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PeerSpot user
COO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Top 20
The API gives us the ability to remote control our DNS settings. We need templates and profiles badly.

What is most valuable?

The API gives us the ability to remote control our DNS settings. With many platforms, such as PF-Sense integrating with CloudFlare, it’s an invaluable tool for things such as Dynamic DNS, Let’s Encrypt DNS-01 Challenge, or even as a rapid counter-measure when traffic diversion is needed.

The speed of everything CloudFlare is extreme. The UI is fast, responsive, and updates seem to be pretty much instant. But the biggest benefit, when mentioning speed, is that you can teach anyone in less than 20 minutes how to use it. This even includes your drunken janitor. Try that with AWS.

The Simplicity. When I mention the simplicity, it’s because of the limited information you are presented with at every screen. Although I hate the endless scrolling when searching for a function, I fully understand that less tech-savvy individuals probably have an easier time dealing with less information being thrown at them as they sift through the pile of setting CloudFlare offers. The features, functions, and terminology are also very well and clearly explained, if not almost cut out in cardboard for the reader to understand.

How has it helped my organization?

CloudFlare made it easier for us to manage our client’s DNS. With their outstanding UI, we have been able to reduce human errors and get a better overview of our DNS and security.

What needs improvement?

  • We need templates and profiles badly for the whole setup and multi-user support with rights management.
  • They need to fix their extensions and integrations faster.
  • They need to add more sub-level API keys.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used CloudFlare for some twenty months.

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Cloudflare
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about Cloudflare. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We did have stability issues a few times, but it’s hard to tell. They don’t always seem open about disclosing it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We never had scalability issues.

How are customer service and support?

I rate technical support quite badly. The support person had a hard time understanding my issue.

But to be fair, we gave up on support from major enterprises a long time ago.

Now we don’t even bother. It simply takes too long time to get escalated to Level-1 support where you can have a meaningful conversation.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We had many previous solutions and that’s why we switched.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was super simple, and it still is.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We don’t have advice, since we mostly rely on their free services such as DNS hosting. In general, their pricing is fair, but the price scaling is way too steep. For example, to go from 200 to 5000 dollars does not make any sense at all.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I believe I reviewed Radware for scrubbing and GratisDNS for DNS.

What other advice do I have?

  • Never put your eggs in one basket. Make sure that you have a contingency plan for DNS.
  • Make sure that you can rapidly move domains off CloudFlare. This can be done with scripting from your existing registrar, or with GoDaddy/CFR/Route53, which is a good triangle for speedy moves.
  • Keep an eye on GEO statistics on your important domains and make sure that you are able to provide a quick regional alternative.
  • Spread out domains over multiple accounts and different CloudFlare Servers.
  • Route53 is a good alternative to CloudFlare.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer2159601 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager- Secure Web Defense- Perimeter Security at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5
A security SaaS provider that protects from application layer attacks, but its console should be made more user-friendly
Pros and Cons
  • "Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
  • "Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

What is our primary use case?

We use Cloudflare for security and delivery.

What is most valuable?

Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack. Feature-wise, Cloudflare is fairly good.

What needs improvement?

Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Cloudflare for about two to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Cloudflare's stability is fair enough, and I haven't encountered any problems with the platform's stability.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Akamai is more user-friendly and easy to configure on the UI for a new person. Imperva is also a good solution that provides most of the features Akamai provides.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations.

What other advice do I have?

I have experience with the cloud version of Cloudflare.

I would advise users to explore Cloudflare and Imperva parallelly because they both stand on the same ground regarding security. In Imperva, there is no version control on their console, which was concerning for me.

Overall, I rate Cloudflare a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Cloudflare
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about Cloudflare. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
842,672 professionals have used our research since 2012.
President and CEO at Mekas Cloud Services
Real User
Easy to scale and configure, with reasonable pricing
Pros and Cons
  • "There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
  • "Latencies are always a problem."

What is our primary use case?

We are an IT consulting company, we provide solutions to our customers. We implement the solutions for our customers. Some of our customers use CloudFlare, some of them are using  Imperva and Palo Alto.

Our customers use this solution for any web traffic, mostly GCP or to AWS cloud as a backend.

What is most valuable?

I like caching and DDoS. There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS.

What needs improvement?

Latencies are always a problem.

Also, one thing I would say is you have to maintain DNS through their services. I don't know if that's a requirement or not.

Latencies are the key issue. If you are not caching and just using DDoS then definitely, there are some latencies added to the traffic.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Cloudflare for more than six years.

We work with many different versions. For new customers, we use the latest version.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I haven't had any issues with stability. We haven't heard anything from our clients.

It's a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is easy to scale. We haven't had any problems with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have not used technical support.

How was the initial setup?

Cloudflare is very straightforward. It is easy to set up.

There is no installation, you just go through the configuration process.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price is reasonable.

What other advice do I have?

It all depends on what the customer is looking for. These are two different areas. Basically, CloudFare is completely Cloud-based, whereas Imperva I can have a physical appliance or a virtual appliance, or a cloud-based. 

My solution is based on what customers are looking for, but Cloudflare is pretty good and getting really popular in terms of DDoS, the paid version of it.

We looked at the service. What are acceptable latencies? Is it okay to route through a different vendor, and before it reaches the backup? They have to go through multiple vendors. You also have to consider what the latencies cost and is that acceptable for the service. These are key things you need to consider when selecting a cloud-based vendor for DDoS.

I would rate Cloudflare a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user508683 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems and New Media Manager at a leisure / travel company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Page rules help shape traffic to the appropriate pages.

What is most valuable?

  • Caching: Caching helps save bandwidth with the CloudFlare CDN
  • Page rules: Page rules help shape traffic to the appropriate pages.

How has it helped my organization?

CloudFlare's caching brings the load speed down from 4.32 seconds to 2.45 seconds.

What needs improvement?

The Always Online feature has room for improvement. It seems to work sometimes and not others even with the pro version.

The feature shows a cached version of your live site if your host is offline. When your site is offline CloudFlare shows this:

For how long have I used the solution?

We moved our DNS to CloudFlare about three years ago.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not encountered any stability issues; the platform is rock solid.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not encountered any scalability issues; moving to the pro version was a simple as a click.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is 10/10. Our one call about a caching issue was easily fixed and it turned out to be a problem we caused, not CloudFlare.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used our own name servers and Snort. We switched due to simplicity of the CloudFlare interface.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup was straightforward. CloudFlare's setup wizards made it easy.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Start with the free plan and move up as needed. It was easy to upgrade and downgrade.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at GoDaddy DNS and Amazon DNS services. After reading the reviews online, we jumped to CloudFlare.

What other advice do I have?

Give it a shot. The setup was easy and you can see the results right away.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Aum e Hani - PeerSpot reviewer
Aum e HaniManager - Web Development at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User

Nice Review Mr. Matthew!
I agree to the Room for Improvement you provided. Should be considered by the Cloudflare community.

Customer Success Associate at RapidCompute
Real User
Good load balancing and DDoS protection with unlimited bandwidth
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
  • "Support response time could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

Our company provides the solution to customers who need website load balancing or DDoS protection. Customers with minimal traffic use the Business Plan and customers with a huge amount of traffic use the Enterprise Plan. 

We currently have thirty customers on the Business Plan and three customers on the Enterprise Plan. 

What is most valuable?

The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks. 

What needs improvement?

The solution should expand its learning portal for partners to include a few demo accounts for learning the product and developing knowledge or technical expertise. 

Support response time could be improved. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for one year. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable, has curbing centers in Pakistan, and is widely used. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable to each customer's needs. For example, you can scale up if you have two domains and want to add a third. It is easy to incorporate scaling. 

How are customer service and support?

The technical support response time for Business Plan customers could be reduced. Most companies opt for this cost-effective plan but they should receive the same service as the Enterprise Plan. Currently, response time for Business Plan customers is six to eight hours and that should be minimized. 

I rate support an eight out of ten. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The solution is easy to setup and share with customers. We categorize a customer's needs and recommend the best plan based on traffic and whether they need load balancing, bot management, routing, and unlimited bandwidth.  

What about the implementation team?

We implement the solution for our customers. Deployment includes one project manager and one support technician. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth. 

I rate the licensing options an eight out of ten. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The solution is a great fit for customers who want unlimited bandwidth. 

Competitors such as Akamai have strict options for bandwidth so might not be a good fit. 

What other advice do I have?

I recommend the solution for customers who don't yet have an idea how much bandwidth they need or who anticipate upscaling in a few months. 

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Product Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
The dashboard is very well thought out, giving useful information

What is our primary use case?

I just switched to Cloudflare as my domain registrar. That led me to use their CDN service, and I will probably use them for SSL when that is available. 

How has it helped my organization?

Cloudflare has made management of my website much easier by combining various functions in one platform without compromising quality. There are also less dark UX patterns than other vendors, so I have peace of mind knowing they aren't trying to trick me or make complicated procedures to attempt to lock me into their service. That is very refreshing!

What is most valuable?

The dashboard is very well thought out, giving useful information and providing easy access to useful functionality I wasn't aware of.

What needs improvement?

This is a very minor thing since I can't think of many ways for them to improve: It looks like they don't support as many TLDs as other registrars, but since they are very new as a registrar, I expect this may improve soon. For example, there are many TLDs in this list, but /co is missing: https://www.cloudflare.com/tld...

For how long have I used the solution?

Less than one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This solution has been stable so far, and monitoring of Cloudflare has shown them to be reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

So far, scalability has done well, but I am not a heavy user.

How are customer service and technical support?

I haven't contacted support which indicates a good self-serve product. The tools to answer your own questions are there, so support is built-in without ever needing to reach a person. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I switched to Cloudflare from GoDaddy because Cloudflare promoted "at cost" domains. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was very straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

Self-managed.

What was our ROI?

Less cost for domains and more satisfaction which is hard to put a dollar value to.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Cost for all services I have researched in Cloudflare is straightforward, and they don't include hidden fees. I'm not a heavy CDN user since I don't get much traffic, so I can't speak too much about the value for their CDN.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I've used various solutions like full hosting companies (Bluehost, iPage, etc.) and most recently GoDaddy. I also looked at Google domains and Namecheap. 

What other advice do I have?

I encourage anyone interested in holistic internet service delivery solutions to check out Cloudflare. They have nice simple solutions that work well together, are easy to set up, and their UI/UX is intuitive.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1585149 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
An intuitive solution that's great for a small business
Pros and Cons
  • "From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
  • "Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

What is most valuable?

Cloudflare is easy to use. It's very intuitive. Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva. I think Imperva is far richer in features from what I can see, but I think that can bring its own pains to be honest. For this reason, I think Cloudflare is a simpler version. 

With Imperva, you can drill down to packet-level very easily. It's very, very good at drilling down deeper and deeper into the packet. I think that is available with Cloudflare, but it's not as good. It doesn't seem to provide us with the same kind of search capability as Imperva. Having said that, I think that's one of the advantages of Cloudflare because you just have to click a button and drill down via clicking. I actually like Cloudflare to be honest. Imperva is almost too difficult for normal businesses — it's too complex. There's almost too much information there. Whereas with Cloudflare, it's easier to drill down and it's more intuitive.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've only been using Cloudflare for a week.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I wasn't involved in the implementation, so I have no idea how much it costs. 

What other advice do I have?

I think this solution is quite intuitive. For businesses that don't have a dedicated security team, I think it's a better product; it's more intuitive for people like us. I'm a network security engineer, but I'm not a dedicated security official. I've too many other things going on to have the time to do the rule sets that you need if you're working with Imperva — I think a lot of that is down to you as the customer. With Cloudflare, I think a lot of that happens in the background. 

I've been working with it for a week and a half so I'm not the best person to say if it's better or worse than Imperva. My only reaction is that maybe it's not as feature-rich for the end-user. Whether that's an advantage, well, that's questionable. Maybe we don't need all of those features sometimes — it depends on the business. The business I'm working in now is a very different business with a different kind of security model. The business I was working with when I used Imperva probably needed that feature-rich capability.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Cloudflare a rating of eight. It's quite intuitive. I like it. From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Independent Consultant at Unaikui
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
A firewall solution with CDN and DDoS protection
Pros and Cons
  • "Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
  • "The pricing could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

Cloudflare is typically a firewall. There are several editions available, such as the free edition.

What is most valuable?

Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.

What needs improvement?

The pricing could be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Cloudflare for one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The product is stable.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution’s scalability is good.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

We never need to contact customer service.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward and takes a few hours. One person can do that.

What about the implementation team?

​I did the deployment myself as a solution architect.

What other advice do I have?

You might be on the free edition, depending on your chosen edition. With the free edition, you receive the top ten protection services.

If Microsoft offered something similar to Cloudflare at the same price, it would be much better because you're already on Azure utilizing resources for CI/CD and transitioning to Cloudflare. From the most basic functionalities to the highest level, they are all awesome if you prevent unauthorized access to your website data through penetration testing.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Cloudflare Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Cloudflare Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.