Cisco Umbrella vs. IBM NS1 Connect

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco Umbrella
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Cisco now offers OpenDNS Umbrella Web Filtering. Cisco acquired OpenDNS in August 2015, and rebranded the product as Cisco Umbrella.N/A
IBM NS1 Connect
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
IBM NS1 Connect is a managed service for authoritative DNS and traffic steering designed to improve application performance and network resilience.
$250
per month
Pricing
Cisco UmbrellaIBM NS1 Connect
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
IBM NS1 Connect Essentials
USD 250*
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco UmbrellaIBM NS1 Connect
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsOptions include IBM NS1 CONNECT FREE DEVELOPER ACCOUNT The IBM® NS1 Connect® free developer account showcases IBM's authoritative DNS capabilities, allowing users to start using it in minutes. Although traffic scale is limited, the full API is available for unlimited usage. It can be used in production as a primary or secondary solution. IBM NS1 CONNECT ESSENTIALS Scaled for growing businesses, the Essentials plan offers features to ensure fast, reliable connections to end-users. Available for purchase on IBM.com or AWS. IBM NS1 CONNECT PREMIUM NS1 Connect Premium is for businesses needing scalable authoritative DNS. Pricing is based on query volume and DNS records. Additional services are also priced through query volume. Enterprise plans offer customizable support and professional services. *(Calculated prices are estimates provided for planning purposes only taking into account potential IBM discounts, and are not a formal offer from IBM or an IBM Business Partner. The estimation may reflect the total discounted price. Certain factors such as configuration, add-ons, or additional requirements will affect final price. IBM Business Partners set and provide their own IBM NS1 Price Estimator pricing, and neither IBM nor IBM Business Partners are bound by the provided estimate.)
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco UmbrellaIBM NS1 Connect
Best Alternatives
Cisco UmbrellaIBM NS1 Connect
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies

No answers on this topic

Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Zscaler Internet Access
Zscaler Internet Access
Score 8.7 out of 10
Google Cloud DNS
Google Cloud DNS
Score 9.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco UmbrellaIBM NS1 Connect
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(110 ratings)
8.1
(8 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(15 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.6
(10 ratings)
7.5
(2 ratings)
Availability
8.7
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.7
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.1
(63 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.5
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.5
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.1
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco UmbrellaIBM NS1 Connect
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
It is good for whole network protection, and individual PCs with the client. Provide good reporting on where your network is going on the net. One thing I would like is a longer history with the logs 14 and 30 days are too short some times.
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IBM
IBM NS1 Connect is suitable for businesses requiring high application availability, improved performance, and advanced traffic steering capabilities, especially in complex multi-cloud environments as it ensures maximum uptime. It's less appropriate for smaller teams without DNS expertise or those with basic DNS needs where a simpler, less feature-rich solution might suffice.
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Pros
Cisco
  • So for example, we had the problem in the past. We are connecting users to our own managed data centers. We had seven locations around the world, put them with Cisco, any connect to our on-prem data center and let them out to the internet. So that's causing some high latency bad experiences with teams and so on. And with Umbrella we can directly connect the user to the cloud and to the internet so the users have a good experience with speed with latency and it's much better than back hauling the traffic to their own company and then processing them there.
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IBM
  • Makes for a fast website loading.
  • Enhanced the user interface.
  • Economical cost.
  • It is the best RUL.
  • DNS response time.
  • Routing the base location of the user.
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Cons
Cisco
  • The smart search feature in Cisco Umbrella is great addition for sure which helps us to identify malicious domain just by searching the URL and there is scoring system of Cisco Umbrella which mark the URL in low, medium and high risk. Sometimes Cisco Umbrella mark well known and good domain as malicious whether sometimes they mark malicious sites/domain as low risk. So, it's something that they should focus on, I think.
  • The live activity search is great for checking internet activities, but the filtering options could be improved. It would be helpful if we could filter by multiple parameters at once like combining username, destination IP and time range.
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IBM
  • User Experience - Please make it more easy to use for Admins
  • Also add some more details in the reference documents
  • Try if they can offer a monitoring tool
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
First off I never give anything a "10" unless it's perfect. LOL - I grade on the curve. I think OpenDNS/Umbrella is a very good product. I think that fact that Cisco absorbed them is one of the proofs of that. I have used the product back when it was free for companies our size. I have not always appreciated the cost - but in the post pandemic cyber chaos, I believe the cost benefit ratio is still very high. I have honestly not looked at other products because Umbrella continues to work to my satisfaction. I consider Umbrella to be one of the key layers in my cyber security strategy.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Usability
Cisco
Better features and easy to manage system with great customer support and overall usability is great as it works for hybrid environment with ease as it is having features for on prem users as wells as cloud users with great customer support and great team of trained engineers to support our opeartions.
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IBM
The interface can be better. As of now, it is a bit difficult to manage multiple records at the same time or to test the rules effectively. The data reporting is also not as great as we expect with tools of today’s maturity.
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
Cisco umbrella services in the cloud are always available. However, the weakness is the VM installed in the data center that are the first resolvers. If the VMs become unavailable for any reason or the vSphere goes down, then all DNS is affected
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Performance
Cisco
our experience with cisco products has always been awesome and same is the case with cisco umbrella .Under umbrella cisco provides flexible and scalable software solution to use across different dept and sites . These softwares are very user friendly ,pages load quickly as these applications are designed for minimum latency and reports are also provided quickely
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cisco
Whilst the support is good once you get through to them, it's email only and the response is slow. This is a issue, because its a core system that needs to work. We have had issues in the past where several of our companies have gone down due to Umbrella and support is nowhere to be seen. It is very difficult to know whether Umbrella is having service issues, since they do not regularly update customers on the status of their services, such as is seen by providers such as Microsoft (status.umbrella.com just seems to show up all of the time, I'm not sure it's even updated)
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Cisco
Quite easy to understand training modules prepared by knowledgeable trainers. Training modules have included all the desired features of these softwares and the content delivery is very good from the respective module trainers and it explains in details the features and apart from that further training material support is also provided if needed.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Cisco
At the time we were forced to move from Cloud Web Security to Cisco Umbrella, Cisco Umbrella was far from being a direct replacement. It was frustrating and difficult to migrate due to the lack of functionality. This has since been addressed, however we now have legacy rulesets that were built as bandaids that cannot be removed. Hopefully the migration to Secure Access will address this.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cisco
Different products in different spaces. The Z3 was more of a VPN endpoint so that users didn't have to worry about a client. If they are at home, they are on their corporate network and able to access resources. Cisco Umbrella can be used then to serve corporate DNS across the VPN tunnel to the Z3 device and extend the capabilities of Cisco Umbrella.
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IBM
It's definitely because of automation capabilities and flexibility that it offers. It also offers much more control over how traffic is routed when compared with Google Cloud DNS. The advance features are once again missing in Google Cloud DNS when compared with IBM NS1 Connect. The operational efficiency is also great when compared with its competitors.
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Scalability
Cisco
Cisco umbrella provides fleaxible and scalable software solutions which are easy deploy across multiple departments and sites wherever needed and this softwares are very easy to use and provides the best interface along with cisco support for other devices apart from cisco infrastructure but still there is scope for improvement on the inclusion of latest features
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Cisco
  • So it's always very hard to calculate return on investment, especially on security and especially in a physical product. So it's not like I'm going to be selling a lot more plastic or a lot more aviation fuel because I implemented Cisco Umbrella. What I know is that definitely, the return on investment is on the ability of the business to continue to run and give the assurance that our users are safe.
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IBM
  • The cost was reasonable for a solution that is well known
  • Having hosted DNS saves us money on maintenance
  • Reports give us critical insight into our domains and how often they are used.
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ScreenShots

IBM NS1 Connect Screenshots

Screenshot of the IBM NS1 Connect home page