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Azure DNS vs Cisco Umbrella comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Customer Service

No sentiment score available
IBM NS1 Connect offers exceptional customer support with expert guidance, responsiveness, and reliability, consistently exceeding customer expectations in DNS services.
Sentiment score
8.1
Azure DNS support is responsive and efficient, though experiences vary due to occasional outsourced services and regional communication challenges.
Sentiment score
8.5
Cisco Umbrella's support is highly rated for professionalism and efficiency, with prompt issue resolution and comprehensive assistance appreciated.
They are very knowledgeable, not only about their product but about general DNS protocols, from performance to global interconnectivity.
They provide good updates about progress or status on their side, and we can even discuss the next steps.
They communicate well and provide feedback that's not only technical but easy to understand if you're not technical.
I would rate customer support ten out of ten due to the excellent assistance throughout the POC process.
 

Room For Improvement

No sentiment score available
IBM NS1 Connect can improve by enhancing API, bulk changes, traffic management, DNS configurations, testing, and dashboard usability.
Sentiment score
4.8
Azure DNS needs domain registration, better security, enhanced support, improved scalability, performance, documentation, and simplified setup processes.
Sentiment score
5.2
Cisco Umbrella requires better integration, user interface, features, pricing transparency, and support for improved user experience and deployment.
We can monitor our endpoints and points of presence around the world.
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.
Right now, as far as I understand, there is no way to do atomic changes to a DNS configuration. You need to make changes record by record and apply.
Making it more flexible and easy to deploy, particularly when integrating with other technologies like Active Directory and proxies, would be beneficial.
 

Scalability Issues

No sentiment score available
IBM NS1 Connect efficiently scales to meet traffic demands with automation, low error rates, and global operational reliability.
Sentiment score
8.3
Azure DNS is praised for its scalability and resilience, catering to both enterprises and small companies effectively.
Sentiment score
8.4
Cisco Umbrella efficiently scales for companies of all sizes, offering seamless deployment and flexible licensing for global users.
We run more than 4.5 billion queries per month on our DNS, so it's pretty critical that they can handle that volume and it's been going pretty well so far.
The solution has helped us to meet SLAs and customers’ demands, without adding complexity.
This product provides the scalability we need to help meet SLAs and customers' demands without adding complexity, which is very important to us.
Cisco Umbrella is scalable for our company.
 

Setup Cost

No sentiment score available
IBM NS1 Connect provides competitive, value-driven pricing, satisfying enterprises with fair costs for high request volumes and advanced features.
Sentiment score
4.2
Azure DNS is affordable and cost-effective, offering flexible plans and free usage within the broader Azure licensing framework.
Sentiment score
6.1
Cisco Umbrella offers flexible pricing from $20 to $40 per license, balancing features and costs with scalable plans.
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.
I would say that you get what you pay for.
NS1's pricing is much more aggressive than its competitors in the market.
 

Stability Issues

No sentiment score available
IBM NS1 Connect offers high stability and reliability, with minimal downtime and excellent performance even during high-demand situations.
Sentiment score
8.1
Azure DNS is highly stable with global availability, though users occasionally report installation challenges and suggest improvements.
Sentiment score
8.5
Cisco Umbrella is highly praised for stability, reliability, seamless connectivity, and consistently delivering high performance with minimal downtime.
We have been using NS1 for a long period of time, and we have not had any major outages on the NS1 side that lead to any outage on our side.
We haven't experienced any downtime whatsoever in the past three years.
Especially, since we have the Dedicated DNS as well, our setup of NS1, as a whole, the Managed and the Dedicated, is very stable.
 

Valuable Features

No sentiment score available
IBM NS1 Connect offers geo-load balancing, automation, and real-time telemetry with integration capabilities, enhancing performance and user experience.
Sentiment score
8.2
Azure DNS provides seamless integration, security, cost-effectiveness, and user-friendly management for domain registration and traffic control.
Sentiment score
8.2
Cisco Umbrella offers comprehensive DNS security, web filtering, malware protection, and easy deployment, enhancing user protection and policy management.
Using Pulsar with telemetry monitoring between the customer and the endpoint, we are able to detect traffic and route it appropriately, which ensures the uptime of our applications and web properties.
Indeed, the API is at the core of how we use Managed DNS. No one goes to the dashboard or manually clicks anything. Everything goes via the API, and we perform hundreds of changes every minute.
NS1 Managed DNS has helped improve our end user experience, which has sped up our time to market.
The DNS layer security provided by Cisco Umbrella is very effective for our security posture, offering us vast improvements in visibility over DNS queries and potential threats.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM NS1 Connect
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Managed DNS (12th)
Azure DNS
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Managed DNS (3rd)
Cisco Umbrella
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (1st), Internet Security (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (3rd), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (1st), Cisco Security Portfolio (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Managed DNS
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

Michael Wills - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Tushar-Patil - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Rohan Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 ...
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...
What do you like most about Azure DNS?
The tool is easy to manage and use.
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...
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...
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...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
 

Also Known As

NS1 Managed DNS, NS1
No data available
OpenDNS
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

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.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.