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IBM NS1 Connect vs OpenText Core DNS Protection​ 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 Domain Name System (DNS) Security
8th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Managed DNS (6th)
OpenText Core DNS Protection​
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
19th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category, the mindshare of IBM NS1 Connect is 2.2%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Core DNS Protection​ is 1.8%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM NS1 Connect2.2%
OpenText Core DNS Protection​1.8%
Other96.0%
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

DavidJackson1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at Abbott
Smart routing has improved uptime and performance and enables real-time automated traffic control
The best features IBM NS1 Connect offers, in my opinion, are real-time monitoring, intelligent traffic routing capabilities, and being API driven. The intelligent traffic routing and API-driven features of IBM NS1 Connect have helped my team by allowing routing based on user location, endpoint switching based on latency, and DNS response time. Additionally, IBM NS1 Connect has API integration. IBM NS1 Connect positively impacts my organization by making our website load faster and enhancing the user interface to be more intuitive and user-friendly. It's very economical and cost-effective. I also love it because it saves time through automation, saving around 30% to 35% of our time and also saving man-source. Our application uptime has improved by 40% to 45%. Although there have been a few outages, the service uptime has significantly improved our trust with clients. It is very cost-effective and affordable, hence providing a great return on investment.
James Selby - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager Security Division at Virtual-IT
Offers reasonable pricing and solid scalability in the enterprise context
In my limited experience with Webroot, it has shown good scalability, particularly in the enterprise context. When it comes to Webroot DNS, I find it to be a nice solution but prefer a more comprehensive approach. I lean towards XDR vendors that can integrate DNS protection into a unified dashboard, especially as traditional anti-malware solutions like Webroot face challenges with evolving threat actors. Currently, I have around 60,000 Webroot users for anti-malware, but for DNS protection, it is a fraction—about one or two percent—since some clients opt for other solutions. Traditional anti-malware technology is becoming less effective against sophisticated threats.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"In general, I would say that this has been the easiest solution to manage and implement."
"If you need an external DNS provider, NS1 has been a really good provider for us, giving us exactly what we were looking for and with more functionality than we need for the moment, functionality that we can buy additionally."
"NS1 was the first solution that could express the logic we needed to be hidden behind the records, and we couldn't adapt any other solution to our needs."
"IBM NS1 Connect has positively impacted my organization by providing controlled downtime, reduced downtime, and time saving through automation, as approximately forty to fifty percent of our time is saved through automation and enhanced visibility."
"IBM NS1 Connect's API-driven architecture has helped my organization with digital transformation as it is an open standard."
"Overall, it has helped to improve our end-user experience."
"Webroot excels in DNS protection, particularly in blocking malicious sites and phishing."
"I would recommend Webroot; it is a very good solution and a solid solution that keeps our computers protected."
"Almost everyone who uses it is happy about the product. I don't get any types of complaints from my clients."
"DNS protection is valuable."
"When compared with other products, Webroot DNS Protection is the best to secure the end users."
"The installation is easy and doesn't take long. The program speedy and doesn't crash. It doesn't consume computer hardware or software."
 

Cons

"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 setup is a bit hard to grasp at first."
"Pricing can be more transparent, especially when dealing with tight budgets."
"When we first deployed, we flipped the switch, and it didn't work as well as we expected."
"The technical support is slow. You raise a PR, and then it takes several weeks for them to respond."
"I believe IBM NS1 Connect can be improved in several ways. The main concern I identified is the cost, which is higher than other solutions despite its uses."
"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."
"Reporting is not done in real-time. Rather, it is done in 15-minute intervales. This is something that should be configurable by the admin."
"It addresses a specific risk related to malicious sites but doesn't cover broader security aspects."
"It needs to be more secure for production environments."
"The reporting system needs improvement. They should make is that we can customize it so we can add, remove or change its interface but they use a template. The reports cannot be changed."
"It needs to be more secure for production environments, currently, it is reliable and secure but as per new internet attacks, it should be ready with a proactive approach to eliminate attack chances."
"The price could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
6%
Construction Company
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Media Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise13
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with NS1 Managed DNS?
The aspect that needs improvement about IBM NS1 Connect is that the integration with AI is not seamless at this moment. That particular portion needs to be re-evaluated. We were able to increase th...
What is your primary use case for NS1 Managed DNS?
I have worked on both deployment models of IBM NS1 Connect in the company's environment and in the clouds. I utilize IBM NS1 Connect's Intelligent Traffic Steering feature.
What advice do you have for others considering NS1 Managed DNS?
I purchased IBM NS1 Connect through AWS Marketplace. We do use analytical tools built into the product. I rate this product 9 out of 10.
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Also Known As

NS1 Managed DNS, NS1
SecureAnywhere DNS Protection
 

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
1. Cisco  2. Dell  3. HP  4. IBM  5. Microsoft  6. Oracle  7. Symantec  8. McAfee  9. Trend Micro  10. Palo Alto Networks  11. Fortinet  12. Check Point Software Technologies  13. Juniper Networks  14. F5 Networks  15. Citrix Systems  16. VMware  17. FireEye  18. Splunk  19. Proofpoint  20. Carbon Black  21. Barracuda Networks  22. SonicWall  23. WatchGuard Technologies  24. Sophos  25. Kaspersky Lab  26. Bitdefender  27. Avast  28. AVG Technologies  29. ESET  30. Malwarebytes  31. Webroot (the company itself)  32. OpenDNS (now part of Cisco)
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM NS1 Connect vs. OpenText Core DNS Protection​ and other solutions. Updated: July 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.