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Azure DNS vs Cisco Umbrella comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.8
Azure DNS offers an 8% ROI with cost efficiency, reduced OpEx, pay-as-you-go pricing, and reliable functionality.
Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco Umbrella improves security, reduces costs, and enhances productivity, offering quick ROI and increased efficiency with threat prevention.
The ROI is always high because Azure DNS setup is essential and does not incur high charges.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.8
Azure DNS support is generally positive, with varying response times and quality based on the support plan and region.
Sentiment score
8.0
Cisco Umbrella is praised for efficient support and extensive resources, with minor delays in email and purchasing processes.
Technical support is minimally required for DNS-related tasks if you have previous experience.
I would rate customer support ten out of ten due to the excellent assistance throughout the POC process.
Cisco's support is fantastic, providing assistance when needed, especially during the initial installation process.
Sometimes, it takes a while to get a response, and the team can be very rigid.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Azure DNS is praised for its scalability, ease of setup, and reliability, making it ideal for diverse business needs.
Sentiment score
8.1
Cisco Umbrella offers scalable, cloud-based infrastructure, enabling easy deployment and management across diverse organizational sizes globally.
Cisco Umbrella is scalable for our company.
It is a scalable solution but requires improvement in specific areas.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Azure DNS is praised for its stability and robust performance, with minor installation challenges noted by fewer users.
Sentiment score
8.3
Cisco Umbrella is praised for its excellent stability, high uptime, and reliability despite rare minor connectivity issues.
I have not experienced any major stability issues with Cisco Umbrella.
I will give stability a score of seven, as there are some glitches from time to time.
 

Room For Improvement

Azure DNS needs improvements in registration, support, security, scalability, pricing clarity, documentation, integration, performance, and multi-cloud functionality.
Cisco Umbrella needs improved integration, user experience, reporting, and regional data centers for better security and network performance.
The product can only shield a small area, making it less effective for larger spaces or multiple users.
I have to write an email to Umbrella support to get assistance, unlike the other products where I can call the Cisco technical assistance center and get an engineer.
Making it more flexible and easy to deploy, particularly when integrating with other technologies like Active Directory and proxies, would be beneficial.
 

Setup Cost

Azure DNS offers cost-effective, usage-based pricing with seamless Azure integration, including free query allowances and charges for extra usage.
Cisco Umbrella pricing is fair yet expensive, with flexible plans, negotiable discounts, and complex scalability for large enterprises.
Azure DNS charges based on the number of zones enabled, offering some free queries monthly, which keeps costs low.
The prices need to be lower as the current pricing is exceedingly high.
The only cost associated is the license cost unless additional solutions need to be integrated with Umbrella, which would incur extra costs.
 

Valuable Features

Azure DNS provides easy installation, security, integration, robust performance, and flexible domain management with a user-friendly interface.
Cisco Umbrella offers DNS-based protection, web filtering, and integration, enhancing security and productivity for hybrid work environments.
Azure DNS provides end-to-end P2P connectivity and enhances security, making it more secure and reliable.
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.
The most valuable feature of Cisco Umbrella is its DNS security.
If a machine is attempting to access compromised sites, it can pinpoint the machine to prevent it, thus narrowing down the attack surface.
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure DNS
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Managed DNS (5th)
Cisco Umbrella
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
113
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

Azure DNS and Cisco Umbrella aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Azure DNS is designed for Managed DNS and holds a mindshare of 7.5%, down 9.8% compared to last year.
Cisco Umbrella, on the other hand, focuses on Domain Name System (DNS) Security, holds 22.4% mindshare, down 28.7% since last year.
Managed DNS
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

Santhosh Varghese - PeerSpot reviewer
A reliable DNS service, easy to deploy, with no maintenance
I give the solution a nine out of ten. I have worked with probably five, or six clients in the last two to three years in consulting. Almost every one of them is using Azure DNS. I would say make use of Azure DNS. It is a very good solution. Rather than you try to build your own DNS. There are several ways you can build your own DNS. You can put your domain controller in Azure and install DNS on the domain controller because it is domain-integrated, Active Directory-integrated DNS. But that's not required now because there is DNS as a solution. So, you just deploy that service and you're up and running. Instead of putting your own servers in the cloud and trying to replicate your on-premise DNS, just make yourself a built-in DNS service.
Alessandro Braga - PeerSpot reviewer
Has comprehensive reporting and scales easily
The reports and notifications are the most useful part of the platform. As soon as you deploy the security layers, the reporting is very comprehensive. It helps you to have, at a glance, a clear view of what's going on. The integration between Cisco Secure solutions is pretty good. We have been able to deliver the solution in a few days. The integration of Umbrella and Meraki is literally one click away from the customer. One of the reasons why we chose Umbrella was its capability to perform end-to-end detection of malware and web traffic. In the last two years, we have been covered, detection has been faster, and we have been able to contain some potential threats along the way. We use the Umbrella stack from DNS protection to web and content protection. Our workforce is made up of 150 Macs; thus, we use Mac as a client. We have some PCs and integration with the network in our co-working spaces. Utilizing Cisco Secure has helped us save time. Being a nimble organization, we don't have IT staff who are fully dedicated to security. The maintenance is also not very time-consuming. In terms of the amount of time saved, it would be half an FTE a year, given the fact that we are informed and notified when threats arise. In terms of operating expenditures, we have been able to negotiate a better cyber insurance rate with our insurance company due to the fact that we are covered by Umbrella. Another benefit of using Cisco Umbrella is application scanning. We have been able to understand how many other applications we were consuming in the cloud, address them, and save money. Without Cisco Umbrella, we would not have realized that we had so many cloud applications in the company. We have been able to close at least four or five applications that were duplicates of others that we were already using in the company. We have realized approximately 10,000 to 12,000 euros a year of immediate savings in an organization of 150 people, which is quite significant.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 resolution. We like the ability to view everything in the Azure portal - this makes...
What do you like most about Azure DNS?
The tool is easy to manage and use.
What needs improvement with Azure DNS?
I did not see any improvements required. It functions as a standard DNS, which is very important, and it does not need separate improvements.
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. Zscaler Internet Access is a good option for carrying out multiple security functi...
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-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...
What do you like most about Cisco Umbrella?
Cisco Umbrella is easy to monitor, manage, and deploy.
 

Also Known As

No data available
OpenDNS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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), Quad9 DNS and others in Managed DNS. Updated: February 2025.
842,466 professionals have used our research since 2012.