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IBM NS1 Connect pros and cons

Vendor: IBM

4.5 out of 5

20 reviews
100% willing to recommend

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Pros & Cons summary

IBM NS1 Connect offers geolocation-aware DNS, automates traffic management with its API-first platform, and optimizes user experiences via real user metrics. Infrastructure deployment is efficient through Terraform integration. However, users encounter a steep learning curve and sporadic technical support, with testing lacking effective simulation. Monitoring needs enhancement due to false positives. Its cost is perceived as high relative to competitors. Managed DNS services efficiently reduce latency and redirect traffic during failures.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

IBM NS1 Connect's filtered DNS is geolocation-aware, allowing organizations to configure servers according to geographic regions for optimal support.

NS1's Pulsar filters collect real user metrics, aiding in optimal user path determination, enhancing user experience, and aiding CDN recovery.

IBM NS1 Connect's API-first platform supports automation and metrics gathering, contributing to efficient DNS and application traffic management.

Integration with Terraform simplifies infrastructure deployment and makes configuration highly efficient.

Managed DNS significantly improves end-user experience by dramatically reducing latency and providing enhanced monitoring and automatic redirection during failures.

CONS

Testing capabilities of IBM NS1 Connect need improvement, including the ability to simulate changes effectively.

IBM NS1 Connect has a steep learning curve, especially regarding filter chains and multi-region setup.

Technical support for IBM NS1 Connect is sometimes slow, with complex issues experiencing delayed responses.

The cost of IBM NS1 Connect is viewed as high compared to other services like Route 53, Azure, and Cloudflare.

IBM NS1 Connect should improve its monitoring and telemetry as false positives have been an issue.

IBM NS1 Connect Pros review quotes

reviewer2889387

Associate Software Engineer at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees

Oct 17, 2026

The authoritative DNS ensures DNS queries for domains and reliable DNS resolution are essential for users, particularly to discover application endpoints, and the API-first automation automates DNS configurations and changes through APIs and infrastructure as code workflows, reducing repetitive manual work and the risk of human error.

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Dns architect at a outsourcing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Sep 28, 2026

The real reliability and uptime of the global Anycast service are 100%, which we really appreciate.

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Senior Software Engineer at PwC

Feb 13, 2026

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.

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IBM NS1 Connect

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Assosiate Director at TIAA

Jul 9, 2026

The best benefits of using IBM NS1 Connect are the performance and availability of the product towards the cloud, and when comparing the performance with other products, I believe it is above par, as it is really helpful and gives me at least a 20 to 30% improvement in functionality.

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Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Reg-X

Oct 28, 2026

Health-based routing helps direct users to healthy application endpoints and reduces the risk of sending traffic to unavailable services.

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Data Protection Specialist at CompuCom

Jul 8, 2026

IBM NS1 Connect's API-driven architecture has helped my organization with digital transformation as it is an open standard.

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Alessandro Dasilva

Especialista De Produtos at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Jul 23, 2026

IBM NS1 Connect has a positive impact on my organization, as I believe it improves security, availability, and DDoS attack mitigation because it detects failures and automatically redirects users to healthy resources.

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JS

Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Aug 10, 2026

The auto DNS traffic routing helps during deployment or incidents by providing more reliability and faster performance.

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VP of Infrastructure & Security at Algolia

Mar 4, 2022

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.

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Valentino Volonghi

Chief Technology Officer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

Feb 15, 2022

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.

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Show 8 more reviews (out of 18)

IBM NS1 Connect Cons review quotes

reviewer2889387

Associate Software Engineer at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees

Oct 17, 2026

Our experience with customer support has been mixed; while some team members are really helpful and responsive, there have been instances where responses to complex technical issues are slower because they need to evaluate and provide support.

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Dns architect at a outsourcing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Sep 28, 2026

IBM NS1 Connect has a very steep learning curve in terms of learning the custom filter chains and the complex multi-region setup, which requires a specialized DNS expert and can be difficult for beginners.

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Senior Software Engineer at PwC

Feb 13, 2026

Pricing can be more transparent, especially when dealing with tight budgets.

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IBM NS1 Connect

Free Report: IBM NS1 Connect Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about IBM NS1 Connect. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2026.

920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Assosiate Director at TIAA

Jul 9, 2026

The technical support is slow. You raise a PR, and then it takes several weeks for them to respond.

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Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Reg-X

Oct 28, 2026

IBM NS1 Connect could be improved with more intuitive dashboards, clearer troubleshooting guidance, and more detailed real-time visibility into DNS performance and traffic routing.

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Data Protection Specialist at CompuCom

Jul 8, 2026

I am not overall satisfied with the license and cost for IBM NS1 Connect because my pre-sales team interacts on that part regarding pricing.

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Alessandro Dasilva

Especialista De Produtos at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Jul 23, 2026

I also think the cost is a bit high compared to other more traditional solutions such as Route 53, Azure, and Cloudflare.

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JS

Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Aug 10, 2026

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.

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VP of Infrastructure & Security at Algolia

Mar 4, 2022

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."

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Valentino Volonghi

Chief Technology Officer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

Feb 15, 2022

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.

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Show 8 more reviews (out of 18)

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Domain Name System (DNS) Security

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Domain Name System (DNS) Security

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Cloudflare vs IBM NS1 Connect

Cisco Umbrella vs IBM NS1 Connect

Quad9 vs IBM NS1 Connect

Amazon Route 53 vs IBM NS1 Connect

Azure DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Google Cloud DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

BlueCat Integrity vs IBM NS1 Connect

Infoblox DDI vs IBM NS1 Connect

Akamai Edge DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

G-Core Labs CDN vs IBM NS1 Connect

Dyn vs IBM NS1 Connect

Infoblox BloxOne DDI vs IBM NS1 Connect

Hurricane Electric Free DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

CloudFloorDNS Enterprise DNS vs IBM NS1 Connect

Managed DNS Services vs IBM NS1 Connect

See all alternatives

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