Hurricane Electric Free DNS service, $ 0.00/mo. on DNS

Free DNS service has been added on Jul 12, 2026, Aggregate Rating (10 out of 10 from 1 reviews)

🔌 Domains Allowed :	1
💳 Payment Methods :	Credit / Debit / Prepaid Cards
🔨 Control Panel :	[In-house]
🔧 Category :	DNS
✍️ Support Options :	EmailForum
⚑ Targeting :	US

See also initial Free DNS service plan location on their website!

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*📜 Plan description

📄 Editorial Review

Hurricane Electric (he.net) is first and foremost a global Internet backbone and colocation provider that also happens to run a fairly lean but capable shared hosting and dedicated server offering. The company is privately held, headquartered in Fremont, California, and has been around since 1994, founded by Mike Leber. Over three decades they have built a very large IPv4/IPv6 network and are widely regarded as one of the largest IPv6 backbones in the world by number of networks connected, with hundreds of Internet exchange points and thousands of peers on multiple continents.

The entire public site, control tools, and documentation run in English, and pricing is shown in US dollars (USD). Hurricane Electric clearly targets technically competent customers: network engineers, ISPs, hosting providers, and organizations that care about routing quality, IPv6, and owning their infrastructure. The retail web hosting portion is relatively small compared to colocation and IP transit, but it is still actively maintained and integrated into the backbone.

Shared Web Hosting (Virtual Host Accounts)

Instead of a large grid of consumer plans, Hurricane Electric keeps shared hosting streamlined around two Linux-based Virtual Host plans:
Enhanced Virtual Host – $24.95/month / Professional Virtual Host – $59.95/month
Both plans include: Static IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for each account & Generous resources:

• Enhanced: 150 GB web space, 1500 GB monthly transfer, up to 25 domains
• Professional: 300 GB web space, 3000 GB monthly transfer, up to 50 domains
• Full Unix-style environment: SFTP/SCP, CGI, Server Side Includes, Cron jobs, access to raw web logs
• Popular scripting stacks: Perl, Python, Ruby, PHP 7.x, plus MySQL databases
• Email platform: 2,500 / 5,000 POP3/IMAP mailboxes, authenticated SMTP, spam filtering, autoresponders
• DNS management for the hosted domains, Webalizer traffic stats, and SSL certificate support

Shared hosting runs on top of Hurricane Electric’s own backbone, with a 10 Gbps international core, multiple upstream connections for redundancy, UPS and generator power, and centrally managed web servers. The feature set is decidedly Unix admin–friendly: there is no flashy "site builder", but instead a stable environment for people happy with FTP/SFTP, shells, and manual app deployment.

A notable plus is the 30-day money-back guarantee on these Virtual Host accounts and the explicit emphasis on month-to-month service rather than long contracts. For technically savvy users who want many email boxes, lots of transfer, and native IPv6 on a network they can respect, these plans are attractive despite the old-school presentation.

Dedicated Servers

Hurricane Electric also runs a dedicated server program built directly inside its Fremont colocation facilities. Rather than a public price grid, dedicated servers are arranged via phone or email with sales, which suits businesses that want specific configurations rather than commodity entry-level boxes.

Key characteristics of this line:

• Servers are installed in Hurricane Electric’s industrial colocation rooms, connected straight to the global backbone
• Operating system choices include Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD
• Systems are configured with minimal exposed services and extra OS-level hardening to limit remote or local privilege escalation
• 24×7×365 monitoring of hardware and connectivity, with routine checks and proactive handling of issues
• On-site spares for disks, power supplies, boards, and RAM to minimize downtime if something fails
• Optional extras: root access, offsite storage servers, additional monitoring, usage statistics, and backup services

The dedicated platform is clearly angled at companies that prefer to offload physical infrastructure and connectivity, but still want tight control over the software stack and routing environment. It’s a network-first take on traditional bare-metal hosting.

Colocation

Colocation is where Hurricane Electric really leans in. They own and operate at least two large data centers in Fremont plus additional presence in San Jose (Silicon Valley), and colocation is offered with immediate availability – a cabinet or even multiple cabinets can be brought online quickly once a deal is in place.

Highlights from the colocation offering:

• Plans from single-U space up to full cabinets and space for tens of thousands of servers
• Connectivity options:
  • Direct connection to Hurricane Electric’s global backbone using Gigabit (1 Gbps) or 10 Gigabit Ethernet
  • Ability to connect to many different carriers and networks with diverse fiber entering the buildings
• Example promotion: $600/month for a 42U cabinet including power and 1 Gbps Internet bandwidth (limit one per customer)
• Core facilities:
  • Fremont 2 (48233 Warm Springs Blvd): ~3,000 cabinets, 13 IXPs, 295+ networks, 8 carriers, 200,000 sq ft, 24×7 staff and remote hands, diverse A/B power, UPS and generators, individually locked cabinets, dense video surveillance, card-key security
  • Fremont 1 (760 Mission Ct): ~1,000 cabinets, multiple IXPs, tens of networks and carriers, raised floors, 24×7 access and remote hands, secure cabinets with surveillance and access control
  • San Jose (55 South Market, Suite 1400): smaller footprint but cage space in the same building as a major regional Internet exchange, with 20+ carriers available and biometric access controls

For customers who want to place their own hardware inside a well-connected West Coast facility, these sites provide high density, serious network reach, and on-site staff around the clock.

IP Transit, Layer 2, DNS, and Tools

Beyond hosting and colocation, Hurricane Electric is heavily focused on IP transit and layer-2 transport. Their network runs multiple 100 Gbps rings across North America, Europe, and Asia, plus a ring around Africa and a PoP in Australia, and connects to over 320 Internet exchange points with direct peering to more than 9,600 other networks. This makes them especially attractive as an upstream provider for ISPs, content networks, and other operators that want dual-stack IPv4/IPv6 at scale.

For hosting customers, the interesting side effect of this backbone focus is the ecosystem of supporting services:

• Free DNS hosting (dns.he.net) with dual-stack resolvers, extensive record types (A, AAAA, CAA, ALIAS, MX, TXT, SRV, etc.), dynamic DNS support, and geographically distributed name servers
• A long-running IPv6 certification program and tunnel broker, handy for engineers and organizations testing or deploying IPv6
• The public BGP Toolkit (bgp.he.net) and looking glass tools, which make it easy to inspect routing, peers, and Internet statistics

All of this makes Hurricane Electric a generic web host and more like a network operator that happens to sell web hosting on top of its own pipes.