Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM NS1 Connect vs Infoblox BloxOne DDI 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM NS1 Connect
Ranking in Managed DNS
12th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Infoblox BloxOne DDI
Ranking in Managed DNS
8th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (6th), DDI (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of IBM NS1 Connect is 1.2%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Infoblox BloxOne DDI is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed DNS
 

Featured Reviews

Adam Surak - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Acts as a first line of defense, allows for full utilization of IP addresses in a network and the ability to block unwanted traffic using DNS is powerful
At this stage, we are struggling to use some of the DNS features of the platform, which are more about protecting your domain from hijacking and similar threats. However, I don't think it is a problem with the platform itself. It seems to be more of an integration issue with the secondary DNS provider we are trying to use on the Internet, called Cloudflare. So, it is more of an integration problem between Cloudflare DNS and any public DNS. I would like to improve the integration aspect of these two products. The platform should be able to work seamlessly with any other secondary DNS provider on the Internet. If Infoblox can make their licensing cheaper, then this platform could be widely used because it does cost a fortune to have it. That's why we do not have it in every entity that we manage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"A valuable feature is blocking domain generation, which automatically generates domains to protect the internal network."
"The overall product rating is ten out of ten."
"The most valuable features of Infoblox BloxOne DDI are its ability to manage all DDI services effectively and monitor them in real-time."
"It actually prevents a lot of false alarms because if a link is blocked by antivirus, it creates an alert for the IT risk team to investigate. By not resolving the IP for a malicious link, it stops many issues before they escalate. This has improved our security posture significantly."
 

Cons

"There could maybe be additional ways to manage traffic. There are no major improvements we're looking for. It's a very complete solution."
"We would really like them to become a DNS registrar."
"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 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 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."
"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."
"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.""
"There is a need for a comprehensive database on DNS."
"Infoblox BloxOne DDI is good to use, but there could be improvements in its visualization and dashboarding UI."
"Infoblox is fairly expensive for my customers. I am unsure if this is a general comment or specific to my situation."
"At this stage, we are struggling to use some of the DNS features of the platform, which are more about protecting your domain from hijacking and similar threats."
 

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."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Managed DNS solutions are best for your needs.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Infoblox BloxOne DDI?
Infoblox is fairly expensive for my customers. I am unsure if this is a general comment or specific to my situation. Customers wonder if discounts or promotions are available.
What needs improvement with Infoblox BloxOne DDI?
Infoblox BloxOne DDI is good to use, but there could be improvements in its visualization and dashboarding UI. While the current functionalities and dashboard are good, better reporting and more fl...
What is your primary use case for Infoblox BloxOne DDI?
I am currently working with ServiceNow, and I use Infoblox BloxOne DDI for managing DHCP and DNS services. I can add, modify, or delete DNS services or DDI devices and manage all the devices within...
 

Also Known As

NS1 Managed DNS, NS1
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM NS1 Connect vs. Infoblox BloxOne DDI and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.