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Akamai Edge DNS vs Amazon Route 53 vs Cisco Umbrella comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

Managed DNS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Akamai Edge DNS2.0%
Cloudflare25.9%
Quad923.9%
Other48.2%
Managed DNS
Managed DNS Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Route 5312.9%
Cloudflare25.9%
Quad923.9%
Other37.300000000000004%
Managed DNS
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Umbrella17.5%
Palo Alto Networks DNS Security9.1%
Infoblox Advanced DNS Protection7.3%
Other66.1%
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

YA
Head of Service Delivery at onme
Ensures global distribution and DDoS protection while offering seamless integration and low latency DNS responses
For user experience, Akamai Edge DNS should allow notes to be added for each record, as this is something Infoblox supports. Without notes, managing changes in DNS records can be difficult, especially for large companies with over 1,000 records, as they may not know who requested changes without proper documentation. I requested this feature two years ago, but it has not been added yet. Akamai Edge DNS could also improve its AI capabilities.
NV
Technical Lead - Cloud at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Security and monitoring features enhance website protection and DNS management effortlessly
For Amazon Route 53, improvements I see include the need for a DNS firewall and a domain-based SSL checker security feature. DNS security is the most important part for me. I feel that whenever you host any kind of website, the first and most important thing is to protect it with a valid SSL. The secure socket layer is essential for the HTTPS green lock in the browser. If I forget to deploy SSL on a website and if my domain hosting is under Amazon Route 53, there should be a mechanism that Amazon Route 53 protects the insecure website using SSL, a thing that the end user does not know whether the SSL certificate comes from the domain, meaning from Amazon Route 53 or from the website.
BB
Senior Network Engineer at Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo, P.C.
Ensures comprehensive protection with seamless threat logging and efficient policy management
My favorite feature of Cisco Umbrella is probably just the DNS and the fact that when a security threat happens, all of that gets logged in their Umbrella portal, and it's very easy to find who's been accessing the site and how many people have accessed it, so that we can go to them and make sure they're not compromised. The features of Cisco Umbrella benefit my company by providing less time to search for things through logs, to look for what we need. It's just one place to go, and we just search for it, and we find it really fast. The fact that there's a virtual database that has all that information is great on our portal.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I recommend Akamai Edge DNS because it is distributed globally and prevents DDoS attacks."
"The high availability of Akamai Edge DNS is impressive due to their numerous POPs, which help in supporting all attacks, including DDoS counterattacks."
"I haven't had any problems with the stability of Akamai Edge DNS in the past five years."
"We can maintain control of the configuration, and it seems to be covering the use case that we need."
"It is a very stable solution since it has a security feature that allows you to recover zone files if you accidentally delete them."
"Route 53 is straightforward both via the console and API, providing ease of use."
"The solution has a user-friendly dashboard."
"The tool's most valuable feature is in the area of domain registration and routing DNS."
"The most valuable feature is that it works very well."
"Using Amazon Route 53 is located in a central place in Amazon AWS which makes it easier to manage every DNS entry in one place. You are able to manage your public and private DNS from there. We can create rules based on weight and globalization is impressive."
"Amazon Route 53 is valuable because it offers aliasing, allowing me to route different services with A records against the DNS."
"The reliability and the durability of the services are quite high."
"I find Amazon Route 53 valuable for its ability to manage DNS records and efficiently route traffic with features like failover routing and geolocation routing."
"The most valuable aspect is that it is hosted with Cisco and can detect any new anomalies, acting almost like an XDR."
"The price is quite good, and as we are resellers we provide our customers with several solutions to do a comparison, and the reaction is that Cisco is quite good."
"It makes it really easy to accomplish content filtering. We don't have to do a lot of customization. You just click the box for the content category and it's up to date."
"The core business of Cisco Umbrella is non-malware. That's all it does: block the malware on the gateway."
"Cisco Umbrella provides a cloud management system where we can manage every client from a single workspace in our portal, and the single pane of glass management is user-friendly."
"Cisco Umbrella is a totally different solution; they are the first to come up with this idea of security and it's a totally new concept of security for everybody, for every time, real time, perfectionism."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."
"Cisco Umbrella's integration with other solutions has been a great feature in terms of ease of administration. Administration and troubleshooting are faster. The single pane of glass is great as well. Another great feature of Cisco Umbrella is remote browser isolation. With this feature, you open a virtual browser, and it's seamless to the user. If the user ends up going to a bad website that's passed a policy and something bad tries to download, it will not download into the machine because it is a virtual window somewhere in the cloud. You are protected by this feature."
 

Cons

"CNAME flattening is a feature that Akamai does not support."
"The solution has a fairly complex setup with our cloud vendors, including Microsoft, Salesforce, and Oracle."
"Akamai Edge DNS is expensive, and the pricing is higher compared to Infoblox."
"The only area that needs improvement is the pricing for DNS zones."
"The only area that needs improvement is the pricing for DNS zones. The price is higher than competitors, and Akamai should offer a better pricing model."
"Error tracing could be made more intuitive."
"There isn't room for recommending new configurations."
"The solution should include more robust and secure services for hardening sites."
"Amazon Route 53 should focus on timeliness and work towards better accuracy. They need to ensure that the threats reported on are actual threats, as the software might miss catching them timely."
"The platform is more complicated to learn than one of its competitors."
"The cost calculator for determining the cost of Route 53 is a little bit obscure."
"The limitations of the tool revolve around the area of monitoring location, especially since the performance and selection options offered by the product are limited."
"For Amazon Route 53, improvements I see include the need for a DNS firewall and a domain-based SSL checker security feature."
"Basically, it is not fully mature, which means it's not yet ready to replace the WSA, however, over a period of time, it could to a certain extent."
"There should be a way to monitor traffic at the user level."
"Data reporting is something I would like to see improved."
"Pricing needs to be reduced for SMB based on the blocking capabilities and the lack of other features that you just cannot do in DNS, such as authentication-based filtering."
"I would like to have the ability to prevent certain sites/data from showing on the reports."
"It should have more integrations with multiple end user OEMs."
"Data reporting could be improved."
"Cisco Umbrella can be improved in terms of limited coverage and wind vulnerability. The product can only shield a small area, making it less effective for larger spaces or multiple users."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Since Akamai is the industry leader, I imagine the solution would be a little more expensive than some other vendors."
"It can be expensive compared to some other providers."
"The price of the product is perfectly fine in my opinion."
"Amazon Route 53 is not an expensive solution."
"The pricing depends on usage and is moderate."
"We pay per use."
"The price of the solution could be a little bit lower compared to Google DNS, which has more features than Amazon."
"The price of Amazon Route 53 is reasonable."
"Amazon Route 53 is not that expensive."
"Its price for us is quite expensive because it's a subscription, and we just use it for the DNS log. So, for us, it's quite expensive."
"There are no hidden costs with Umbrella. Everything is included in the package."
"In terms of licensing, we're not able to be extremely clear with the customer because it's based on their reporting. It's not based on the actual traffic. If they say they have 50 users but they have 80, we'll just buy for 50 users. That's something where we'd like to have more flexibility."
"Cisco is expensive. For example, we are looking at Nexus Dashboard, and it's costing about 250,000 euros. I ask, "What do I get from it?" I'm still not convinced that we have to spend on it, so pricing is a problem."
"The price is quite good."
"We did a good negotiation, and at the moment, its price is fine."
"It was a little bit expensive on a per seat basis, but the company I was running was only a midsize Australian company, and it was a reasonable budget per computer for that system. It started off being a free product, and then Cisco bought it, and it went to a reasonable price. I was using Cisco AMP as well. So, my per computer cost was reasonably high, but for a small company, it was within an acceptable level."
"Pricing depends on the automation requirements of the organization."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Non Profit
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise52
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Akamai Edge DNS?
For user experience, Akamai Edge DNS should allow notes to be added for each record, as this is something Infoblox su...
What is your primary use case for Akamai Edge DNS?
As a reseller company for Akamai, my typical use case for Akamai Edge DNS is its distribution worldwide, providing DD...
What advice do you have for others considering Akamai Edge DNS?
I recommend Akamai Edge DNS and rate the overall solution a ten out of ten. Akamai Edge DNS should improve its AI mor...
Azure DNS or Amazon Route 53?
Azure DNS is a hosting service of DNS domains. It has excellent operating time and performance, resulting in fast res...
What needs improvement with Amazon Route 53?
There is always a scope for improvement when it comes to price. Even though AWS is available at multiple regions, but...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Route 53?
We are not using AWS for ourselves, but we create solutions on AWS products for our customers. Majorly it is EC2, RDS...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zs...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-nat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Umbrella?
The pricing for Cisco Umbrella is fair compared to other platforms out there for DNS security. We acquired it as a bu...
 

Also Known As

Akamai Fast DNS
Route 53
OpenDNS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Otto Group
Hess, Expedia, Kelloggs, Philips, HyperTrack
Chart Industries, City of Aspen, Eastern Mountain Sports, FLEXcon, George Washington University, Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, Ohio Public Library Information Network, PTC, Richland Community College, Smart Motors, Tulane University, VeriClaim
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Amazon Web Services (AWS), BlueCat and others in Managed DNS. Updated: May 2026.
896,692 professionals have used our research since 2012.