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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cloudflare

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/ACloudflare’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

    Score7.9 out of 10
    N/AIBM NS1 Connect is a managed service for authoritative DNS and traffic steering designed to improve application performance and network resilience.

    $99

    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 99*
    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.
    Incentivized
    IBM
    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.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    98%
    Would buy again
    169 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    163 Answers
    92%
    Delivers good value for the price
    12 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    169 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    142 Answers
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    8 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    152 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    12 Answers
    Features
    CloudflareIBM NS1 Connect
    DDoS Protection
    Comparison of DDoS Protection features of Cloudflare and IBM NS1 Connect
    Feature
    Cloudflare
    8.4
    5 Ratings
    5% below category average
    IBM NS1 Connect
    -
    Ratings
    Automatic Scalability9.46 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mitigation SLA8.86 Ratings00 Ratings
    Security policy management8.66 Ratings00 Ratings
    WAF capabilities8.66 Ratings00 Ratings
    Request rate limiting7.86 Ratings00 Ratings
    Traffic filtering7.66 Ratings00 Ratings
    Bot detection8.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    Global threat intelligence8.86 Ratings00 Ratings
    Real-time analytics and reporting7.86 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    CloudflareIBM NS1 Connect
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Amazon Route 53
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    Azure DNS
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Amazon Route 53
    Score8.8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    CloudflareIBM NS1 Connect
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (191 ratings)
    7.7
    (13 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.2
    (4 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    8.6
    (8 ratings)
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.6
    (153 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)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 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 has features as a CDN/Gateway/Reverse Proxy that simply don't exist in other solutions. Having so many capabilities under a single platform, with solid support and high uptime, has been essential. I would recommend it for hobby projects all the way to enterprise scale. There's a lot of push around AI and workers. Some feel like Cloudflare is following the hype. But after reading a lot about the new features, a decent amount of them has real value.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    where is well suited - in terms of managing high scale application networks which needs to be present and working in lot of regions - so multi-region failover setup - this is a strength of NS1 connect. Where is it less suited - in term of reporting, like visually ibm team needs to work on their UI UX graphs and all that.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • IBM NS1 Connect provides a comprehensive solution for managing and optimizing traffic steering.
    • It provides solutions like Dedicated DNS, which offers a separate resolution network for authoritative DNS, ensuring maximum uptime even in the face of outages.
    • It utilizes real-time metrics and automated DNS routing decisions to optimize traffic distribution and ensure resilience.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cloudflare
    lower cost
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    The product is very easy to use even for a junior admin new to the job. It has an intuitive interface, logical layout and easy to generate reporting. We have been able to catch configuration errors, DDOS attacks and logging of unusual behavior. We also love how it can be used in a redundant fashion to eliminate downtime
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Cloudflare
    Their Argo for the global network is the core feature we love.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Cloudflare
    While I have had good support in the past from Cloudflare's technical support team, I have had some terrible experiences with billing support. I have had multiple tickets sent to their billing support that I will never receive a reply to for over a month. When I finally do get a reply, it has been an automated email that never gives me an answer to my question.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Cloudflare
    Very well executed implementation where our team was able to handle the implementation with guidance.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Cloudflare
    Nothing like it. Organizations can utilize these Cloudflare products to enhance their online presence by improving security, performance, reliability, and developer efficiency. Cloudflare is an American company that delivers services such as DNS, a content delivery network (CDN), and various other additional services to make websites faster and more secure. Cloudflare is used by over 26 million sites, resulting in the processing of more than 1 billion IP addresses each day.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    Cloudflare offers a very intuitive interface and strong security features, but its DNS traffic management is more opinionated and provides less granular control for complex routing use cases. Akamai is powerful and enterprise‑grade, but it felt heavier and more complex than what we needed for DNS‑focused traffic steering. We ultimately selected IBM NS1 Connect because it struck the right balance between flexibility, intelligence, and control.
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Cloudflare
    They are built for scale and have the capacity to handle all the traffic we could ever expect to get.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    I gave it an 8 because it handles massive datasets and high user concurrency very reliably without significant performance lag. It’s built for enterprise-level growth, but the infrastructure setup for that maximum scale can get quite complex to manage.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Enhanced end-user experience as a result of better performance & uptime
    • Easy management - resulting in cutting down in operations cost
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    IBM NS1 Connect Screenshots

    Screenshot of the IBM NS1 Connect home page