What users are saying about
17 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.3 out of 100
Based on 17 reviews and ratings
32 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 8.7 out of 100
Based on 32 reviews and ratings
Feature Set Ratings
Platform-as-a-Service
Consul
Feature Set Not Supported
N/A
7.9
IBM Cloud Managed Istio
79%
IBM Cloud Managed Istio ranks higher in 11/11 features
IBM Cloud Managed Istio ranks higher in 11/11 features
Ease of building user interfaces
N/A
0 Ratings
6.7
67%
5 Ratings
Scalability
N/A
0 Ratings
7.7
77%
5 Ratings
Platform management overhead
N/A
0 Ratings
7.5
75%
5 Ratings
Workflow engine capability
N/A
0 Ratings
8.0
80%
5 Ratings
Platform access control
N/A
0 Ratings
8.3
83%
5 Ratings
Services-enabled integration
N/A
0 Ratings
7.8
78%
5 Ratings
Development environment creation
N/A
0 Ratings
8.0
80%
5 Ratings
Development environment replication
N/A
0 Ratings
8.0
80%
5 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification
N/A
0 Ratings
8.2
82%
5 Ratings
Issue recovery
N/A
0 Ratings
8.7
87%
5 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes
N/A
0 Ratings
7.5
75%
5 Ratings
Attribute Ratings
- Consul, by HashiCorp is rated higher in 2 areas: Likelihood to Recommend, Support Rating
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
Consul
86%
5 Ratings
8.5
IBM Cloud Managed Istio
85%
5 Ratings
Usability
10.0
Consul
100%
1 Rating
IBM Cloud Managed Istio
N/A
0 Ratings
Support Rating
8.8
Consul
88%
4 Ratings
6.4
IBM Cloud Managed Istio
64%
2 Ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Consul
Consul can provide a light-weight, lightning-fast and robust solution for the following:
- Network mesh
- Service DNS
- Global key-value store (values can be complex objects as well)
- Utility for blue-green deployments
- Service health checking
DevOps Team Leader
CognyteInformation Technology & Services, 1001-5000 employees
IBM Cloud Managed Istio
Clearly, the [IBM Cloud Managed Istio] tool is very useful when you have multiple services and each service is connecting with other services through APIs in different networks. To manage this type of complex network, [IBM Cloud Managed Istio] is very useful. It comes with a license that can increase the billing of your project so make sure if your application network mesh, monitoring cannot be managed on your own then you can use it.If your application is not very complex then you have many tools available like Grafana, Prometheus, Sumo Logic, which you can integrate individually with your cluster and implement. In this type of scenario, it is better to not use [IBM Cloud Managed Istio] and it will serve your purpose as well.
Infrastructure Engineer
Volt BankInvestment Banking, 501-1000 employees
Pros
Consul
- Key-Value database management.
- Service discovery.
- Centralized configuration database with native high availability.
Senior Devops Engineer
SOTIComputer & Network Security, 1001-5000 employees
IBM Cloud Managed Istio
- Layers transparently onto existing applications
- Allows control of access and rules to be developed
- Creates metrics for usage
Senior Manager Workforce Planning - Project Managment
HalliburtonOil & Energy, 10,001+ employees
Cons
Consul
- The GUI: The GUI interface for Consul has gotten a lot better over the years. Since Consul is so easy to interact with via API, this isn't a showstopper, but for those that are less command line inclined it's always nice to be able to refer them to an easy to use and understand web interface
- It's chatty: Consul is extremely chatty. Sometimes it's particularly chatty at 2am with no indication as to why and eats up quite a bit of resources. Just be sure to provision your systems that typically take a heavy load with a little extra for Consul

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Information Services Company, 501-1000 employeesIBM Cloud Managed Istio
- Some more functionalities added could improve it better.
- Better technical user guidance.

Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology
Banking Company, 5001-10,000 employeesPricing Details
Consul
General
Free Trial
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
$0.027 per month
Consul Editions & Modules
Edition
Open Source (self-managed) | $01 |
---|---|
Cloud (managed Consul) | starting at $.0272 |
Enterprise | Self-Managed Custom Deployments |
- always free
- Per Hour
- none
Additional Pricing Details
—IBM Cloud Managed Istio
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
—IBM Cloud Managed Istio Editions & Modules
—
Additional Pricing Details
—Usability
Consul
Consul 10.0
Based on 1 answer
Consul's API is extremely user friendly. While their web interface isn't quite as "mature", it's still pretty easily navigated for the average person. Together they make a pretty easy to pick up and use tool.

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Information Services Company, 501-1000 employeesIBM Cloud Managed Istio
No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Consul
Consul 8.8
Based on 4 answers
I've never used paid support from HashiCorp, but I consider its support a good one, since they provide a lot of free resources for the community and there are good user groups supporting you on several sorts of issues. Also, HashiCorp is known as a company with a strong relationship with the community, that is easily noticed by the events HashiCorp promotes over the world.
Senior Devops Engineer
SOTIComputer & Network Security, 1001-5000 employees
IBM Cloud Managed Istio
IBM Cloud Managed Istio 6.4
Based on 2 answers
Training and usage support available

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Computer Software Company, 1001-5000 employeesAlternatives Considered
Consul
Consul was easier to configure out of the box than Serf and gave us more initial options. Its easy to use tools and support were by far superior to Serf in many ways. Support alone was one of those areas that Serf could take an example from Consul to keep its customers happy.
Operations/Systems Manager
Crowell SystemsComputer Software, 51-200 employees
IBM Cloud Managed Istio

Verified User
Engineer in Corporate
Renewables & Environment Company, 1001-5000 employeesReturn on Investment
Consul
- It contains a native web UI, which in contrast to its counterparts, is handy, very intuitive and - most importantly - very informative. It leaves no room for doubt about your services "forest" health. So, for that purpose, the learning curve was almost down to non-existent. Our team managed to work seamlessly with Consul being our services API
- Our management staff had a difficult time understanding what Consul was really all about. For technical staff it is pretty simple to understand the huge value such a tool can pose to our suite of solutions, but once our management staff took the grasp of its valuable handy set of tools, we didn't take long to start using it and keeping track of our Swarm overall health, with was a constant concern for the entire company before.
- For load balancing purposes, we were relying pretty much on guesses before we decided to use Consul. One would check a certain node overall health and decide if we would need to spring a new instance at AWS or Digital Ocean.
Sr. Software Developer
CONSLOG - Construction SoftwareInformation Technology and Services, 1-10 employees
IBM Cloud Managed Istio
- It reduced the complexity of network mesh (ingress/egress services).
- One tool with many solutions. No need to integrate monitoring tools or notification tools.
- It reduced the number of lines of YAML code.
- It reduced the number of labor hours.
Infrastructure Engineer
Volt BankInvestment Banking, 501-1000 employees