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

Amazon CloudFront vs Azure Front Door comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Amazon CloudFront
Ranking in CDN
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Azure Front Door
Ranking in CDN
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (11th), Microsoft Security Suite (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 22.2%, up from 20.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 9.6%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Front Door is 20.2%, up from 20.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
XYX ABC - PeerSpot reviewer
Top-notch in terms of customer service and offers pay-as-you-go model with a free tier
With a mixed stack, things become a problem. With GCP and Azure, the DNS setup gets tricky when using CloudFront. With AWS, it's smooth and streamlined. Their GUI provides all the details and is very easy to navigate. The challenge starts to occur because AWS gives you only one DNS endpoint for the entire service. This single endpoint covers your CDN, AWS server, and domain migration needs. If you use any other solution like GCP or Azure, you face additional configuration changes and account management. You need separate accounts for AWS CloudFront and your chosen platform, like GCP. This means securing and managing two separate accounts – an extra responsibility. With Cloudflare, you just need one account and pay for it. Managing the complex DNS details isn't your burden. However, on the flip side, CloudFront might require more hands-on management on your part.
Thomas Zebar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides great security with a good application firewall
The initial setup is straightforward. If you want to use the portal, CLI, or PowerShare, or you want to use automation data for one month, it's straightforward. Even when it comes to operational maintenance, it's pretty easy and straightforward. Microsoft has done a great job on that front. Maintenance generally requires someone who is a cloud administrator or similar to maintain services in general, with Front Door a small piece of a larger maintenance requirement. There's not a lot to manage, the configuration is simple. I encourage people to document the configuration and infrastructure as well as disaster recovery in case anything happens.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."
"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"It has built-in DDoS protection, which protects against DDoS attacks."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"The product provides reduced latency and quicker site refreshes."
"The best feature of Amazon CloudFront is its simplified process and easy integration."
"The most valuable feature is the number of servers they can put your content in while being reliable."
"The most beneficial aspect of Amazon CloudFront is its capacity to automatically arrange resources depending on user needs, eliminating the need for on-premises management."
"The image loading process is easy and cost-effective too."
"The speed and usability of the solution are valuable."
"I am impressed with the tool's integrations."
"I particularly appreciate its load-balancing capabilities as it allows us to manage multiple instances and support a global presence effectively."
"You can assign as many web application firewall policies as you want to the same instance of Front Door."
"Rules Engine is a valuable feature."
"The price is one of the most important aspects of the product. It's quite affordable."
"The solution is good."
"The tool is easy to use for beginners."
"The most valuable feature is that I can have CDN and load-balancing capabilities in a single service instead of managing two separate tools."
 

Cons

"The product needs to improve its automation."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"Sometimes, the server goes down automatically."
"During the setup phase, there were some hiccups in terms of security, the user role, and the permissions."
"Amazon CloudFront can improve by accurately determining the latency of a non-defined URL that the solution encounters."
"Support needs to be enhanced."
"The product should be more intuitive."
"With a mixed stack, things become a problem. With GCP and Azure, the DNS setup gets tricky when using CloudFront."
"The support must be improved."
"The distribution networks need to be a little bit more user-friendly in the way that new users are not able to configure the CloudFront distribution as easily as experienced users."
"There is room for improvement and they're working on it."
"The product's features are limited compared to Cloudflare. The tool also doesn't work well in a hybrid environment. I would like to see a way to add personalized APIs in the system."
"In the tool, there needs to be a good amount of monitoring in the area of health probes to capture in front of what is happening."
"We should be able to use Front Door defenders with multiple cloud vendors. Currently, they can be used only with the Azure cloud. Azure Front Door should also be able to do global load balancing and provide internal front door services. Microsoft should clearly define what Traffic Manager, Application Gateway, and Azure Front Door products do. These are similar products, and people get confused between these products."
"The product needs to improve its latency."
"It lacks sufficient functionality."
"This is a relatively expensive solution."
"The tool should improve its cost."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"We are using the free version."
"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"I used to work with AWS and Azure, and we provided cost comparisons for customers to help them choose the right services. Azure tends to be more user-friendly and easier to understand, while AWS may take more time."
"The product has a mid-range pricing."
"I rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten. The licensing follows a pay-as-you-go model."
"The product could improve its price."
"The tool is affordable."
"We do not have many options to optimize costs."
"I rate Amazon CloudFront's pricing a five out of ten."
"The policies and prices keep on changing frequently with AWS solutions"
"It is on a pay-as-you-go basis."
"Considering the standard licensing of the tool, even though we have not checked the billing as of now, it might not be very costly."
"The product is expensive."
"The pricing of the solution is good."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"The transition to the premium tier has led to increased costs, making it more expensive than the classic tier."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CDN solutions are best for your needs.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
How do I choose between AWS Global Accelerator and Amazon CloudFront?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Global Accelerator or Amazon CloudFro...
What do you like most about Amazon CloudFront?
The solution has good security features.
What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Front Door?
It's a matter of value versus price. If we add more features and raise the price, it must remain justifiable. If we m...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Azure Front-Door
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Unilever, Spotify, Pinterest, MLB Advanced Media, Foursquare, PBS, Airbnb, Netflix, WIX, Comcast, Automobili Lamborghini, Rovio, Discovery Communications
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudFront vs. Azure Front Door and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.