of site, to US services
- Generally worked OK
- Crackle was supposed to work, but it didn’t work when I tried
- Hulu Desktop app would not work
- Found general browsing to be a bit slow
- Support was limited
- US only sites
- Strangely for a service like this, no Twitter or Facebook contacts
- For free trial had to provide credit card details (this was the only service that required this for a free trial)
- Billing commenced before the week trial was over
- Zero support, even after support requests did not hear anything
- Generally worked OK, but due to billing issues and lack of contact points would not recommend
- While it did not offer a free trial they did offer a 48 hour money back guarantee
- They offer various prices depending on subscription length and also offer VPN services (the longer you sign up for the cheaper it becomes on a monthly basis, for example one month access for the DNS service is US$4.95, but if you sign up for 1 year it works out to US$4.16 a month)
- Covers a wide variety of sites in both the USA and UK and all the Netflix regions (you have the option of choosing which Netflix region you would like to connect to)
- Has several DNS servers, including in Singapore
- Generally very good service for both US and UK sites (sometimes slightly slow for UK sites, but that may have been an ISP limitation)
- Good user control panel page
- Excellent customer support, including both via live help and email
- Covers a massive range of sites, not just the usual US and UK ones, but other countries such as Sweden and Switzerland
- Offers a unique service called UnoDNS Dynamo
- Has several DNS services, including three in Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan)
- Generally very good service for all sites (sometimes slightly slow for non US sites, but that may have been an ISP limitation)
- Excellent user control panel page
- Excellent customer support
So, after all of that, which service?
If your intention is just to access a few popular streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix in the USA, I would say at the moment ProxyDNS as its free. They do say they are in beta at present so may charge in the future.
I do require access to non US sites (such as BBC iPlayer, amongst others), so ProxyDNS is not the best solution for me.
Out of all the DNS redirections services have have tried out I think Unblock-us*, Overplay* and UnoTelly* provide the best service. All three of them are very robust, cover a wide range of sites and have excellent customer services.
From a price point, I was disappointed Unblock-us dropped its yearly plan, otherwise I probably would have just stuck with them. They said they would be offering a VPN service, however I have not heard anything further on this since November 2012.
I do not see the benefit over Unblock-us over UnoTelly or Overplay, especially if Pandora over the Squeezebox no longer works on Unblock-us. All three services do offer Netflix locale switching, while Overplay and UnoTelly offer additional services that Unblock-us does not offer and they both offer yearly plans.
While both Overplay and UnoTelly offer VPN services, I have not found myself needing VPN so often, and when I do, I have found the free option with TunnelBear to be more than sufficient.
The yearly price for DNS services with Overplay and UnoTelly are roughly the same, UnoTelly comes out slightly cheaper. I do find UnoTelly has a slight edge on services offered as well (for example having a Hong Kong DNS server and UnoDNS Dynamo).
I guess therefore, for me, UnoTelly has a slight edge over Overplay.
(Note, links with * are referral links).
