Farewell Free OpenDNS For Businesses (and Churches)

Well, it's been a good run, but we recently got an email from OpenDNS that they are shutting down their free content filtering solution for businesses. They will still offer a free home solution, but a business (or church) will have to pay starting March 15. Here's a snipet from the email:

...OpenDNS Basic has been redesigned as a product for home use solely, to focus on delivering the best possible experience for individuals and families.  OpenDNS Enterprise, which launched two years ago and now has over 2,500 customers, is our product geared toward professional and commercial use of our Web content filtering and security services.  Though not free like the OpenDNS Basic service you use today, it includes significant additional functionality -- in particular, malware and botnet protection services vetted and chosen by Fortune 100 organizations who rely on OpenDNS Enterprise today.  And don't let the name fool you, while we are proud to have some of the largest companies in the world using OpenDNS, our business offering is competitively priced for businesses of all sizes.

If you choose not to migrate, you will continue to receive the same, best-in-class recursive DNS services for free without any usage limits, however all filtering functionality will be disabled on March 15th...

Here's the full announcement

WE started using OpenDNS at GCC on 7/30/08. Prior to that we were using the content filters on our Sonicwall firewall, but we had enough problems with it we went searching for a better solution … and thus started testing OpenDNS.

So I contacted OpenDNS to see if they offered a non-profit discount and to get pricing. Pricing is based on number of users you support … which is confusing if you're a church. If we include weekend attendees that's over 5000 people while our staff is about 80 full and part-timers. The quote I got back for 100 users was $2000 - $500 (non-profit discount) = $1500. While that's a descent discount, it's still way to much for my budget when our Sonicwall firewalls already have content filter licensing. We just haven't used the Sonicwall filters in forever! I'm told by other IT peers that the Sonicwall filters are far better than in years past … guess we'll soon find out ourselves :-)

I'm still a big fan of the free OpenDNS Family Shield solution for homes. Quick, easy, free and works very well.

[edit 2/8/12 12:58pm] After telling our OpenDNS rep we'll pass, he says he can get us down to $1000/yr.  Also had another church IT peer suggest we check out the free DynDNS filtering solution that sounds VERY similar to what OpenDNS has done for us. 

[edit 2/9/12] More info about the coming change in this forum

Comments

[Bryan Radtke]

Just went thru this. We used OpenDNS Enterprise for a year, but weren't overly satisfied and needed better reporting. We will continue using OpenDNS DNS servers, but implemented a Sophos Appliance for web filtering.

[Stuart]

So I'm guessing that if we haven't had an email then we won't get cut off.

But whatever this pricing structure sucks big time.