Azure DNS is a DNS hosting service that is part of Microsoft’s cloud service’s platform. It sits on top of an Anycast network with 21 points of presence. In a nutshell, Azure is a basic DNS hosting service that lacks the bells and whistles of a specialized DNS provider, like Constellix.

It’s most often used by Azure cloud customers who want to point a domain to where their Azure app is hosted… and that’s about it. But it does have traffic management services like failover and load balancing.

Features

Both Constellix and Azure offer failover with baked-in monitoring services. They also both offer the top three kinds of load balancing: round robin, weighted, and latency-based routing.

Monitoring

Constellix offers more advanced and customizable monitoring services, such as the ability to choose monitoring locations.

GeoDNS

Constellix also has GeoDNS services, which Azure lacks completely.

Analytics

Both services have DNS query analytics tools, but Azure is limited to showing query volume and record counts. Whereas, Constellix lets you see where your queries are coming from, over which network, and you can even download real-time logs of incoming query traffic.

Pricing

Constellix charges less for queries, but Azure is a little cheaper for traffic management services. However, Azure’s traffic manager doesn’t have nearly as many customizable services as Constellix when it comes to load balancing and traffic optimization.

Hands down, Constellix is better for multi-cloud management and multi-regional configurations.

Verdict

Azure can be more affordable if you use it in conjunction with other Azure services. However, it lacks the advanced capabilities of Constellix’s GeoDNS features and performance monitoring.