Azure DNS vs BlueCat Integrity comparison

Microsoft and BlueCat are both solutions in the Managed DNS category. Microsoft is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3, while BlueCat is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.9. Microsoft holds a 20.3% mindshare in MDP, compared to BlueCat’s 5.2% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of BlueCat users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

BlueCat Integrity and Azure DNS compete in the domain name system (DNS) solutions market. Azure DNS holds an upper hand due to its seamless integration with Azure services, making it advantageous for cloud deployment.

Features: BlueCat Integrity is noted for its stability, flexibility, and comprehensive DNS, DHCP functionalities, alongside a user-friendly interface. It offers strong automation and API integration, along with security compliance. Its Linux-based foundation enhances reliability. Azure DNS stands out with features like DDoS protection, exceptional integration with Azure services, and robust DNS management, which include security benefits such as Defender for DNS.

Room for Improvement: BlueCat Integrity could improve its reporting capabilities, multi-factor authentication support, and broaden its IPv6 feature set. It has limited integration with cloud services and documentation needs enhancement. Azure DNS requires clearer domain registration processes and enhanced visibility for troubleshooting. Its scalability is challenged in multi-cloud and hybrid environments, and it could improve security features further.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: BlueCat Integrity is praised for its flexible deployment options across on-premises and hybrid clouds, aided by professional service offerings for complex integrations. Its customer support, though occasionally slow, is knowledgeable and dedicated. Azure DNS offers smooth integration within Microsoft's ecosystem but lacks specialized enterprise support, often requiring external expertise for advanced settings.

Pricing and ROI: BlueCat Integrity is priced at an enterprise level, shifting from perpetual licenses to subscriptions, considered costly but returns value through operational efficiency. Azure DNS pricing is based on Azure service usage, usually seen as more affordable due to Microsoft package inclusions. Its cost-effectiveness suits smaller deployments, while BlueCat caters to large-scale robust needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure DNS vs. BlueCat Integrity Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Azure DNS vs. BlueCat Integrity

December 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM NS1 Connect

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of IBM NS1 Connect is 2.7%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure DNS is 20.3%, down from 22.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BlueCat Integrity is 5.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed DNS

Featured Reviews

Michael Wills

Senior Network Systems Engineer at McKesson

Balances cost and functionality, speeds up provisioning, and reduces the DNS maintenance work drastically

The provisioning is great. They have an API service that is simple to use and very quick. The changes that we make are replicated worldwide in a matter of usually milliseconds, sometimes seconds. They are done very rapidly. That's something that's obviously priceless when we're dealing with things like DNS. It is great as an API-first platform for DNS and application traffic management. It is very simple to use. It allows us to rapidly provision and deprovision things. We are all around happy with the solution. From a metrics standpoint, the solution that we came from had no metrics. So, it has been great. Their service team is excellent in taking the time to provide reports for both growth and strategic planning. It has been great.

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Tushar-Patil

Senior Consultant at Hexaware Technologies Limited

Offers good performance and helps its users with disaster recovery

Azure DNS has improved our company's domain management and resolution reliability since it provides most of the solutions, especially whatever is required in our organization. My experience of integrating Azure DNS into our company's existing cloud services was easy. For the security and privacy aspect, my company mostly relies on Microsoft. I don't have the expertise to comment on whether Azure DNS has influenced our company's operations from a security and privacy perspective. Azure DNS is a really good product when it comes to scalability and performance for our company's workload. Azure DNS has helped my company with the disaster recovery phase. The product uses cloud features, and since my company has separate regions, we have a backup tool or a backup deduplication technology. The implementation of Azure DNS in our environment benefits the entire organization, but four to five people have access to the solution. I rate the overall product a nine to ten out of ten.

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Ian Slade

Sr. Manager Network Engineering and Architecture at SAIC

It improves our security by providing a single source of IP address usage and contact information

As a defense contractor, we must meet many compliance standards regarding logging, configuration, and administrative access. BlueCat is one of the few products that combines all the compliance components in a secure, reliable solution. Integrity requires some technological expertise and a full-time employee to run the system. It is one of several technologies that my group manages, but maintenance requires minimal effort. Upgrading and deploying the solution is a bigger task, but it is easy to maintain once it is running. BlueCat Integrity offers a single pane of glass view for our IP address space. From the GUI interface, you can see all the IP addresses and roll them up to the colored views of usage and availability. That capability is critical because we have multiple groups that are off on their own in a cloud environment. We can avoid IP address overlap by checking that as we add different projects. While I've worked at this company, we've had more than 50 acquisitions. As we acquire these companies, some IP addresses may overlap. We can integrate those, see the spaces, and adjust.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"One of the features that is non-standard and that is very useful is the filtered DNS. We have set up our external VPN, which is what all our employees connect through, to use this feature. It's geolocation-aware. In that way, for India we set it up so that these are the servers that should be supporting things, and in the UK these servers, in the U.S. these servers, and in Sweden these ones."

"The Filter Chain is one of the most valuable features, for geo-load balancing and geo-fencing. The Filter Chain is the most useful because it allows us to do several things. With geo-fencing we can redirect a particular user to a particular answer. That's very valuable for us. Filter Chains with monitoring is our strategy to provide redundancy."

"The provisioning is great. They have an API service that is simple to use and very quick. The changes that we make are replicated worldwide in a matter of usually milliseconds, sometimes seconds. They are done very rapidly. That's something that's obviously priceless when we're dealing with things like DNS."

"For starters, it integrates with Terraform and a lot of our infrastructure is effectively built out using Terraform. That makes all this stuff extremely easy... when we deploy, all the entries are created and configuration is done."

"We leverage two things from Managed DNS that we couldn't do with any other solution. One is their filter chain technology, which allows us to shift some of the intelligence we need for the traffic steering to the DNS. The second one is data sources, which enables us to manipulate multiple records simultaneously using NS1's internal message DOS. In our case, we are trying to direct the traffic in over 150,000 different NS1 records to an arbitrary set of repeating responses."

"Monitoring is really important for us. We really care about reliability, and we want to make sure that we can remove some points of presence in our sector and in our edge network really fast when we experience any problems. So, monitoring that NS1 provides for DNS is really important for us."

"The fact that it's an API-first platform for DNS and application traffic management is one of the reasons we looked into NS1. We use it for a lot of automation and metrics gathering and it's been great."

"We find that the low latency access to DNS queries has a direct effect on the customer experience. Visiting a site, whether it's an AdTech-based solution or marketing tech, the fact that whatever we're rendering on a page can be rendered better than the industry standard, in terms of time, ensures a better user experience."

More IBM NS1 Connect pros

"It is a scalable solution."

"The most valuable features of Azure DNS are the DNS forwarder and the DNS additional record editions."

"I like the feature where I can add multiple DNS records for the same subdomain."

"The best feature is the domain register. The other great feature is that whenever you create any resources, Azure DNS will automatically create a record for you."

"The setup is relatively straightforward."

"Azure DNS is a user-friendly and very easy-to-manage solution."

"Azure DNS provides end-to-end P2P connectivity and enhances security, making it more secure and reliable."

"The DNS resolution is the most valuable feature."

More Azure DNS pros

"The solution includes automatic management of segments."

"The most significant advantage of BlueCat is its foundation on open-source software, specifically BIND and ISC DHCP."

"The most valuable piece, which has been a lifesaver, would be the BlueCat DNS resolver. BlueCat Cloud DNS resolver is a tool that takes a look into your cloud's DNS and then reports back everything it finds into BlueCat's DNS Edge solution. The Edge solution has a bunch of nice rules that you can configure to route the DNS traffic. That automation alone is a lifesaver for me for the day-to-day churn of the DNS components that change on an hourly, daily basis."

"It's a critical infrastructure piece. This is where all the IPs are named for the whole organization. It's a big deal. It has all the features related to DNS and DHCP. It's pretty amazing."

"I've been impressed by BlueCat's performance and user-friendly GUI."

"BlueCat Integrity's scalability and user-friendliness are the most valuable features."

"Adaptive DNS's best feature is DDoS protection, which stops malware and network security attacks."

"The solution is scalable in multiple ways."

More BlueCat Integrity pros

Cons

"There could maybe be additional ways to manage traffic. There are no major improvements we're looking for. It's a very complete solution."

"I would love to see improvement in the testing capabilities they provide. They have a simulate-filter feature so that you can simulate how your traffic would flow, based on their Filter Chains. I believe that was shut off for quite some time. Having that as a way to test our load-balanced CDN structure would be fantastic."

"We use the geo load balancing functionality and there are a couple of things that are helpful there. But the language itself is something we had to get used to a little bit. Some of my folks made a few mistakes in rolling out the Filter Chain...The Filter Chain setup is a bit hard to grasp at first. It would also be nice to have a way to simulate changes in addition to staging."

"We would really like them to become a DNS registrar."

"I would like to see the UI updated to allow me to do finer searches. I would also like to have the ability to get reports that can sort based on various metrics. For example, I would like to be able to say, "Show me the top 10 records by total queries" in an easy-to-digest format."

"When we first deployed, we flipped the switch, and it didn't work as well as we expected. It wasn't a complete outage, but we had issues in some places with some customers. The NS1 team went out of their way to resolve it on Thanksgiving. We have a post about it on our blog. We called it "Black Thursday.""

"We care about monitoring and telemetry work, and NS1 provides a pretty good system for monitoring. We can monitor our endpoints and points of presence around the world. If there are any issues, we can easily remove them from our network, but this area needs some improvement because it is not always reliable in NS1. In the past, we had a number of false-positive cases when the monitoring system told us about some problems in our infrastructure that were not true. NS1 is improving the system, and we are constantly talking about this with them. I know that they are releasing a new version of their monitoring system, which is really important for us, but this is a different area where we would expect them to improve."

"The reporting metrics are great from an API standpoint, but it would be a little bit nicer if there was some type of dashboard around that. There should also be some type of reporting that's more executive-level focused."

More IBM NS1 Connect cons

"The DNSSEC feature is not yet available on the DNS server so it needs to be added."

"The process of creating a virtual mission could be improved."

"The support from Microsoft in India is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"Azure DNS does provide enhanced support for applications and includes several security features to protect against threats. One of the security features it offers is the ability to detect and prevent dangling DNS records, which can be used in cyber attacks. Dangling DNS records occur when a website owner creates a domain name but forgets to remove the CNAME record, leaving the domain vulnerable to takeover by malicious actors. Azure DNS includes security measures to identify and prevent such threats, helping to keep your DNS infrastructure secure. However, if Microsoft could add more security capabilities to the DNS, that would be great to detect and identify anomalies that are happening to prevent cyber threats."

"Azure needs to add domain registration to the DNS service."

"The solution’s pricing could be improved."

"The solution should provide better pricing."

"Azure DNS' documentation needs to improve."

More Azure DNS cons

"I would like the GUI to be similar to AWS and Azure, where we can simply click on an item to expand it and see all the information on one page, without having to click to the next page."

"The solution does not export reports in a comprehensive format."

"The user interface could be improved, as the implementation of BlueCat can be complicated and requires personnel with expertise in DNS, DHCP, and IP management."

"The integration has room for improvement."

"The IPAM dashboard could be enhanced to display more information and provide data analysis features."

"Some areas need improvement, especially the issue with stale entries in the BlueCat tenancy. I have heard that it is already fixed in BlueCat Integrity 10. I have not used that yet."

"The UI is outdated and needs a modern refresh."

"Usability needs to be better."

More BlueCat Integrity cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From a cost standpoint, it's certainly not the most expensive out there, and it's also not the cheapest, but it does well to balance the cost and the functionality/reliability."

"We pay about $30,000 a month. We used to pay about $20,000 with Dyn every month, for lower volume than we're doing right now, but it had none of the features that we have available with NS1, so it was worth it for us. It seems competitive for us, given that we're doing 4.5 billion requests."

"The cost of this product is one of the reasons that we chose it."

"Everything can always be cheaper, but as it is today the pricing is fair."

"NS1's pricing is much more aggressive than its competitors in the market and you get more value out of what you pay for it."

"The solution is free."

"The solution payment model is based on how many users use it. This is not an expensive solution, but it can depend on how long we use it. However, if the price was decreased it would be helpful."

"I would describe Azure DNS as a cheaply priced product."

"The solution is moderately priced."

"The solution's price is reasonable."

"The pricing is expensive."

"The solution itself is free but you need to pay for the Microsoft Azure infrastructure and host your domains in Azure to use it."

"To use Azure DNS, I need to buy the license meant for Windows Server."

More Azure DNS pricing and cost advice

"Adaptive DNS's price depends on your network ranges, the services you want, and the level of support you require."

"Compared to other solutions, BlueCat Integrity offers a competitive price."

"BlueCat Integrity's pricing is reasonable within the market."

"I am not sure about the exact pricing, but I believe their cost is lower compared to Infoblox."

"Overall, I would say that it is priced fairly, though perhaps a bit on the high side."

"BlueCat Integrity is more cost-effective than Infoblox."

"We paid around $5,000 per year for SolarWinds, and now we pay around $20,000 per year for BlueCat, but we have less downtime and fewer issues with DNS and DHCP."

"While BlueCat falls on the expensive side, its exceptional customer service and consistent quality justify the cost."

More BlueCat Integrity pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

University

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NS1 Managed DNS?

For starters, Managed DNS from NS1 is an easy way to get the job done. Whether you're a novice or a pro, Managed DNS ...

See all answers

Azure DNS or Amazon Route 53?

Azure DNS is a hosting service of DNS domains. It has excellent operating time and performance, resulting in fast res...

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What do you like most about Azure DNS?

The tool is easy to manage and use.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure DNS?

The web interface to manage the solution must be made easier. The tool must provide seamless integration between DHCP...

See all answers

What do you like most about BlueCat Adaptive DNS?

This inherent stability, derived from its Linux-based architecture, provides a well-established and reliable platform.

See all answers

What needs improvement with BlueCat Adaptive DNS?

The user interface could be improved, as the implementation of BlueCat can be complicated and requires personnel with...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for BlueCat Adaptive DNS?

We have been a partner of BlueCat for two years now, and we are responsible for deploying the solution over the Middl...

See all answers

Comparisons

Cloudflare vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 41% of the time

Akamai Edge DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 19% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 18% of the time

Neustar UltraDNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 6% of the time

Infoblox DDI vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM NS1 Connect Competitors

Amazon Route 53 vs Azure DNS

Compared 57% of the time

Cloudflare vs Azure DNS

Compared 28% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Azure DNS

Compared 5% of the time

Infoblox DDI vs Azure DNS

Compared 5% of the time

Quad9 vs Azure DNS

Compared 1% of the time

More Azure DNS Competitors

Infoblox DDI vs BlueCat Integrity

Compared 50% of the time

Infoblox IPAM vs BlueCat Integrity

Compared 23% of the time

SolarWinds IPAM vs BlueCat Integrity

Compared 8% of the time

Cloudflare vs BlueCat Integrity

Compared 5% of the time

NetBox.dev vs BlueCat Integrity

Compared 2% of the time

More BlueCat Integrity Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM NS1 Connect

December 2024

Download IBM NS1 Connect product report

Buyer's Guide

Azure DNS

December 2024

Download Azure DNS product report

Buyer's Guide

BlueCat Integrity

December 2024

Download BlueCat Integrity product report

Also Known As

NS1 Managed DNS, NS1

No data available

BlueCat Adaptive DNS, BlueCat Automation Manager, BlueCat DDI

Learn More

IBM

Microsoft

BlueCat

Overview

Why

In a 24/7 world, customers demand applications, websites, and content that load instantly and are always on. When those connections are unreliable or slow, businesses don’t meet customer expectations, causing customers to leave. When that occurs, revenue may suffer.

What

IBM NS1 Connect delivers the high-performance, reliable, secure network connectivity that businesses need to meet increasingly sophisticated customer expectations. Leveraging a global network with a 100% uptime SLA, IBM has the capacity and scale to meet the needs of any business. IBM NS1 Connect takes performance to the next level, powering the sophisticated needs of enterprises with complex network infrastructures.

How

IBM NS1 Connect provides network connectivity solutions that give networking teams the visibility, control and automation needed to help ensure your business stays online by steering traffic to the ideal network connections for any given moment. IBM NS1 Connect also enables IT teams to identify network performance anomalies through deep insights into DNS data flows, allowing them to identify configuration problems or network issues that affect performance so they can quickly resolve them.

Details

IBM NS1 Connect is a managed service that provides authoritative, premium DNS and advanced, customizable traffic steering that improves application performance and network resilience. Revenue-generating applications require authoritative DNS resolution to keep critical applications and websites online. Unless your DNS infrastructure is always-on and resilient, network reliability and user experience will suffer, your network reliability may suffer, resulting in poor user experiences if revenue-generating critical applications and websites are not online. IBM NS1 Connect’s always-on, API-first architecture provides fast, secure connections to users anywhere in the world with premium DNS and advanced, customizable traffic steering. It also enables your IT teams to efficiently monitor networks, deploy changes and conduct routine maintenance.

IBM NS1 Connect uses the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure that websites and applications are:

Online, all the time: Global network with 100% uptime SLA and DDoS protection
Fast: Top tier response and propagation times, custom traffic steering to optimize connections
Cheaper to run: Far less expensive than self-hosting
Automation friendly: API-first platform with Ansible/Terraform integrations and support for Pliant rapid network automation
Easier to troubleshoot: Unique DNS data insights offering

Designed for enterprises looking to optimize their DNS performance, IBM NS1 Connect is a managed service delivering authoritative DNS and advanced traffic steering that improves application performance and network resilience and provides fast, secure connections to users anywhere in the world. NS1 Connect streamlines DNS management by automating both simple and complex DNS configuration tasks via API and preconfigured integrations, so you can spend more time on higher-value work.

IBM NS1 Connect is delivered through our unified delivery platform. The cloud-based platform gives networking teams the visibility, control and automation needed to help ensure your business stays online by steering traffic to the ideal network connections for any given moment. IBM NS1 Connect solutions also enable IT teams to identify network performance anomalies through deep insights into DNS data flows, allowing them to identify configuration problems or network issues that affect performance so they can quickly resolve them.

For enterprises looking to further optimize DNS performance, IBM NS1 Connect offers rich DNS data analytics to streamline the identification of the root cause of anomalies within traffic.

IBM NS1 Connect Features

Global anycast DNS network: Enjoy fast connections to consumers around the globe through an anycast network with 26 points of presence (PoPs).
100% uptime SLA on DNS resolution: Maximize uptime and revenue generation with resilient, always-on, authoritative DNS.
API-first architecture: Integrate and automate workflows with NS1 Connect's well-documented API; every line of code starts as an API call, all functionality is available through the API.
Real-time user monitoring (RUM)-based traffic steering: Uses real-time intelligence on network performance and availability to direct DNS connections to the best available application resource; the widest range of filter options and data sources in the industry, not data that is extrapolated from sampling; the most flexible, granular controls for your network.
Built-in resilience: Add a single-tenant, redundant DNS layer and manage it from a single control plane as your primary DNS.
Managed DNS for China: Improve performance for the Chinese mainland by segmenting traffic with NS1 Connect’s Managed DNS for China.
DNS insights: Get a better understanding of DNS traffic patterns by mining your DNS data to identify security issues, misconfigurations and performance issues.
DDoS protection: Cap your query-based spending with protection against unexpected surges in traffic from distributed denial-of-service attacks.
Uptime monitor: Quickly identify issues and automatically adjust DNS traffic steering configurations with native health check alerts.
DevOps tool integrations: Preconfigured integrations with leading DevOps tools including Ansible and Terraform to help automate routine maintenance, manage data sources and feeds.
Propagation speed: fastest propagation in the industry, measured in seconds not minutes; worldwide propagation in under five seconds.
Independence: neutral arbiter between infrastructure services (CDNs, clouds).

IBM NS1 Connect helps enterprises modernize and optimize networking infrastructure to provide customers with faster connections to websites, applications, services and content.

Azure DNS is a hosting service for DNS domains, providing name resolution using Microsoft Azure infrastructure. By hosting your domains in Azure, you can manage your DNS records using the same credentials, APIs, tools, and billing as your other Azure services.

BlueCat Integrity is a comprehensive DNS security solution that provides visibility and control over all DNS traffic on your network. It offers real-time threat detection and response, as well as policy enforcement to ensure compliance with security standards. With its advanced analytics and reporting capabilities, Integrity enables you to identify and mitigate security risks before they can cause damage. It also integrates with other security tools to provide a complete security ecosystem. Whether you're a small business or a large enterprise, BlueCat Integrity can help you protect your network from DNS-based attacks and ensure the integrity of your DNS infrastructure.

Sample Customers

Avast Software, Bloomberg L.P., BBC, Carfax, CNBC LLC, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Disney Streaming, Dropbox, EBAY Inc, Gannett Media Corp, Salesforce, Wayfair, Workday

M-Files

Computer Sciences Corporation

Buyer's Guide

Azure DNS vs. BlueCat Integrity

December 2024

Free Report: Azure DNS vs. BlueCat Integrity

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure DNS vs. BlueCat Integrity and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.

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