Amazon Route 53 vs Azure DNS comparison

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 6, 2024

We compared Azure DNS and Amazon Route 53 based on our user's reviews in several parameters.

Azure DNS is praised for its reliability, scalability, and ease of use, with excellent customer service and a favorable ROI. On the other hand, Amazon Route 53 is noted for its excellent DNS management capabilities, performance, integration with AWS, and comprehensive monitoring tools. Users appreciate the competitive pricing structures of both services, but suggest improvements in areas such as uptime, interface simplicity, and documentation.

Features: Azure DNS differentiates itself from Amazon Route 53 with its ease of use, seamless integration with other Azure services, and competitive pricing. On the other hand, Amazon Route 53 offers excellent DNS management capabilities, comprehensive monitoring and alerting tools, and reliable performance.

Pricing and ROI: The setup cost of Azure DNS and Amazon Route 53 differ in their pricing structure and setup simplicity. Azure DNS is highly regarded for its cost-effectiveness and hassle-free setup process, while Amazon Route 53 offers flexible pricing options and a straightforward setup cost., Azure DNS has favorable ROI with cost-effectiveness, efficiency, increased productivity, decreased downtime, and improved performance. Users appreciate easy setup and management. Amazon Route 53 offers positive ROI with reliability, efficiency, and value as a DNS service, as reported by users.

Room for Improvement: Azure DNS users have highlighted areas for improvement in reliability, uptime, and a more user-friendly management interface. They also desire more comprehensive documentation and a simplified pricing structure. On the other hand, Amazon Route 53 could enhance resolving latency issues, user interface, documentation, integration with other AWS services, and advanced features like traffic routing options.

Deployment and customer support: The reviews for Azure DNS and Amazon Route 53 indicate that the duration required for establishing a new tech solution can vary. Some users of Azure DNS spent three months on deployment and an additional week on setup, while for Amazon Route 53, there were mixed reviews with some users taking three months for deployment and an additional week for setup, and others completing both within a week., Azure DNS customer service has been highly praised, with prompt and efficient assistance. Users appreciate the knowledgeable and responsive support staff. Amazon Route 53 also has positive feedback, with prompt and helpful assistance from their support team. Users appreciate their expertise and ability to provide reliable solutions.

The summary above is based on 35 interviews we conducted recently with Azure DNS and Amazon Route 53 users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Route 53 vs. Azure DNS Report (Updated: July 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Route 53 vs. Azure DNS

July 2024

Download the complete report

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Categories and Ranking

IBM NS1 Connect

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of IBM NS1 Connect is 3.5%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon Route 53 is 22.8%, down from 25.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure DNS is 21.4%, down from 24.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed DNS

Unique Categories:

No other categories found

Featured Reviews

Valentino Volonghi

Chief Technology Officer at NextRoll

Feb 15, 2022

Terraform integration means all entries are created and Configuration done at deploy time, reducing manual work

We use the geo load balancing functionality and there are a couple of things that are helpful there. But the language itself is something we had to get used to a little bit. Some of my folks made a few mistakes in rolling out the Filter Chain. It doesn't return all of the multiple results by default. It returns only one. So we have to add a bunch of operations, like geo-target by first selecting a group in terms of regional proximity and then shuffle the list of potential endpoints and then select the first one. The Filter Chain setup is a bit hard to grasp at first. It would also be nice to have a way to simulate changes in addition to staging. Also, right now, as far as I understand, there is no way to do atomic changes to a DNS configuration. You need to make changes record by record and apply. But if someone wants to do more complex stuff like, for example, if I want to migrate from a CNAME to an A record being served, or vice versa, that's typically something that involves first taking out all of the CNAMEs and then adding all of the A records. That would require some downtime. It would be a lot easier if I could just have the new full record with the CNAME or A record, and then be able to replace the nodes directly in a single operation and I don't think they have that.

Read full review

Bireshwar Adhikary

Senior Consultant at ATOS

Jan 20, 2023

Effective for processing domain registrations and configuring load balancers

Our company uses the solution for DNS services. We purchase domains, create load balancers, set provisions, host websites, and manage how internet traffic routes to websites. The solution handles all DNS queries and translates friendly domain names to numeric IP addresses. It is easy to process…

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Bruno Clemente

Cloud Infrastructure Specialist at Infracommerce

Nov 1, 2023

A stable solution that saves us time and cost and provides excellent integration features

We use the solution for some e-commerce sites that we use. It also integrates with our Kubernetes environment on Azure Azure DNS improves our integration with the Kubernetes environment. When we scale or increase our Kubernetes site, the tool updates DNS automatically. It saves us time and cost.…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Monitoring is really important for us. We really care about reliability, and we want to make sure that we can remove some points of presence in our sector and in our edge network really fast when we experience any problems. So, monitoring that NS1 provides for DNS is really important for us."

"We find that the low latency access to DNS queries has a direct effect on the customer experience. Visiting a site, whether it's an AdTech-based solution or marketing tech, the fact that whatever we're rendering on a page can be rendered better than the industry standard, in terms of time, ensures a better user experience."

"Everything we download into our observability platform so that we can also track any changes in traffic behavior or things like that is also something that we use quite a lot. I'd say traffic management, the speed of updates, and observability are the top three things that we use."

"The Filter Chain is one of the most valuable features, for geo-load balancing and geo-fencing. The Filter Chain is the most useful because it allows us to do several things. With geo-fencing we can redirect a particular user to a particular answer. That's very valuable for us. Filter Chains with monitoring is our strategy to provide redundancy."

"For starters, it integrates with Terraform and a lot of our infrastructure is effectively built out using Terraform. That makes all this stuff extremely easy... when we deploy, all the entries are created and configuration is done."

"Their Pulsar filters allow us to collect RUM metrics from our users so that we can determine the best paths for our users to take. That has been very useful in providing the best user experience, and for responding to and recovering from downtime of our multiple CDNs."

"The fact that it's an API-first platform for DNS and application traffic management is one of the reasons we looked into NS1. We use it for a lot of automation and metrics gathering and it's been great."

"We leverage two things from Managed DNS that we couldn't do with any other solution. One is their filter chain technology, which allows us to shift some of the intelligence we need for the traffic steering to the DNS. The second one is data sources, which enables us to manipulate multiple records simultaneously using NS1's internal message DOS. In our case, we are trying to direct the traffic in over 150,000 different NS1 records to an arbitrary set of repeating responses."

More IBM NS1 Connect pros

"Technical support from Amazon is very good...Overall, the product is stable."

"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."

"The solution has a user-friendly dashboard."

"The scalability is the most valuable feature."

"The solution offers you the flexibility to control configuration rules."

"The initial setup is good and straightforward."

"Amazon Route 53 is a DNS resolution service that helps you to map your hostname to another hostname."

"The product's initial setup phase was very easy."

More Amazon Route 53 pros

"The integration with other services on Azure is valuable."

"From a security perspective, Microsoft is much better than other cloud providers."

"The most valuable features of Azure DNS are the DNS forwarder and the DNS additional record editions."

"We use the solution to host IP addresses, sites like microsites."

"The solution allows you to host DNS service without using Azure's servers."

"The initial setup is straightforward and not that complex."

"The best feature is the domain register. The other great feature is that whenever you create any resources, Azure DNS will automatically create a record for you."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is a stable product."

More Azure DNS pros

Cons

"I would love to see improvement in the testing capabilities they provide. They have a simulate-filter feature so that you can simulate how your traffic would flow, based on their Filter Chains. I believe that was shut off for quite some time. Having that as a way to test our load-balanced CDN structure would be fantastic."

"We use our client in our infrastructure to communicate with NS1. This client is a bit complex in the way that it is set up. NS1 has their own client solution that you can deploy into your platform to do this, but even that is a bit complex. So, I would like a very simple, thin, light API agent that we can deploy into our platform to communicate with NS1. That would be welcome."

"We care about monitoring and telemetry work, and NS1 provides a pretty good system for monitoring. We can monitor our endpoints and points of presence around the world. If there are any issues, we can easily remove them from our network, but this area needs some improvement because it is not always reliable in NS1. In the past, we had a number of false-positive cases when the monitoring system told us about some problems in our infrastructure that were not true. NS1 is improving the system, and we are constantly talking about this with them. I know that they are releasing a new version of their monitoring system, which is really important for us, but this is a different area where we would expect them to improve."

"There could maybe be additional ways to manage traffic. There are no major improvements we're looking for. It's a very complete solution."

"The reporting metrics are great from an API standpoint, but it would be a little bit nicer if there was some type of dashboard around that. There should also be some type of reporting that's more executive-level focused."

"I would like to see the UI updated to allow me to do finer searches. I would also like to have the ability to get reports that can sort based on various metrics. For example, I would like to be able to say, "Show me the top 10 records by total queries" in an easy-to-digest format."

"We use the geo load balancing functionality and there are a couple of things that are helpful there. But the language itself is something we had to get used to a little bit. Some of my folks made a few mistakes in rolling out the Filter Chain...The Filter Chain setup is a bit hard to grasp at first. It would also be nice to have a way to simulate changes in addition to staging."

"The Filter Chain simulation is really good in the UI, but it would be nice to have something similar in the API so that we could simulate and test things before we deploy them."

More IBM NS1 Connect cons

"The solution’s pricing and technical support could be improved."

"The cost calculator for determining the cost of Route 53 is a little bit obscure."

"The multiple routing policies present in the product have certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

"It is difficult to manage the product if the person involved in the setup process doesn't know much about the solution."

"It may not always be easy to integrate with on-premise infrastructure, especially with the complexity of the resolver and other factors involved. Improvements could be made to enhance the ability to integrate seamlessly."

"Streamlining and optimizing processes related to Procter, VPN workflows, and other subjects based on specific needs would allow for continual improvement and adaptation to the evolving requirements of the system."

"Supporting DNS check is one feature missing in the solution."

"The product could improve its price."

More Amazon Route 53 cons

"Azure DNS sticks mostly with the Azure native solution and doesn't scale well in a multi-cloud or hybrid environment."

"The security features and stability needs to be bettered."

"The initial setup of this solution could be less complex and require less manual configurations."

"The technical support can be more knowledgeable."

"Azure DNS' documentation needs to improve."

"The product must provide information on which DNS or application is consuming the most budget."

"I would like to see more security features and protection."

"The CDN integration could be improved."

More Azure DNS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Everything can always be cheaper, but as it is today the pricing is fair."

"NS1's pricing is much more aggressive than its competitors in the market and you get more value out of what you pay for it."

"We pay about $30,000 a month. We used to pay about $20,000 with Dyn every month, for lower volume than we're doing right now, but it had none of the features that we have available with NS1, so it was worth it for us. It seems competitive for us, given that we're doing 4.5 billion requests."

"From a cost standpoint, it's certainly not the most expensive out there, and it's also not the cheapest, but it does well to balance the cost and the functionality/reliability."

"The cost of this product is one of the reasons that we chose it."

"We pay per use."

"The price of Amazon Route 53 is reasonable."

"The price of the solution could be a little bit lower compared to Google DNS, which has more features than Amazon."

"Amazon Route 53 is not an expensive solution."

"It can be expensive compared to some other providers."

"Amazon Route 53 is an expensive solution."

"The price of the product is perfectly fine in my opinion."

"Amazon Route 53 is not that expensive."

More Amazon Route 53 pricing and cost advice

"The solution is free."

"In my opinion, DNS is inexpensive. The pricing depends on how you use it, but overall, it's quite affordable. It typically costs just a fesw cents, and Microsoft even offers ten thousand free hits per month."

"Azure DNS is a cheap solution, and I rate it a two out of ten for pricing."

"I would describe Azure DNS as a cheaply priced product."

"We have an enterprise license agreement with Microsoft. Their pricing is competitive. I would rate it a three and a half out of five."

"The solution payment model is based on how many users use it. This is not an expensive solution, but it can depend on how long we use it. However, if the price was decreased it would be helpful."

"We use the tool's free version."

"The solution is moderately priced."

More Azure DNS pricing and cost advice

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793,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

14%

University

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NS1 Managed DNS?

For starters, Managed DNS from NS1 is an easy way to get the job done. Whether you're a novice or a pro, Managed DNS ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Amazon Route 53?

The most valuable features of the solution are the DNS, routing, and traffic features.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon Route 53?

Since DNS is based on internet access, improving some security features would improve internet quality worldwide.

See all answers

What do you like most about Azure DNS?

The tool is easy to manage and use.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure DNS?

The web interface to manage the solution must be made easier. The tool must provide seamless integration between DHCP...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Azure DNS?

We use the solution for domains. We manage the name servers using the tool.

See all answers

Comparisons

Cloudflare vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 35% of the time

Akamai Edge DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 25% of the time

Neustar UltraDNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 9% of the time

Hurricane Electric Free DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 5% of the time

BlueCat Integrity vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM NS1 Connect Competitors

Cloudflare vs Amazon Route 53

Compared 16% of the time

Google Cloud DNS vs Amazon Route 53

Compared 5% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Amazon Route 53

Compared 3% of the time

Akamai Edge DNS vs Amazon Route 53

Compared 2% of the time

Neustar UltraDNS vs Amazon Route 53

Compared 2% of the time

More Amazon Route 53 Competitors

Cloudflare vs Azure DNS

Compared 25% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Azure DNS

Compared 5% of the time

Infoblox DDI vs Azure DNS

Compared 4% of the time

Google Cloud DNS vs Azure DNS

Compared 2% of the time

Dyn vs Azure DNS

Compared 0% of the time

More Azure DNS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM NS1 Connect

July 2024

Download IBM NS1 Connect product report

Buyer's Guide

Managed DNS

July 2024

Download Amazon Route 53 product report

Buyer's Guide

Azure DNS

July 2024

Download Azure DNS product report

Also Known As

NS1 Managed DNS, NS1

Route 53

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IBM

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Microsoft

Overview

Why

In a 24/7 world, customers demand applications, websites, and content that load instantly and are always on. When those connections are unreliable or slow, businesses don’t meet customer expectations, causing customers to leave. When that occurs, revenue may suffer.

What

IBM NS1 Connect delivers the high-performance, reliable, secure network connectivity that businesses need to meet increasingly sophisticated customer expectations. Leveraging a global network with a 100% uptime SLA, IBM has the capacity and scale to meet the needs of any business. IBM NS1 Connect takes performance to the next level, powering the sophisticated needs of enterprises with complex network infrastructures.

How

IBM NS1 Connect provides network connectivity solutions that give networking teams the visibility, control and automation needed to help ensure your business stays online by steering traffic to the ideal network connections for any given moment. IBM NS1 Connect also enables IT teams to identify network performance anomalies through deep insights into DNS data flows, allowing them to identify configuration problems or network issues that affect performance so they can quickly resolve them.

Details

IBM NS1 Connect is a managed service that provides authoritative, premium DNS and advanced, customizable traffic steering that improves application performance and network resilience. Revenue-generating applications require authoritative DNS resolution to keep critical applications and websites online. Unless your DNS infrastructure is always-on and resilient, network reliability and user experience will suffer, your network reliability may suffer, resulting in poor user experiences if revenue-generating critical applications and websites are not online. IBM NS1 Connect’s always-on, API-first architecture provides fast, secure connections to users anywhere in the world with premium DNS and advanced, customizable traffic steering. It also enables your IT teams to efficiently monitor networks, deploy changes and conduct routine maintenance.

IBM NS1 Connect uses the Domain Name System (DNS) to ensure that websites and applications are:

Online, all the time: Global network with 100% uptime SLA and DDoS protection
Fast: Top tier response and propagation times, custom traffic steering to optimize connections
Cheaper to run: Far less expensive than self-hosting
Automation friendly: API-first platform with Ansible/Terraform integrations and support for Pliant rapid network automation
Easier to troubleshoot: Unique DNS data insights offering

Designed for enterprises looking to optimize their DNS performance, IBM NS1 Connect is a managed service delivering authoritative DNS and advanced traffic steering that improves application performance and network resilience and provides fast, secure connections to users anywhere in the world. NS1 Connect streamlines DNS management by automating both simple and complex DNS configuration tasks via API and preconfigured integrations, so you can spend more time on higher-value work.

IBM NS1 Connect is delivered through our unified delivery platform. The cloud-based platform gives networking teams the visibility, control and automation needed to help ensure your business stays online by steering traffic to the ideal network connections for any given moment. IBM NS1 Connect solutions also enable IT teams to identify network performance anomalies through deep insights into DNS data flows, allowing them to identify configuration problems or network issues that affect performance so they can quickly resolve them.

For enterprises looking to further optimize DNS performance, IBM NS1 Connect offers rich DNS data analytics to streamline the identification of the root cause of anomalies within traffic.

IBM NS1 Connect Features

Global anycast DNS network: Enjoy fast connections to consumers around the globe through an anycast network with 26 points of presence (PoPs).
100% uptime SLA on DNS resolution: Maximize uptime and revenue generation with resilient, always-on, authoritative DNS.
API-first architecture: Integrate and automate workflows with NS1 Connect's well-documented API; every line of code starts as an API call, all functionality is available through the API.
Real-time user monitoring (RUM)-based traffic steering: Uses real-time intelligence on network performance and availability to direct DNS connections to the best available application resource; the widest range of filter options and data sources in the industry, not data that is extrapolated from sampling; the most flexible, granular controls for your network.
Built-in resilience: Add a single-tenant, redundant DNS layer and manage it from a single control plane as your primary DNS.
Managed DNS for China: Improve performance for the Chinese mainland by segmenting traffic with NS1 Connect’s Managed DNS for China.
DNS insights: Get a better understanding of DNS traffic patterns by mining your DNS data to identify security issues, misconfigurations and performance issues.
DDoS protection: Cap your query-based spending with protection against unexpected surges in traffic from distributed denial-of-service attacks.
Uptime monitor: Quickly identify issues and automatically adjust DNS traffic steering configurations with native health check alerts.
DevOps tool integrations: Preconfigured integrations with leading DevOps tools including Ansible and Terraform to help automate routine maintenance, manage data sources and feeds.
Propagation speed: fastest propagation in the industry, measured in seconds not minutes; worldwide propagation in under five seconds.
Independence: neutral arbiter between infrastructure services (CDNs, clouds).

IBM NS1 Connect helps enterprises modernize and optimize networking infrastructure to provide customers with faster connections to websites, applications, services and content.

Amazon Route 53 is a highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web service. It is designed to give developers and businesses an extremely reliable and cost effective way to route end users to Internet applications by translating names like www.example.com into the numeric IP addresses like 192.0.2.1 that computers use to connect to each other. Amazon Route 53 is fully compliant with IPv6 as well.

Azure DNS is a hosting service for DNS domains, providing name resolution using Microsoft Azure infrastructure. By hosting your domains in Azure, you can manage your DNS records using the same credentials, APIs, tools, and billing as your other Azure services.

Sample Customers

Avast Software, Bloomberg L.P., BBC, Carfax, CNBC LLC, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Disney Streaming, Dropbox, EBAY Inc, Gannett Media Corp, Salesforce, Wayfair, Workday

Hess, Expedia, Kelloggs, Philips, HyperTrack

M-Files

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Route 53 vs. Azure DNS

July 2024

Free Report: Amazon Route 53 vs. Azure DNS

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Route 53 vs. Azure DNS and other solutions. Updated: July 2024.

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