IBM NS1 Connect vs Infoblox DDI comparison

IBM and Infoblox are both solutions in the Managed DNS category. IBM is ranked #12, while Infoblox is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.7. IBM holds a 2.6% mindshare in MDP, compared to Infoblox’s 7.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Infoblox users who would recommend it.

IBM NS1 Connect

Read 11 IBM NS1 Connect reviews

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1,158 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Infoblox DDI

Read 9 Infoblox DDI reviews

1,709 Views
1,277 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM NS1 Connect

Infoblox DDI

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

IBM NS1 Connect and Infoblox DDI both operate in the DNS management category. IBM NS1 Connect appears to have a competitive edge due to its API-driven automation and advanced monitoring features.

Features: IBM NS1 Connect provides advanced traffic management tools, including the Filter Chain for geo-load balancing, automation via Terraform, and real-time telemetry. It emphasizes infrastructure as code, offering robust API integration. Infoblox DDI excels with its IP Address Management (IPAM), seamless integration with existing DNS servers, and a focus on DNS security and discovery capabilities.

Room for Improvement: IBM NS1 Connect could improve by enhancing API capabilities for bulk operations and better monitoring reliability. Infoblox DDI needs price adjustments for SMBs, improved integration with Ansible and Terraform, and a more user-friendly GUI with better URL recategorization features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM NS1 Connect is cloud-based with commendable customer support and an API-first design for streamlined integration. Infoblox DDI offers on-premises and hybrid cloud options, with reliable support during deployments, catering to different infrastructural preferences.

Pricing and ROI: IBM NS1 Connect stands out with competitive pricing and significant ROI from automation reduced DNS management costs. Infoblox DDI is more expensive, especially for SMBs, though its subscription model minimizes multiple license needs and provides ROI through stable performance and extensive security offerings.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM NS1 Connect vs. Infoblox DDI Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM NS1 Connect vs. Infoblox DDI

January 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

IBM NS1 Connect

Ranking in Managed DNS

12th

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Infoblox DDI

Ranking in Managed DNS

7th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

DDI (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of IBM NS1 Connect is 2.6%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Infoblox DDI is 7.3%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed DNS

Featured Reviews

Adam Surak

VP of Infrastructure & Security at Algolia

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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Areeba Shujat

Systems security engineer at Secure Networks Ltd

Proactively secures DNS by blocking malicious URLs and triggers necessary alerts

I work with Infoblox DDI for DNS management, which involves blocking malicious and suspicious URLs. This helps in protecting my organization's domain name system and involves deep investigation and policy enforcement to understand why certain URLs are being used Infoblox is a proactive DNS system…

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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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More IBM NS1 Connect pros

"The best feature is the user interface."

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

"The UI is quite user-friendly and the support is available 24/7."

"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."

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

"It offers an easy initial setup."

"The UI is quite user-friendly and the support is available 24/7."

"Infoblox is a proactive DNS system that enhances organizational security by blocking and triggering alerts for malicious or suspicious URLs."

More Infoblox DDI pros

Cons

"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.""

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"I would like to see the UI updated to allow me to do finer searches. I would also like to have the ability to get reports that can sort based on various metrics. 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."

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

More IBM NS1 Connect cons

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

"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."

"The solution is expensive."

"The pricing is quite expensive, which is why I recommend it for medium and large enterprises and not for small businesses."

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

"There are some bugs and glitches that need attention."

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

"Infoblox encounters some glitches, making it not entirely super stable."

More Infoblox DDI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"Everything can always be cheaper, but as it is today the pricing is fair."

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

"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."

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

"Infoblox DDI is an expensive product."

"Infoblox's subscription includes support."

"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

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

University

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

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.

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What needs improvement with Infoblox DDI?

There are some bugs and glitches that need attention. I have experienced instances where a URL was triggered by Infoblox even though it was not accessed. Updating signatures in the backend could po...

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What is your primary use case for Infoblox DDI?

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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BlueCat Integrity vs Infoblox DDI

Compared 42% of the time

Cloudflare vs Infoblox DDI

Compared 19% of the time

VitalQIP vs Infoblox DDI

Compared 12% of the time

Azure DNS vs Infoblox DDI

Compared 12% of the time

Smart DDI vs Infoblox DDI

Compared 1% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM NS1 Connect

January 2025

Download IBM NS1 Connect product report

Buyer's Guide

Infoblox DDI

January 2025

Download Infoblox DDI product report

Also Known As

NS1 Managed DNS, NS1

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IBM

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.

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

Adobe, Aflac, UCSD, Airbus, Amgen, Apple

Buyer's Guide

IBM NS1 Connect vs. Infoblox DDI

January 2025

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