Azure DNS vs Cisco Umbrella comparison

The compared Microsoft and Cisco solutions aren't in the same category. Microsoft is ranked #3 in MDP , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 20.7% mindshare in the category. Cisco is ranked #1 in DS , with an average rating of 8.8, and holds a 25.8% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Cisco users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Cisco Umbrella and Azure DNS compete in network security and DNS management. Azure DNS seems to have the upper hand due to its integration with Azure services, along with scalability and performance features.

Features: Cisco Umbrella is known for its straightforward management interface, comprehensive threat protection, and reliable security capabilities. Azure DNS stands out for its robust integration with other Azure services, offering scalable DNS management and performance-oriented features.

Room for Improvement: Cisco Umbrella users suggest enhancements in reporting and analytics tools, as well as expanding its integration capabilities. Azure DNS feedback indicates a need for more intuitive learning resources, simplified configurations, and better cross-platform integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Umbrella is praised for its swift deployment and responsive customer support, ideal for quick setups. Azure DNS, although more complex due to its extensive features, benefits from seamless cloud integration and robust technical support.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco Umbrella is considered cost-effective, delivering substantial ROI through its security benefits. Azure DNS, with higher initial costs, provides value with advanced features and scalability, offering better long-term value.

To learn more, read our detailed Managed DNS Report (Updated: November 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Managed DNS

November 2024

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Helped 814,649 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

IBM NS1 Connect

Mindshare comparison

Managed DNS

Domain Name System (DNS) Security

Featured Reviews

Michael Wills

Senior Network Systems Engineer at McKesson

Jun 8, 2022

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.

Read full review

Tushar-Patil

Senior Consultant at Hexaware Technologies Limited

Feb 7, 2024

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.

Read full review

Rohan Singh

Consultant at KRS Systems

Jun 26, 2022

Protects endpoints wherever they are, always pushing people to the right locations to avoid malicious intent

The most valuable thing is how easy it is to deploy. We did it with 9,000 users at my last job, and it took a week to get to all the endpoints. Doing that without having to physically touch all those endpoints was very simple. The single pane of glass management makes it very easy to manage your rollout. We get a lot of "single panes of glass" and, eventually, you need a pane of panes of glass. But it's always good to have a clear and graphical view, and Umbrella's is nice and easy to read. Definitely, of the panes of glass that we do have, it's one of the easiest to use. The single pane of glass is good to group users together and separate people out. Some people need different types of security. Some people are more vulnerable. Some have more highly valuable assets, like C-suite people. It's really good to be able to have end-users defined inside of that. You don't have to jump around. You don't have to figure out who's who. It's all done through one pane of glass. What most people don't realize is that it's running in the background, which is a really nice aspect when it comes to security. Often, when you deploy a security tool, it takes up CPU performance. Everything slows to a grind. But Umbrella is so simple and easy and it doesn't affect the end-user experience. It's the best of all worlds. It's nice when people realize that they're being protected when they go to the wrong site. I think people are happy that they're protected, but it's nice that they rarely notice it. It's generally easy to maintain network connectivity, but with Umbrella, the nice part is that whichever connectivity you're on, you're always secure. With Umbrella, as long as you're online, you're going to be protected.

Read full review

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 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."

"Their Pulsar filters allow us to collect RUM metrics from our users so that we can determine the best paths for our users to take. That has been very useful in providing the best user experience, and for responding to and recovering from downtime of our multiple CDNs."

"Everything we download into our observability platform so that we can also track any changes in traffic behavior or things like that is also something that we use quite a lot. I'd say traffic management, the speed of updates, and observability are the top three things that we use."

"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."

"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 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."

More IBM NS1 Connect pros

"It is a very stable solution."

"The most valuable feature is the ease of installation."

"The initial setup is straightforward and not that complex."

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

"Data protection is paramount across cloud platforms"

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a stable product."

"What I like about Azure DNS is that it doesn't have any issues and integrates quickly with other products. It has good integration, which is incredible. I also like that whenever you deploy private links and endpoints, Azure DNS gives you the option to select the Azure native DNS, private DNS, or go with the Azure custom DNS. It depends, but if you don't have any dependencies on the DNS, then, like many customers, you won't have DNS issues. Azure DNS is a very good solution that helps you with domains and other resources."

"The solution allows you to host DNS service without using Azure's servers."

More Azure DNS pros

"Application performance has greatly improved and there are less operational issues. Productivity has been going up because we have less operational issues. Also, we have happy customers."

"Using this solution has meant that we've needed to make fewer firewall changes."

"We can have a full overview and a quick overview of all the DNS requests. For us, it's quite important."

"The solution is extremely stable. It has excellent performance."

"It is a good cloud-based solution for DNS security."

"Umbrella has helped my IT staff in two ways. First, our security team was able to get more insights into the users, their devices, and the sites they browse. Second, our system administration team was able to manage DNS resolutions in a way that is more accessible and less intrusive to our domain system."

"It provides centralized, device-agnostic management of the Internet experience."

"Helps block personal email accounts."

More Cisco Umbrella pros

Cons

"The Filter Chain simulation is really good in the UI, but it would be nice to have something similar in the API so that we could simulate and test things before we deploy them."

"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."

"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 use our client in our infrastructure to communicate with NS1. This client is a bit complex in the way that it is set up. NS1 has their own client solution that you can deploy into your platform to do this, but even that is a bit complex. So, I would like a very simple, thin, light API agent that we can deploy into our platform to communicate with NS1. That would be welcome."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

More IBM NS1 Connect cons

"The licensing cost should be improved."

"The web interface to manage the solution must be made easier."

"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."

"The CDN integration could be improved."

"Azure DNS' documentation needs to improve."

"There are issues with the cloud systems."

"The initial setup of this solution could be less complex and require less manual configurations."

More Azure DNS cons

"The solution could be faster as the process is very slow."

"It should have a real-time malware classification engine. It should check the malware on the website. It would be good if it had a real-time malware check for the websites because currently, it just compares the DNS queries of the blacklist. It should also have malware control over file execution and the types of files that the users are allowed to download."

"The reporting could be improved by way of the information that's displayed. For example, when you pull a report, it shows an internal employee going to many websites, but you can spin that right down by saying a lot of it is being cached."

"I would like to see more integration between Cisco Umbrella and Cisco DNA Center."

"Their support should be improved. It is necessary that the support is efficient. It is not really easy to get a resolution for an issue from Cisco support. They should be faster and more efficient."

"If the virtual appliances could also gather traffic bandwidth reports, that would be great."

"Its on-prem rollout is quite challenging. It needs better coordination with the Internet Service Provider. It is a cloud-based solution, and any endpoint that connects to it has to go through all the gateway ISPs, but some of the ISPs block HTTPS-based DNS. That's where the challenge occurs with Umbrella."

"I would like to have more applications being recorded."

More Cisco Umbrella cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We use the tool's free version."

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

"We have an enterprise license agreement with Microsoft. Their pricing is competitive. I would rate it a three and a half out of five."

"Azure DNS is a cheap solution, and I rate it a two out of ten for pricing."

"The solution is moderately priced."

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

"In my opinion, DNS is inexpensive. The pricing depends on how you use it, but overall, it's quite affordable. It typically costs just a fesw cents, and Microsoft even offers ten thousand free hits per month."

"The solution is free."

More Azure DNS pricing and cost advice

"It needs a better price point."

"I am not sure, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think it's $1.00 or so per device/month."

"As an educational partner, we get better licensing structures. We are very happy with that. It has been very nice that Cisco has partnered with the educational sector to bring that."

"It has a reasonable price. It is certainly not as expensive as it used to be. It is in line with other offerings on the market. There are a number of different flavors of Umbrella. They could bring Umbrella SIG down a bit because its price is a little bit high for what it does, but I also understand why its price is high."

"There is room for improvement when it comes to the cost."

"Cisco is expensive. For example, we are looking at Nexus Dashboard, and it's costing about 250,000 euros. I ask, "What do I get from it?" I'm still not convinced that we have to spend on it, so pricing is a problem."

"Cisco uses subscription models for the pricing and there are three subscription plans."

"You can request an evaluation license."

More Cisco Umbrella pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

10%

University

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

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...

See all answers

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

Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?

Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zs...

See all answers

Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?

Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-nat...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?

Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.

See all answers

Comparisons

Cloudflare vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 41% of the time

Akamai Edge DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 20% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 19% of the time

Neustar UltraDNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 7% of the time

Hurricane Electric Free DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM NS1 Connect Competitors

Amazon Route 53 vs Azure DNS

Compared 58% of the time

Cloudflare vs Azure DNS

Compared 27% of the time

Infoblox DDI vs Azure DNS

Compared 4% of the time

Google Cloud DNS vs Azure DNS

Compared 1% of the time

Neustar UltraDNS vs Azure DNS

Compared 1% of the time

More Azure DNS Competitors

Zscaler Internet Access vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 19% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 9% of the time

Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 7% of the time

Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform vs Cisco Umbrella

Compared 2% of the time

More Cisco Umbrella Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM NS1 Connect

October 2024

Download IBM NS1 Connect product report

Buyer's Guide

Azure DNS

November 2024

Download Azure DNS product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Umbrella

November 2024

Download Cisco Umbrella product report

Also Known As

NS1 Managed DNS, NS1

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OpenDNS

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IBM

Microsoft

Cisco

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.

Cisco Umbrella offers flexible, cloud-delivered security according to users’ requirements Cisco Umbrella includes secure web gateway, firewall, and cloud access security broker (CASB) functionality all delivered from a single cloud security service. Cisco Umbrella’s protection is extended to devices, remote users, and distributed locations anywhere. As company employees work from many locations and devices, Cisco Umbrella is the easiest way to effectively protect users everywhere in minutes.

Cisco Umbrella uses machine learning to search for, identify, and even predict malicious domains. By learning from internet activity patterns, this DNS-layer security solution can automatically identify attacker infrastructure being staged for the next threat. These domains are then proactively blocked, protecting networks from potential compromise. Cisco Umbrella analyzes terabytes of data in real time across all markets, geographies, and protocols.

Cisco Umbrella works with leading IT companies to integrate its security enforcement and intelligence. Built with a bidirectional API, Cisco Umbrella makes it easy to extend protection from on-premises security appliances to cloud controlled devices and sites.

Cisco Umbrella is suitable for small businesses without dedicated security professionals, as well as for multinational enterprises with complex environments.

Why use Cisco Umbrella?

Simplify security management: Cisco Umbrella is the fastest and easiest way to protect all users within minutes and reduces the number of infections and alerts sent from other security products by stopping threats at the earliest point. With no hardware to install and no software to manually update, ongoing management is simple
Reliable reporting: Cisco Umbrella reports show activity for each device or network in the system. Users gain a more complete picture of the security risks facing their organization and can take action to remedy them.
Manage and control cloud apps: Umbrella provides visibility into sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud services in use across the enterprise. Users can uncover new services being used, see who is using them, identify potential risk, and block specific applications easily.

Reviews from Real Users

Cisco Umbrella stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of the major ones are its DNS-based protection, ability to protect users no matter where they are located, stability, and high performance.

Daniel B., a network specialist at Syswind Kft, writes, “We primarily use the solution as cloud security for our branches. It protects us from direct internet outbreaks. It makes for good flexibility. The solution is very easy to manage. We found the initial setup, for example, to be quite simple. Efficient protection on the DNS level and even higher. The sandboxing feature analyses and handles the complicated security risks.”

Victor M., SOC & Security Services Director at BEST, notes, “It provides security for the remote workers and it helps to improve enterprise security in a very easy way. We mainly enjoy web software protection capabilities. It prevents the end-users from getting into bad sites or sites that potentially could have malware or could be phishing. It helps end-users avoid the wrong sites. The solution works very smoothly. The user interface is good.”

OpenDNS is a part of Cisco providing a suite of consumer products aimed at making the internet faster, safer, and more reliable.

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

Chart Industries, City of Aspen, Eastern Mountain Sports, FLEXcon, George Washington University, Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, Ohio Public Library Information Network, PTC, Richland Community College, Smart Motors, Tulane University, VeriClaim

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and others in Managed DNS. Updated: November 2024.

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We monitor all Managed DNS reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.