Constellix
Managed DNS providers software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
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Pay-as-you-go
Free Trial unavailableFree version unavailable
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- Transportation and logistics
- Healthcare and life sciences
- Banking and insurance
What is Constellix
Constellix is a managed DNS platform that provides authoritative DNS hosting with routing and traffic management features. It is used by IT, network, and DevOps teams to publish and control DNS zones for internet-facing applications and to improve availability through policy-based responses. The product emphasizes global DNS infrastructure, health checks, and multiple routing policies (for example, geo, latency, and failover) that can be managed via UI and APIs.
Health checks and failover
The platform includes monitoring/health checks that can influence DNS answers when an endpoint becomes unavailable. This enables automated DNS failover without manual record changes during incidents. For organizations that do not want to build custom monitoring-to-DNS automation, this reduces operational steps and time-to-mitigation.
Advanced DNS traffic steering
Constellix supports multiple routing policies such as geo-based responses, latency-based routing, and failover. These capabilities help teams direct users to specific endpoints and implement active-active or active-passive patterns at the DNS layer. This is useful for multi-region applications and disaster recovery designs where DNS decisions need to change based on endpoint health or location.
API-driven DNS management
Constellix provides programmatic management options suitable for infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD workflows. Teams can automate record updates, zone provisioning, and routing policy changes as part of deployment pipelines. This aligns with common operational patterns in managed DNS services where automation and repeatability are required at scale.
DNS-only scope for security
As a managed DNS provider, Constellix focuses on authoritative DNS and traffic steering rather than being a full web security and performance suite. Organizations that want integrated application-layer protections (for example, broader edge security controls) may need additional products. This can increase vendor count and integration effort for security and performance requirements beyond DNS.
Complexity for small deployments
Routing policies, health checks, and multi-endpoint configurations add operational complexity compared with basic DNS hosting. Smaller teams with simple zones may not use these features but still need to learn the model and manage configuration carefully. Misconfiguration risk increases when advanced routing is enabled without clear runbooks and testing.
Pricing and feature packaging
Managed DNS offerings often package advanced routing, monitoring, and higher query volumes into premium tiers. Buyers may need to validate which capabilities (for example, specific routing options or check frequency) are included in their plan and how overages are handled. This can make cost forecasting harder than simpler DNS-only services with flat pricing.
Plan & Pricing
Pricing model: Pay-as-you-go (usage-based) Billing cycle: Monthly (billed at month-end or when account hits credit threshold) Free tier/trial: No permanently free tier shown on the public site; demo available (see notes).
Key public pricing / billing details found on Constellix official site and knowledge base:
- Constellix uses a unit-based invoicing system and pricing schedules (discounts as usage increases). One query "count" is measured as 1,000,000 queries (one million). Pricing schedules reduce units-per-count at higher volumes (example: standard queries use 197,000 units/count until 1 billion queries, then 97,500 units/count).
- The lowest pricing schedule has an upper bound described as "500 million units or $1,000" (as stated in the billing KB).
- Clients are not invoiced unless their account balance exceeds $4.
- Default credit threshold for automatic invoicing is $100; accounts billed automatically when they reach their credit threshold.
- Pre-authorization (card validation) is a $5 returnable charge when adding a card.
- Manual invoice payments incur a $40 administrative fee for invoices under $500.
- Accounts with monthly balances over $10,000 are assigned a dedicated account representative.
- Certain add-on configuration fees are published (example from official SAML article: Platinum SSO = no fee; Gold & Standard SSO require $250 one-time setup + $100/month).
Free tier/trial (official site evidence):
- Permanent free plan: Unavailable (no evidence on official site).
- Time-limited free trial: Unavailable (official site offers "Request a Demo"/"Book a free demo" but does not show a public self-service free trial).
Discounts / pricing schedules:
- Discounts are applied via pricing schedules as usage increases; the billing KB describes automatically applied pricing schedules and unit reductions at higher usage tiers (no public per-dollar step-rates listed on the public site).
Notes / limitations:
- The Constellix public website and knowledge base document the billing model, invoicing rules, and unit/count mechanics, but they do not list full public per-dollar list prices (per-domain or per-query dollar rates) on the publicly accessible pages I could view. Specific per-dollar rates and detailed per-SKU prices appear to be available in the billing console or via sales.
