Unsplash customer story
DNS management at scale
Luke Chesser, Cofounder & Head of Product at Unsplash
Handling 10s of billions of requests a month
The Company
Unsplash provides high-resolution images to millions of users on a community-powered platform. With over 100,000 contributors and more than 1 billion downloads, dependable DNS management is critical to Unsplash's success. That's why they partnered with DNSimple in 2017 and haven't looked back.
In all the years of running Unsplash and handling 10s of billions of requests a month across our API, CDNs, and site, we've never once had an issue with our DNS. It just works.
Luke Chesser, Cofounder & Head of Product at Unsplash
A Need for Reliability
The amount of traffic Unsplash handles on a daily basis means they need a straightforward, stable DNS hosting provider, and no unwelcome surprises. But they were having a hard time finding it. Most services they tried seemed more interested in sales than anything else. Unsplash felt the process was difficult, and that they were constantly being up-sold.
Whenever [you] make a change to a domain that is running a lot of traffic on it, you want no surprises in the process. Other services felt like they complicated the process and felt unreliable.
Luke Chesser, Cofounder & Head of Product at Unsplash
The services weren't meeting their needs. And they didn't need someone selling them a lot of things they wouldn't use. They wanted a DNS host with expert-level service that was focused on its goals and transparent in its practices.
A few of their team members were already using DNSimple for their personal sites, and liked the service. They decided to try DNSimple for their company, too.
The Unsplash team
Choosing DNSimple
DNSimple focuses on doing a few things really well, and then it gets out of your way.
Luke Chesser, Cofounder & Head of Product at Unsplash
DNSimple's approach to DNS management is exactly what Unsplash wanted. They appreciate the ease of use, and streamlined management and configuration processes, along with our comprehensive documentation. When they set up their domains in our web interface, it was a clear-cut process, and the best implementation they'd seen.
Having a service that makes that process [DNS configuration] as approachable as possible, with helpful documentation, is a must, so that you can easily configure DNS and get back to building products.
Luke Chesser, Cofounder & Head of Product at Unsplash
DNSimple met their needs with our straightforward, stable DNS hosting service. No surprises, no complicated contracts, and no more hours searching for information if they didn't understand part of the process.
Ultimately at the end of the day, DNSimple is a service we trust: from the pricing, to the predictable experience (no surprises), and the reliability as a DNS host provider.
Luke Chesser, Cofounder & Head of Product at Unsplash
Scaling with Their Needs
Because DNSimple specializes in best-in-class DNS management tools, we easily scaled with Unsplash's rapid growth.
DNSimple has been one of the few products that we have continued to use, despite growing significantly both in team size and traffic. That the service has always been reliable and inexpensive has made it a core part of our stack and one that we'll continue using.
Luke Chesser, Cofounder & Head of Product at Unsplash
Over the last three years, DNSimple has proven we're the best DNS hosting provider for Unsplash. Our service has been reliable and trustworthy from day one. And we've still never tried to up-sell them. We do what we do best, so they can do what they do best.
Unsplash also has some advice for anyone who's in the same boat they were:
Skip the other services and use DNSimple 😉
Luke Chesser, Cofounder & Head of Product at Unsplash
If you're ready for the same reliable DNS management, transparent pricing, and scalable services that helped Unsplash with their success, give us a try.
Favorite features
Anycast DNS
Faster sites. Reduces the latency by advertising the same IP from different locations.
Multi-layered DDoS defense
Reduce the risk of your application being down due to DDoS attacks.
More customer stories
Empowering open source maintainers
How Linux Foundation simplified and automated their domain management through DNSimple.
Automation through DNSimple
How DNSimple provides the tools to register, connect, and operate customized domains within the ClickFunnels process.
Worry-free DNS
How Zenjoy simplified and consolidated their domain and DNS management with DNSimple.