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BlueCat Integrity vs IBM NS1 Connect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

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
8.8
BlueCat Integrity enhances ROI by reducing ownership costs, downtime, and labor, while increasing reliability and operational efficiency.
Sentiment score
8.0
IBM NS1 Connect improved performance, reduced costs, and enhanced efficiency through automation, benefiting application uptime and customer experiences.
As we are migrating other tools into this one, there can be 30% to 40% cost savings.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
BlueCat Integrity offers expert technical support, appreciated for its rapid response and personalized service, but sometimes inconsistent.
Sentiment score
9.1
IBM NS1 Connect offers exceptional customer support with expert guidance, responsiveness, and reliability, consistently exceeding customer expectations in DNS services.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
BlueCat Integrity is scalable and adaptable for diverse environments with efficient expansion, though users note licensing costs and robustness improvements.
Sentiment score
8.3
IBM NS1 Connect efficiently scales to meet traffic demands with automation, low error rates, and global operational reliability.
I would rate the scalability of the solution a seven out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
BlueCat Integrity is highly stable, resilient, and consistently achieves significant uptime, with issues mostly due to external factors.
Sentiment score
8.2
IBM NS1 Connect offers high stability and reliability, with minimal downtime and excellent performance even during high-demand situations.
 

Room For Improvement

BlueCat Integrity needs enhancements in automation, UI, support, IPv6, and ease of use for better functionality.
IBM NS1 Connect can improve by enhancing API, bulk changes, traffic management, DNS configurations, testing, and dashboard usability.
The API aspect could be improved with more use cases and better handling of object attributes.
 

Setup Cost

BlueCat Integrity's pricing is competitive, offering value and cost-effectiveness, with expenses averaging $20,000 annually for large networks.
IBM NS1 Connect provides competitive, value-driven pricing, satisfying enterprises with fair costs for high request volumes and advanced features.
Our licensing model with BlueCat Integrity is cheaper than Infoblox.
 

Valuable Features

BlueCat Integrity provides robust, scalable network management with automation, security features, and minimal maintenance for efficient IT infrastructure handling.
IBM NS1 Connect offers geo-load balancing, automation, and real-time telemetry with integration capabilities, enhancing performance and user experience.
It has an understandable GUI interface.
 

Categories and Ranking

BlueCat Integrity
Ranking in Managed DNS
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (1st), DDI (1st)
IBM NS1 Connect
Ranking in Managed DNS
12th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of BlueCat Integrity is 1.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM NS1 Connect is 1.2%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed DNS
 

Featured Reviews

Ryan Michael Patterson - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides a single pane of glass, a user-friendly GUI, and is extremely reliable
Currently, a significant portion of automation within our infrastructure relies on custom-written scripts. For instance, every time we require automated IP address space updates, we must develop the script ourselves. Looking forward, I would welcome pre-existing scripts readily deployable within our infrastructure to alleviate this burden. BlueCat currently meets our core needs, and we appreciate their service. However, we believe the platform could benefit from significant improvements, particularly in terms of ongoing maintenance and the implementation of new features. One crucial area for development is IPv6 support. As we transition to this newer networking protocol, we lack robust tools and functionalities tailored to IPv6 within BlueCat. Consequently, we'd like to see greater investment from BlueCat in building out their IPv6 feature set.
Adam Surak - PeerSpot reviewer
Handles customer-facing records and upstream selection logic with good efficiency
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. If we have about 1,000 endpoints, that translates to around 150,000 records. Assuming there's an even distribution, so every time a server fails or an endpoint goes on a level, we would have 150 updates. With NS1, we have one, so this had an even more significant effect. There are situations where we have thousands of specific records sharing the same responses. In that case, there is one update instead of thousands and thousands. When we chose Managed DNS in 2014, it was the only solution that could do what we wanted, but I'm not sure about the current state of the market. The NS1 API is an API on top of a managed DNS. It's not an afterthought. It's not like the solution existed. Someone was sending updates by email. Then a product manager came along and said, "Hey, there is this cool thing. It's called an API. Maybe we should do it?" And they are like, "Okay. Let's do it." In the case of NS1, they thought about how to use an API to manipulate and retrieve the stuff. It's supposed to be API-driven. Also, NS1 doesn't have hidden features that would not be available over the API. Even their dashboard is built on top of the API. You can leverage all the functionality programmatically. That's what we do. We don't use their native integrations because we have been customers before these integrations and real-time telemetry existed. Our solution isn't leveraging either of those. Instead, we leveraged their API integration, which was the first thing that existed. 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. The API automatically drives everything, so that's the integration we leverage. We don't use the Pulsar Active Steering feature because we don't have a website. Our solution is being used as an API for other solutions. You can put the Pulsar agent on the website and feed NS1 the information. In our case, we are integrating into third-party sites. We cannot put our JavaScript on their websites for NS1 to provide the data, so we don't.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What needs improvement with BlueCat Adaptive DNS?
The solution is too granular and sometimes complex to configure. We do not always need so many details. Simpler configurations with fewer details would be beneficial. The API aspect could be improv...
What is your primary use case for BlueCat Adaptive DNS?
In the past, we did not have a DDI system, so information was distributed in different places. As our environment became more complicated with on-campus, remote offices, and cloud setups, we wanted...
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Also Known As

BlueCat Adaptive DNS, BlueCat Automation Manager, BlueCat DDI
NS1 Managed DNS, NS1
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Computer Sciences Corporation
Avast Software, Bloomberg L.P., BBC, Carfax, CNBC LLC, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Disney Streaming, Dropbox, EBAY Inc, Gannett Media Corp, Salesforce, Wayfair, Workday
Find out what your peers are saying about BlueCat Integrity vs. IBM NS1 Connect and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.