Azure DNS vs Infoblox DDI comparison

Microsoft and Infoblox are both solutions in the Managed DNS category. Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.4, while Infoblox is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.8. Microsoft holds a 20.7% mindshare in MDP, compared to Infoblox’s 6.6% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Infoblox users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Azure DNS and Infoblox DDI compete in the DNS management category. Infoblox DDI has an upper hand with its comprehensive features in IP address management and security enhancements.

Features: Azure DNS offers seamless integration with the Azure ecosystem, automatic DNS record creation, and Microsoft's security enhancements. Infoblox DDI emphasizes strong IP address management, DNS and DHCP management, and extensive security features, with notable discovery capabilities and threat intelligence.

Room for Improvement: Azure DNS needs enhancements in domain registration, redundancy, latency, and better integration with hybrid clouds, while clearer pricing is also required. Infoblox DDI could improve its setup process, pricing model for SMBs, and better integration with tools like Ansible and Terraform.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure DNS is commonly used in public and hybrid cloud environments with good scalability and offers variable customer service based on Microsoft's support plans. Infoblox DDI is typically deployed on-premises and in hybrid setups, providing strong technical support but with a more complex deployment process.

Pricing and ROI: Azure DNS follows a pay-as-you-go model within the Azure infrastructure, offering affordability and ease of use for existing Azure users, providing good ROI with minimal upfront costs. Infoblox DDI has higher pricing, especially for SMBs, and may require additional licenses for features, yet offers a robust return on investment through its centralized management and security benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure DNS vs. Infoblox DDI Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Azure DNS vs. Infoblox DDI

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM NS1 Connect

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of IBM NS1 Connect is 2.8%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure DNS is 20.7%, down from 22.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Infoblox DDI is 6.6%, up from 1.4% 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

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.

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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.

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Utpal Sinha

Sr Network Engineer at Momentive

Sep 25, 2023

An excellent tool that provides an overall centralized view of everything in an environment, majorly the security part

The three major features of Infoblox DDI are very good. Artificial intelligence is one of the areas in the solution where there are some shortcomings. When dealing with URLs, Infoblox needs a good team that takes care of the recategorizations. Zscaler is good since it can recategorize the website. Every day, millions of websites are newly launched, which may or may not be malicious. Malicious websites will get blocked if a company goes for recategorization. If the recategorization part is not taken care of properly, with millions of websites being launched every day, then the malicious websites will not get blocked. Zscaler has a good team to take care of the recategorization part within twenty-four hours, while Infoblox does not have such a team. Symantec and Palo Alto have good teams to take care of the recategorization part, while Infoblox does not have such types of teams. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the solution. The recategorization part takes longer with Infoblox DDI compared to other companies like Symantec, Zscaler, and Palo Alto.

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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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"It massively speeds things up. Today, we allow developers to deploy services and have externally facing DNS scrapers that are created automatically without the addition of human intervention."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

More IBM NS1 Connect pros

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

"The most valuable feature of Azure DNS is it works automatically after configuration. Additionally, the solution is secure."

"Can be configured to achieve a hundred percent reliability"

"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."

"It is a scalable solution."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the simplicity of putting DBs."

"If you're running your enterprise application on Azure, it's convenient to use Azure DNS. It has native integration with other Azure solutions, and Microsoft is a globally recognized DNS provider. You also get CDN services. If you're a media company that requires on-demand data streaming, your DNS plays a vital role by working with CDN services to publish your application. It's cheaper and easier to expand your solution."

"It is a scalable solution."

More Azure DNS pros

"Infoblox DDI prioritizes DNS security, which is crucial for the security department."

"Infoblox has more technology patents than any of its competitors."

"One of the benefits of implementing Infoblox DDI is that it supports both RADIUS and TACACS+."

"It offers an easy initial setup."

"The best feature is the user interface."

"The most valuable feature of Infoblox DDI is its IP Address Management (IPAM) tool. This tool allows for the effective management of IP addresses and provides the capability to detect duplicates, hence its moniker "discovery." Another feature that I find particularly useful is the integration of DNS, which can be seamlessly integrated with your existing primary DNS server, making the overall experience much more seamless and efficient."

"Infoblox DDI is a good tool if you want to centralize everything in your environment...It is a stable solution."

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."

"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 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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

More IBM NS1 Connect cons

"Domain registration is one of the problems. We need to go to application services or web apps to purchase the domain instead. If that were to be equivalent to AWS's Route 53 that would be good. But, it is not as flexible as that."

"The technical support can be more knowledgeable."

"The licensing cost should be improved."

"The CDN integration could be improved."

"The solution lacks scalability."

"What needs improvement in Azure DNS is visibility in terms of troubleshooting. It's similar to the area for improvement in Azure Network Watcher, where I can see how the source is going out if I'm troubleshooting a source destination. I can also see the destination. As for seeing how the packet travels, that's what should be improved. It's still lacking in visibility. Suppose I'm looking into backend machines, and if I'm hitting another NPM machine or any machine on the other side, there should be visibility. The tool should tell you that a specific machine is passing through a VPN gateway or route table, routing to a third-party firewall, and then dropping. Azure DNS should show an accurate answer to help the customers, which is its area for improvement."

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

"Azure DNS' documentation needs to improve."

More Azure DNS cons

"They need to reconsider their pricing for their SMB customers. It is a hurdle for them to manage the price."

"Every vendor or organization cannot purchase Infoblox DDI because of some license issues."

"They need to provide more training and tutorials than what's provided on the website."

"The solution is expensive."

"The recategorization part takes longer with Infoblox DDI compared to other companies like Symantec, Zscaler, and Palo Alto."

"Regarding an upcoming release of Infoblox DDI, I would like to see an improvement in the existing integration with Ansible. Currently, the integration is not up to par and requires further enhancements, particularly in Ansible version 2.5. Additionally, the GUI is slow, it could be improved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"The price is low and it's a reasonable price for that product."

"The pricing is expensive."

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

"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."

"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."

More Azure DNS pricing and cost advice

"The license of the solution is expensive, not including the hardware."

"Infoblox's subscription includes support."

"Infoblox DDI is an expensive product."

"I would say the pricing falls between average and expensive. It's not a cheap product."

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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

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

12%

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

What do you like most about Infoblox DDI?

Infoblox DDI is a good tool if you want to centralize everything in your environment...It is a stable solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Infoblox DDI?

Every vendor or organization cannot purchase Infoblox DDI because of some license issues.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Infoblox DDI?

Infoblox DDI can be used as a DHCP server, DNS server agent, gateway, and access management tool.

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

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

Cisco Umbrella vs Azure DNS

Compared 5% 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

BlueCat Integrity vs Infoblox DDI

Compared 41% of the time

Cloudflare vs Infoblox DDI

Compared 18% of the time

VitalQIP vs Infoblox DDI

Compared 12% of the time

Cisco Prime Network Registrar vs Infoblox DDI

Compared 6% of the time

More Infoblox DDI 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

Infoblox DDI

October 2024

Download Infoblox DDI product report

Also Known As

NS1 Managed DNS, NS1

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IBM

Microsoft

Infoblox

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.

Network landscapes are rapidly evolving, driven by trends in hybrid and multi-cloud transformation, the IoT and distributed workforces. Infoblox is uniquely able to support organizations in this challenging environment because our solutions support DNS, DHCP and IP address management. These are the critical network services collectively known as DDI that make all network interactions possible.

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

Adobe, Aflac, UCSD, Airbus, Amgen, Apple

Buyer's Guide

Azure DNS vs. Infoblox DDI

October 2024

Free Report: Azure DNS vs. Infoblox DDI

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