If we purchase a domain from a company who doesn’t offer free DNS management and want to customize its DNS records (like pointing MX records to Gmail), that’s when a solid DNS service is needed.

EntryDNS is a completely free DNS management service which allows any number of domains and records being created.

It has support for providing free DNS addresses for dynamic IPs as well (with the domain emtrydns.org).

And, there is a REST API for modifying DNS records which is useful for integrations with 3rd party apps.

Every designer & developer has at least few domain names (some of us has many).

Also, we all have projects in mind that searching the domain names for them is sometimes the biggest joy of the project as it is an important process.

The tools & services mentioned in this post are not the "all" solutions you can find but, considering domain names are valuable assets, they are the ones I experienced or still using regarding managing & searching for domain names. And they work great.

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Domain Search

Domize – Very Fast Domain Search

Domize is a simple but very effective & fast domain search site which shows you results while you type. It looks for the availability of all possible domains by removing the last letters of the searched word like: testsearch, testsearc, testsear & so..

It also has an iPhone interface and can be integrated to any website via a widget.

DomJax

An Ajax domain name search which also lets you to see the PageRank & provides the links for validators and other domain tools.

Bust A Name

Bust A Name has a fast Ajaxed domain search. You can instantly save the domains that you searched for reviewing them again.

Also, it has a word combiner that lookups for the domains that are generated from the keywords mentioned. These features make it a "must use" for the process of thinking & searching" for a name.

MakeWords

This site helps you find a nice domain name with the keywords you provide + the theme based dictionary it has.

If you don’t exactly know what are you looking for & have ideas flying around, MakeWords can help you.

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Many users updating a domain’s DNS addresses while switching web hosting companies, probably, has an experience with new DNS addresses not being activated in a short time & spent some time with checking if they are activated or not.

DNSPinger is free web-based service that checks the domain name provided every 3 minutes for 24 hours and notifies the user via e-mail when the DNS update is activated.

The story

Few days ago, I updated the DNS addresses of a domain name and it took more than 12 hours to activate and I spent some time with pinging it to see if the hosting switch was successful. Rather than checking for it anymore, I created a .vbs file that would check the update status and notify me.

Hoping to help other users having the same problem, here is DNSPinger, an easy to use DNS update notifier.

If you’re dealing frequently with domain names, bookmark DNSPinger and it’ll save your time.