Cloudflare vs. IBM NS1 Connect

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 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 8.0 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
NoNo
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
Best Alternatives
CloudflareIBM NS1 Connect
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloud Internet Services
IBM Cloud Internet Services
Score 8.8 out of 10
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Akamai App & API Protector
Akamai App & API Protector
Score 8.0 out of 10
Google Cloud DNS
Google Cloud DNS
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CloudflareIBM NS1 Connect
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(0 ratings)
7.5
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
CloudflareIBM NS1 Connect
Likelihood to Recommend
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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It is very useful where system demand is very high and more traffic is coming. It is very efficient and gives best return on investment
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Pros
  • Registrar and DNS services are impeccable, with registrations done at cost and without ADs. DNS services setting standards for speed of resolution.
  • DDOS protection. With their content distribution network to back them they have the bandwidth and tools to be both proactive and reactive to bad actors.
  • WAF - Their Web Application Firewall helps mitigate common site vulnerabilities and has active zero-day protection running for breaking exploits
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  • 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
  • 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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  • Learning materials depicting flows that can help users who are completely new to networking
  • Pricing can be more transparent
  • I feel UI is a bit complex to adapt, especially for new users, it should be made more intuitive
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Likelihood to Renew
CF is a core piece of our cloud infra.
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No answers on this topic
Usability
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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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
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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No answers on this topic
Performance
They are built to be fast and deliver very well on this. Performance has never been a problem.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
I have only used their support a few times, and most times, they are responsive and able to resolve my issue with a minimal amount of time and effort. However, there was one instance where I simply asked about how to purchase some more resources (redirect rules), and I received some type of automated/AI response that was very unhelpful and gave me no opportunity to escalate to a person.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Very well executed implementation where our team was able to handle the implementation with guidance.
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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.
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IBM NS1 Connect and Amazon Route 53 are both DNS (Domain Name System) services, but differ in their focus and strengths. IBM NS1 Connect is a cloud DNS service designed for complex traffic routing, application performance, and reliability, while Route 53 is a more general-purpose DNS service offering domain registration, routing, and health checks, often used within the AWS ecosystem.
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Scalability
They are built for scale and have the capacity to handle all the traffic we could ever expect to get.
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No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • We have seen reduced usage and downtimes after using Cloudflare for Caching. This has already yielded ROI as minimal downtime ensures consistent user traffic and increases revenue.
  • It can handle significant traffic spikes and shields the website from DDOS attacks. We have prevented a number of DDOS attacks after using Cloudflare and hence we are already seeing an ROI by using it.
  • Some of the integrations with Cloudflare are really painful and we have faced a lot of issues because of not having native integrations to certain 3rd party apps.
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  • 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