As a note: you'll have to add a valid payment method on DigitalOcean to activate your account, but once you're in it's free to use all the DNS features, and you can automate via the API, docs here: https://developers.digitalocean.com/documentation/v2/#domain...
That doesn't give me good vibes. They're surely going to attempt to monetize it at some point. What's the benefit for digitalocean to providing a 'free' service?
Note that I'm a Developer Advocate at DigitalOcean.
AFAIK, there is no plans to move to paid service. It makes sense to make DNS management easier for developers if you have your applications or websites running on our droplets.
As a note: you'll have to add a valid payment method on DigitalOcean to activate your account, but once you're in it's free to use all the DNS features, and you can automate via the API, docs here: https://developers.digitalocean.com/documentation/v2/#domain...