Amazon Route 53 vs Quad9 comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Quad9 DNS are both solutions in the Managed DNS category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.7, while Quad9 DNS is ranked #3 with an average rating of 6.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 20.7% mindshare in MDP, compared to Quad9 DNS’s 16.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 50% of Quad9 DNS users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

Amazon Route 53 and Quad9 both operate in the DNS services market. Amazon Route 53 is advantageous in scalability and integration, while Quad9 excels in security features catering to privacy-focused users.

Features: Amazon Route 53 offers seamless integration with other AWS services, advanced routing policies for optimized traffic management, and robust high availability to ensure DNS reliability. Quad9 differentiates itself with strong security measures, including DNS-based threat protection to block malicious domains, complemented by a privacy-focused operational model and ease of use without additional setup complexities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon Route 53 provides a streamlined deployment process, particularly beneficial for existing AWS users, along with extensive support and comprehensive documentation. Quad9, focusing on security, requires minimal configuration and is designed to minimize administrative tasks, offering straightforward deployment and customer support aimed at enhancing user security experience.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon Route 53's pricing involves an initial investment that scales with usage, delivering a solid ROI for enterprises utilizing AWS services extensively. Quad9 offers its DNS services at no charge, making it an attractive option for those prioritizing cost-efficiency and security without the requirement for integration with other services. Route 53 presents greater ROI potential for businesses demanding extensive DNS management capabilities, while Quad9 remains appealing for budget-conscious users with a focus on security.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Route 53 vs. Quad9 Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Route 53 vs. Quad9

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM NS1 Connect

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of IBM NS1 Connect is 2.7%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon Route 53 is 20.7%, down from 24.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Quad9 is 16.8%, up from 14.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed DNS

Featured Reviews

Michael Wills

Senior Network Systems Engineer at McKesson

Balances cost and functionality, speeds up provisioning, and reduces the DNS maintenance work drastically

The provisioning is great. They have an API service that is simple to use and very quick. The changes that we make are replicated worldwide in a matter of usually milliseconds, sometimes seconds. They are done very rapidly. That's something that's obviously priceless when we're dealing with things like DNS. It is great as an API-first platform for DNS and application traffic management. It is very simple to use. It allows us to rapidly provision and deprovision things. We are all around happy with the solution. From a metrics standpoint, the solution that we came from had no metrics. So, it has been great. Their service team is excellent in taking the time to provide reports for both growth and strategic planning. It has been great.

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Jithin Scaria

Senior Professional I-Software Engineer Lead at Capgemini

Provides clear documentation, easy to understand, simplifies management and efficiently handles our domain-related configurations and DNS records

For initial setup, we generally use provisioning tools for these kinds of DNS records. The choice often depends on the cloud provider and the Infrastructure as Code (IAC) tools the client prefers. We adapt our approach accordingly rather than focusing on a single method within Route 53. The documentation is very user-friendly. Even someone with no prior experience can easily understand it. It provides step-by-step instructions and explains things in a clear and concise way. You can find everything you need to know about Route 53 and its features in the documentation, including white papers. In addition to manual configuration, you can also use third-party tools like Terraform, Pulumi, or AWS CloudFormation templates to manage your Route 53 configurations.

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Louis Geoffroy

President at IDEBUG

It's easy to use and set up, but I've faced performance problems

I have experience with Quad9 and most other filtering solutions. Quad9 was working well initially, but it started slowing, so I switched to OpenDNS. I recently checked Tom's Hardware, an IT review site, and read a review of seven DNS filters. Open DNS was ranked the fastest, and Quad9 was second. Google was on there too, but they said it didn't filter enough.

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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

"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."

"One of the features that is non-standard and that is very useful is the filtered DNS. We have set up our external VPN, which is what all our employees connect through, to use this feature. It's geolocation-aware. In that way, for India we set it up so that these are the servers that should be supporting things, and in the UK these servers, in the U.S. these servers, and in Sweden these ones."

"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."

"It massively speeds things up. Today, we allow developers to deploy services and have externally facing DNS scrapers that are created automatically without the addition of human intervention."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More IBM NS1 Connect pros

"Host zones and integrated features such as Health Checks and DNS routing are valuable features of Route 53."

"The solution is stable."

"We haven't faced any outages or issues directly related to Route 53. It has been 100% stable for me."

"The initial setup is good and straightforward."

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

"One of the best advantages is managed security."

"Route 53 is valued for its health check feature and reliability."

"The tool's health check functionality improved our company's service reliability since it is a good feature."

More Amazon Route 53 pros

"Setting up Quad9 is straightforward if you know what you're doing, and it's easy to use overall."

"The most valuable feature of Quad9 is that it is a free solution."

Cons

"We would really like them to become a DNS registrar."

"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."

"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."

"When we first deployed, we flipped the switch, and it didn't work as well as we expected. It wasn't a complete outage, but we had issues in some places with some customers. The NS1 team went out of their way to resolve it on Thanksgiving. We have a post about it on our blog. We called it "Black Thursday.""

"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."

"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."

More IBM NS1 Connect cons

"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."

"When we are looking at the model registry, it may be not clear sometimes. For example, if you use a single grid model and group or registry, it has a different SDK in the pilot. And it may be not so comfortable to use both of them because it is two different places for keeping things in order."

"With Amazon Route 53, finding what you want is so much more difficult, making it an area where improvements are required."

"The product should improve its automation."

"Route 53 supports DNSSEC, and it may not be available for all domain types or configurations. It can become expensive as usage scales, especially with advanced features and high query volumes. Slower response time with lower-tier support plan."

"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."

"A general area for improvement with AWS services is that while AWS quickly releases new services, sometimes these services are not as mature as expected, which can be frustrating."

More Amazon Route 53 cons

"It used to work fine for all the devices, but it started to slow and become non-responsive. I would have to reload the page two or three times before all the pages loaded. With OpenDNS, I only need to load the page once."

"Quad9 could improve by having more free features, such as custom DNS filtering."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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 that expensive."

"We pay per use."

"The tool is a bit expensive."

"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."

"The price of Amazon Route 53 is reasonable."

More Amazon Route 53 pricing and cost advice

"The price of Quad9 is free."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

University

Educational Organization

22%

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Comms Service Provider

15%

Hospitality Company

Media Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

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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?

I'm not a network specialist, so I don't know the deep specifics of DNS and what might need improvement on an interna...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?

Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...

See all answers

What do you like most about Quad9?

Setting up Quad9 is straightforward if you know what you're doing, and it's easy to use overall.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Quad9?

We've had performance problems with Quad9. It isn't responding fast enough.

See all answers

Comparisons

Cloudflare vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 42% of the time

Akamai Edge DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 20% of the time

Neustar UltraDNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 6% of the time

Infoblox DDI vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 5% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs IBM NS1 Connect

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM NS1 Connect Competitors

Azure DNS vs Amazon Route 53

Compared 65% of the time

Cloudflare vs Amazon Route 53

Compared 20% of the time

Google Cloud DNS vs Amazon Route 53

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai Edge DNS vs Amazon Route 53

Compared 3% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Amazon Route 53

Compared 2% of the time

More Amazon Route 53 Competitors

Cloudflare vs Quad9

Compared 82% of the time

Google Cloud DNS vs Quad9

Compared 13% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Quad9

Compared 2% of the time

Verisign Public DNS vs Quad9

Compared 1% of the time

Neustar UltraDNS vs Quad9

Compared 1% of the time

More Quad9 Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM NS1 Connect

November 2024

Download IBM NS1 Connect product report

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Route 53

November 2024

Download Amazon Route 53 product report

Buyer's Guide

Managed DNS

November 2024

Download Quad9 product report

Also Known As

NS1 Managed DNS, NS1

Route 53

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Learn More

IBM

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Quad9 DNS

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.

Quad9 enhances internet security by dynamically blocking malicious domains using real-time threat intelligence. It’s designed to protect users from cyber threats without compromising performance or privacy.

Quad9 offers DNS security that prevents access to harmful domains while ensuring user privacy and high-speed service. It operates by filtering DNS queries, enhancing online safety without logging personal data. Established on trusted threat intelligence, it balances efficient protection against cyber threats with minimal impact on internet speed.

What are the key features of Quad9?

Real-time Threat Blocking: Uses advanced threat intelligence to block malicious domains instantly.
Privacy-focused: Does not log personal data, ensuring user anonymity.
Global Coverage: Provides fast and reliable DNS resolution worldwide.
Free Service: Offers complete protection at no cost to users.

What benefits does Quad9 offer?

Enhanced Security: Reduces risk of malware and phishing attacks by filtering harmful domains.
Improved Performance: Maintains fast internet speeds despite added security measures.
Anonymous Usage: Prioritizes privacy by refraining from logging or storing personal user data.

In industries like finance and healthcare, where data protection is crucial, Quad9 is implemented to enhance security protocols. Its no-cost approach and efficient threat blocking make it suitable for integration into existing security frameworks, particularly where privacy preservation and threat mitigation are priorities.

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

CISCO, Netlab, proofpoint

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Route 53 vs. Quad9

October 2024

Free Report: Amazon Route 53 vs. Quad9

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Route 53 vs. Quad9 and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

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