DNS and email with no sysadmin

I hate having to sysadmin. So I’m constantly looking for free or cheap hosts for the fundamentals. Not in the VeriSign everything-and-the-kitchen-sink- but-you-have-to-pay-extra-for-everything- and-you-can’t-even-do-simple-things manner. Just give me a web interface to configure things, and keep the systems humming. I’ll take it from there.

For DNS, I’ve found mydomain.com. They give me a nice web interface for setting everything from subdomains, via setting A/CNAME/MX records, to email forwarding rules. You don’t have to worry about keeping your DNS servers accessible, and you don’t have to worry about messing up named.conf.

And then for email I’ve found fastmail.fm, who provides me with a mail box, including a super-fast web interface, IMAP, POP, authenticated SMTP, lots of storage space, and exceptional service. Some of it you have to pay for, but it’s still pretty cheap for what you get.

I’m also looking at rackspace.com (or rackspace.co.uk for those of us in Europe). It is definitely looking interesting for hosting private servers.