I don't mind hosting my DNS at registrar, since they provide the service, but I do want to have secondary DNS servers/provider somewhere else: dns.he.net (free), or paid service elsewhere. But, unfortunately, none of the registrars I tried allow you to have secondary DNS server, ie allow dns AXFR for the zone file. (godaddy, hover, gandi, namecheap and 1and1 -- note, I tried them over the time and asked all of them for AXFR to have secondary zone elsewhere -- all of them declined. Latest and current is Hover).<p>After long time researching, I've decided to use $2/month plan on cloudns.net for primary DNS, and secondary at dns.he.net.
Most domains can have up to 13 name servers assigned at the registry, most domain registrars will let you setup 6 or more (mine does 6). Ideally you'd have your registrars and another source hosting your dns and keep them synced up.<p>Unless you have a weird edge case most of the time its set it up once and forget it. This way even if you registrar has problems you have another dns that is still up. Do a dig on some popular domains (like google,cnn,etc) and you'll see they have multiple dns entries by different providers.<p>If your website is important enough to keep up in case your registrar is not, then you need it hosted by multiple providers including your registrar (its usually free, why not right).
Sounds like the author doesn't know how any of this DNS stuff actually works.<p>The registrar ultimately controls which nameservers are used to lookup your domain. If someone has access to your registrar account then they can change this so it doesn't matter if you have separate services.<p>Also if your registrar is accessible but your DNS provider is down, you can switch to a different DNS provider at any time, it's not something to "prepare" for like this article says.
FYI, this references the DNSimple outage event on December 1st 2014. The point stands, but the "current" references aren't so current anymore.