Amazon CloudFront vs IBM Cloud Video comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM are both solutions in the CDN category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.2, while IBM is ranked #31. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 8.3% mindshare in CDN, compared to IBM’s 0.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon CloudFront and IBM Cloud Video based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Microsoft, Akamai and others in CDN.

To learn more, read our detailed CDN Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CDN

April 2025

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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

Cloudflare

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 22.7%, up from 21.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 8.3%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Cloud Video is 0.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

CDN

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

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.

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Parth Buch

Infrastructure Architecture at Capgemini

Seamlessly manages security and dynamic content hosting in diverse applications

Hosting static content or with engineering dynamic content is beneficial. CloudFront provides a common access point, manages routing to different methods, and serves as an access point plus API routing. With AWS, maintenance is not required as it's a service offered by AWS which maintains itself. Security concerns are manageable through AWS's security mechanisms, with additional security enhancement possible through options like WAF and NACL.

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RONALD Lim

Co-Founder & Events Producer at Think Event

Great user interface and easy to implement

I like the corporate looking user interface for the audience and very straight forward log-in process too. The user interface of other solutions such as GoToWebinar can be confusing for a less tech-savvy audience. IBM has thoroughly thought through everything and the flexibility to integrate the API to expand the registration gateway allows us to have an extra layer of security. Furthermore, the brand IBM is reputable in the market for its data and network security.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."

"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."

"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."

"The technical support is good."

"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."

More Cloudflare pros

"The tool is highly available and reliable. It helps to access server applications easily. Integrating Amazon CloudFront with other AWS services was very easy, I would rate it eight out of ten."

"The best feature of Amazon CloudFront is its simplified process and easy integration."

"It has built-in DDoS protection, which protects against DDoS attacks."

"Its main advantage is that it offers something in this region that wasn't available before; previously, you had to go outside of the region to get the same level of service that you can now access right here in Bahrain. It's truly incredible. Building this IX has significantly changed how traffic is handled. The technical support is good. The initial setup is very straightforward. I rate the solution a perfect ten."

"The speed and usability of the solution are valuable."

"The support team is knowledgeable."

"The product’s most valuable feature is the availability of the websites."

"It is stable."

More Amazon CloudFront pros

"I like the user interface. There aren't too many buttons that the audience will have to fiddle with."

Cons

"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."

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."

"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."

"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."

"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."

"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."

"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."

More Cloudflare cons

"There are some solutions needed for integration that are not free."

"The only issues we've faced were when AWS itself had problems, and that's very rare. I can only recall one instance when they had issues, but they managed to resolve it quickly."

"Amazon CloudFront seems to have too many unnecessary products, which makes it cluttered."

"During the setup phase, there were some hiccups in terms of security, the user role, and the permissions."

"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."

"The product could support any network load balancer. At present, we can use only Amazon’s load balancer application."

"AWS is redesigning its user interface and user experience for CloudFront, and there is room for improvement in certificate management."

"The solution can benefit from expanding its data center and server locations to multiple places for smoother content delivery with even lower latency. The latency we experience is sufficient for our needs, and we are doing well. However, if they expand their locations in the future, it could be a positive factor. Its competitors have multiple data and server locations."

More Amazon CloudFront cons

"They should improve the registration gateway. Currently, you can't do a pre-event registration that's straightforward. You have to do an API to integrate. It would be a lot easier if they had that."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"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."

"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."

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

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

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

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The product has a mid-range pricing."

"We do not have many options to optimize costs."

"Its price is really on the high side. It should be cheaper in general."

"Amazon CloudFront costs less than third-party services."

"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."

"I rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten. The licensing follows a pay-as-you-go model."

"The solution’s price is reasonable."

"I rate Amazon CloudFront's pricing a five out of ten."

More Amazon CloudFront pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

20%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

22%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Amazon CloudFront?

The solution has good security features.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudFront?

I find Amazon's pricing good, rating it eight out of ten and considering it affordable and rightly placed, not expens...

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Compared 63% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

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No data available

Product Reports

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

IBM Ustream

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) service that accelerates delivery of your websites, APIs, video content or other web assets. It integrates with other Amazon Web Services products to give developers and businesses an easy way to accelerate content to end users with no minimum usage commitments. Amazon CloudFront can be used to deliver your entire website, including dynamic, static, streaming, and interactive content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your content are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance. Amazon CloudFront is optimized to work with other Amazon Web Services, like Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, and Amazon Route 53. Amazon CloudFront also works seamlessly with any non-AWS origin server, which stores the original, definitive versions of your files. Like other Amazon Web Services products, there are no long-term contracts or minimum monthly usage commitments for using Amazon CloudFront – you pay only for as much or as little content as you actually deliver through the content delivery service.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

With cognitive and AI infused technologies, IBM Cloud Video empowers customers to enhance live and on-demand video opportunities, and maximize viewer engagement.

IBM

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

Airbnb, N3 Results, University of Notre Dame

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Microsoft, Akamai and others in CDN. Updated: April 2025.

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