Cloudflare vs. IBM NS1 Connect

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cloudflare
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud is a unified platform of cloud-native services designed to help enterprises regain control over their IT environments. Powered by an intelligent, programmable global cloud network, it is built to offer security, performance, visibility, and reliability.
$20
per month
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
CloudflareIBM NS1 Connect
Editions & Modules
Pro
$20
per month
Business
$200
per month
Free
Free
Enterprise
Contact sales team
IBM NS1 Connect Essentials
USD 250*
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CloudflareIBM NS1 Connect
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
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
CloudflareIBM NS1 Connect
Considered Both Products
Cloudflare
Chose Cloudflare
We use Cloudflare where we don't want to spend a lot of money, and can live with not so fast DNS speeds. NS1 is used when you need the top performance with the the DNS. Cloudflare has far more other features for which it is used alongside with NS1 as well.
IBM NS1 Connect
Chose IBM NS1 Connect
NS1 connect has one of the best response times for public DNS and high uptime. We see it beating some of the other vendors hands down.
Best Alternatives
CloudflareIBM NS1 Connect
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloud Internet Services
IBM Cloud Internet Services
Score 9.0 out of 10
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Akamai App & API Protector
Akamai App & API Protector
Score 9.5 out of 10
Google Cloud DNS
Google Cloud DNS
Score 9.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CloudflareIBM NS1 Connect
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(185 ratings)
8.1
(8 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(8 ratings)
7.5
(2 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.8
(149 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
CloudflareIBM NS1 Connect
Likelihood to Recommend
Cloudflare
Cloudflare works well as security measure that gives peace of mind without needing to work too hard to get it functioning well. It provides great tools to customize the security experience as well. This is all the same for the caching tools as well. They have a lot of built in tools that make using the caching easy right out of the box, but they provide the customization options to get things just right for your site.
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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
Cloudflare
  • The best part is the content delivery network. Cloudflare has a large network of data centres around the world that helps cache and delivers content quickly to our customers.
  • Cloudflare offers us with a fast and reliable DNS service and with the world class features such as Cloudflare workers, SSL verification, certificate management and web application firewall. When all of these are combined together, it provides very strict security for our organization.
  • One of the most important feature that we use is the analytics and threat detection. It provides us with the real time insights of all the threats originating from multiple locations and landing on our websites.
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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
Cloudflare
  • In some cases, using Cloudflare can actually lead to slower website speeds if the network is congested or if the website's traffic is particularly heavy.
  • Some website owners may find that the level of customization offered by Cloudflare is limited, especially in comparison to other solutions.
  • While Cloudflare is easy to set up and manage, it may be too complex for users who are not familiar with web technologies.
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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
Cloudflare
lower cost
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Usability
Cloudflare
Everything is extremely concise and all settings apply immediately and take effect globally. There is no reason to explicitly plan/think in terms of individual regions as one would have to traditional cloud offerings (AWS, OCI, Azure). All Cloudflare products integrate seamless as part of a single pipeline that executes from request to response.
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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
Cloudflare
In 6+ years of relying on Cloudflare, I think we experienced one or two brief outages that were Cloudflare's fault.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Performance
Cloudflare
Their Argo for the global network is the core feature we love.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cloudflare
Excellent product, Cloudflare is a true pioneer of the modern Internet, providing tools, services, and expertise that vastly improve the performance and security of web services. Any issues are resolved quickly with detailed RCA and follow-ups published publicly. I'm thankful to Cloudflare and use their services both at work and at home.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Cloudflare
Very well executed implementation where our team was able to handle the implementation with guidance.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Cloudflare
They have the most generous free offering, and after the free offering limit is reached - you're still getting plenty of value for the buck.
They have very good reputation.
They have an ever expanding list of tools that can support multiple scenarios under one roof.
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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
Cloudflare
They are built for scale and have the capacity to handle all the traffic we could ever expect to get.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Cloudflare
  • Immediate ROI on Registrar and DNS hosting while giving a single plane of glass to managing both with domain registrations at cost, and no cost DNS hosting
  • WAF helped us move at risk servers/applications into a protected state allowing us to perform remediations at a measured pace and get them done right instead of band aide solutions.
  • CDN proxying increase the speed of our website while simultaneously reducing server load.
  • DMARC management and report interpretation allow use to identify weak points in our email systems, remediate and move to stricter policies without significantly increasing staff time spent managing it.
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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