G-Core Labs CDN vs IBM NS1 Connect comparison

Gcore and IBM are both solutions in the Managed DNS category. Gcore is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.0, while IBM is ranked #12. Gcore holds a 0.5% mindshare in MDP, compared to IBM’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Gcore users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

G-Core Labs CDN

Read 4 G-Core Labs CDN reviews

732 Views
500 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

IBM NS1 Connect

Read 11 IBM NS1 Connect reviews

2,000 Views
995 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

G-Core Labs CDN

IBM NS1 Connect

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

IBM NS1 Connect and G-Core Labs CDN are both key competitors in the CDN network solutions space. While IBM NS1 Connect demonstrates strengths in pricing and support, G-Core Labs CDN has an edge in advanced features, appealing to users who prioritize comprehensive networking capabilities.

Features: IBM NS1 Connect offers DNS targeting capabilities, intelligent traffic routing, and multi-cloud DNS management. G-Core Labs CDN provides global scalability, edge computing features, and real-time monitoring. G-Core Labs CDN's more extensive global reach and edge computing capabilities present a stronger feature set for sophisticated networking demands.

Room for Improvement: IBM NS1 Connect could enhance its user interface to simplify the deployment process and improve user experience. Better integration options might also augment its appeal. Additionally, expanding feature-richness could help match the competition. G-Core Labs CDN, on the other hand, could focus on reducing initial setup costs, refining its pricing strategy for budget-conscious clients, and offering more flexible deployment options to tap broader customer bases.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: G-Core Labs CDN boasts quick deployment with easy integration and responsive customer support, facilitating fast transitions for organizations. IBM NS1 Connect, though offering flexible deployment options, could improve its user-friendliness to enhance implementation speed.

Pricing and ROI: IBM NS1 Connect's pricing is competitive, emphasizing cost-effective setups that offer favorable ROI for traditional DNS management needs. G-Core Labs CDN, despite higher initial costs, provides substantial ROI with its features suited to high-demand environments. Organizations opting for G-Core Labs CDN can expect greater long-term value despite upfront investments.

To learn more, read our detailed G-Core Labs CDN vs. IBM NS1 Connect Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

G-Core Labs CDN vs. IBM NS1 Connect

April 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

G-Core Labs CDN

Ranking in Managed DNS

10th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CDN (9th)

IBM NS1 Connect

Ranking in Managed DNS

12th

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of G-Core Labs CDN is 0.5%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM NS1 Connect is 1.2%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed DNS

Featured Reviews

Edgar Mart

Senior Technical Support Engineer at HayPost CJSC

Works without interruption, scales well, and has perfect uptime

Our website works without interruption almost until late at night, as many students have the opportunity to study in the evening. Most of all, we appreciate the stable and fast work of g-core. Uptime is always perfect. With such a volume of data as we have, failures can occur from time to time. The support solves everything in the shortest possible time. I love that the guys are constantly trying to improve the service. Our online school is expanding every year, and there are no problems that our provider can’t solve. They also have the opportunity to negotiate individual conditions for complex sites.

Read full review

Adam Surak

VP of Infrastructure & Security at Algolia

Handles customer-facing records and upstream selection logic with good efficiency

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. If we have about 1,000 endpoints, that translates to around 150,000 records. Assuming there's an even distribution, so every time a server fails or an endpoint goes on a level, we would have 150 updates. With NS1, we have one, so this had an even more significant effect. There are situations where we have thousands of specific records sharing the same responses. In that case, there is one update instead of thousands and thousands. When we chose Managed DNS in 2014, it was the only solution that could do what we wanted, but I'm not sure about the current state of the market. The NS1 API is an API on top of a managed DNS. It's not an afterthought. It's not like the solution existed. Someone was sending updates by email. Then a product manager came along and said, "Hey, there is this cool thing. It's called an API. Maybe we should do it?" And they are like, "Okay. Let's do it." In the case of NS1, they thought about how to use an API to manipulate and retrieve the stuff. It's supposed to be API-driven. Also, NS1 doesn't have hidden features that would not be available over the API. Even their dashboard is built on top of the API. You can leverage all the functionality programmatically. That's what we do. We don't use their native integrations because we have been customers before these integrations and real-time telemetry existed. Our solution isn't leveraging either of those. Instead, we leveraged their API integration, which was the first thing that existed. Indeed, the API is at the core of how we use Managed DNS. No one goes to the dashboard or manually clicks anything. Everything goes via the API, and we perform hundreds of changes every minute. The API automatically drives everything, so that's the integration we leverage. We don't use the Pulsar Active Steering feature because we don't have a website. Our solution is being used as an API for other solutions. You can put the Pulsar agent on the website and feed NS1 the information. In our case, we are integrating into third-party sites. We cannot put our JavaScript on their websites for NS1 to provide the data, so we don't.

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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

"The CDN interface is intuitive and user-friendly, and there are no intrusive ads or upselling additional services. Everything is self-contained, and it's a convenient CDN overall. We also loved that they provided a free trial period. They always seem to do what's best for the consumer and the internet."

"The support is amazing! They solve the issues on the fly."

"Uptime is always perfect."

"Since transitioning to G-Core, our site has started working much faster, and freezes have stopped. Users are staying on the site longer and visiting more sections. We increased the number of customers by 30 percent in the past six months. This is partially attributable to G-Core services."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More IBM NS1 Connect pros

Cons

"There are some nuances in the tariff configurations that we found confusing. We would like more flexibility in this area."

"It would be great if there were a section on the provider's website that shows a set of services for a particular business. It would be helpful to have some kind of checklist of services that are suitable for your blog, which are required, and which can be set up later."

"I would like to have one optimized report that we could use for our own needs."

"Once in the past six months, we got a "site is unavailable" error for a maximum of 20 minutes."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

More IBM NS1 Connect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of G-Core Labs CDN is very reasonable in comparison with other companies. We've done a lot of research into CDN providers, and G-Core offers the best service for the lowest cost."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Media Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for G-Core Labs CDN?

Compared to other solutions currently available on the market, the price of G-Core Labs CDN is very reasonable. G-Core CDN has 4 pricing editions: a free model, START 1.5TB, PRO 5TB, and a custom o...

See all answers

What do you like most about G-Core Labs CDN?

Uptime is always perfect.

See all answers

What needs improvement with G-Core Labs CDN?

We are closely monitoring the improvements in statistics on using the CDN resource. Now it can be viewed by different parameters: geography, individual users, devices, and more. We are waiting for ...

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Compared 22% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CDN

April 2025

Download G-Core Labs CDN product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM NS1 Connect

April 2025

Download IBM NS1 Connect product report

Also Known As

No data available

NS1 Managed DNS, NS1

Overview

Powerful edge and cloud solutions for media business and the entertainment industry

Gcore

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.

IBM

Sample Customers

avast, TEDx, Nanobit, Group Wagner, Momento

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

Buyer's Guide

G-Core Labs CDN vs. IBM NS1 Connect

April 2025

Free Report: G-Core Labs CDN vs. IBM NS1 Connect

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