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Amazon CloudFront vs Windows Azure CDN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
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
Windows Azure CDN
Ranking in CDN
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 22.2%, up from 20.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 9.3%, down from 12.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Windows Azure CDN is 3.0%, up from 2.4% 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.
Elham AlMoosawi - PeerSpot reviewer
Commendable solution enhancing regional connectivity and efficiency
Its main advantage is that it offers something in this region that wasn't available before; previously, you had to go outside the region to get the same level of service you can now access right here in Bahrain. It's truly incredible. Our customers are more interested in accessing CDNs and peering with each other. Moreover, building this IX has significantly changed how traffic is handled. It has enabled better regional connectivity and access to content, which was our main goal. It has saved us money and time.
Muhammad ZaheerNazir - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to handle edge cases and has purge features
I believe Windows Azure CDN can improve monitoring and measuring overall end-user performance. Providing monitoring tools or agents that can be integrated into our pages would be highly beneficial. Setting up a custom domain with Windows Azure CDN involves proving domain ownership, which can take some time. The process is relatively straightforward if your DNS or domain registrar is already integrated with Microsoft. However, the verification process may be more time-consuming if you use a different service provider.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"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."
"The technical support is good."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the speed of delivery."
"It has built-in DDoS protection, which protects against DDoS attacks."
"Edge configuration and availability are vital features for easy content drop-off requests"
"The solution has good security features."
"One of the most valuable features of CloudFront is the reduced latency due to its edge locations, which results in a very fast delivery of data."
"The UI and the functionality in AWS for CloudFront is much better as compared to Azure and GCP."
"It is an expensive product with valuable features."
"The image loading process is easy and cost-effective too."
"The fact that it just delivers what it is supposed to do is its most valuable feature...The initial setup is very straightforward."
"One of the most valuable aspects is the capability to store extensive datasets and objects in the cloud, enabling their download through shared access signatures."
"One of the tool's best features is its ability to handle edge cases. For instance, we encountered a situation where we needed to remove certain files from public access. The solution offered a purge feature that allowed us to remove these files. This feature ensured that the files were deleted from all edge servers. Subsequently, we were able to upload new versions of the files."
"The geolocation feature is very important because many colleagues travel worldwide and need to access information from anywhere. The product has improved security."
"It is a stable solution."
"I enjoy engaging in discussions with colleagues possessing unique expertise. I leverage the three platforms—Azure, Google, and AWS extensively. This allows me to offer diverse solutions to customers, commonly referred to as a multi-cloud approach."
"I like that CDN offers a routing feature."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that one can access Windows Azure CDN from anywhere."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"The pricing could be improved."
"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"Latencies are always a problem."
"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."
"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"There is room for improvement in customer service and support."
"The lack of seamless integration made the setup process more complex and required additional research to manage all the services properly."
"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 solution could be more simplified for new users. It could be more user-friendly."
"Amazon CloudFront seems to have too many unnecessary products, which makes it cluttered."
"A lot of caching features must be added to the solution."
"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."
"There is a bit of a workaround required for custom domain management on CloudFront."
"Windows Azure CDN should lower its prices."
"I believe Windows Azure CDN can improve monitoring and measuring overall end-user performance. Providing monitoring tools or agents that can be integrated into our pages would be highly beneficial. Setting up a custom domain with Windows Azure CDN involves proving domain ownership, which can take some time. The process is relatively straightforward if your DNS or domain registrar is already integrated with Microsoft. However, the verification process may be more time-consuming if you use a different service provider."
"We have experienced issues with switch connectivity."
"Exploring shared access solutions with cloud accounts would be a beneficial choice."
"Azure is continuously improving its CDN but the documentation should be up-to-date."
"There were a few bugs that were very disappointing. So, that is a part of the reason why we started using Fastly."
"The response time of the support team must be improved."
"I aim to enhance the reporting."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"I rate Amazon CloudFront's pricing a five out of ten."
"The tool is affordable."
"Amazon's pricing varies depending on the data transfer."
"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."
"We do not have many options to optimize costs."
"Amazon CloudFront is an expensive solution."
"It comes at a relatively affordable cost."
"The pricing is extremely high, almost 9 out of 10."
"The solution's price is above the medium range."
"The solution's price depends on how much traffic you have. So, it was okay for us. Payments are to be made on a monthly basis since one has to pay for what they used."
"I rate the price of Windows Azure CDN a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is high."
"The pricing of the solution depends on usage and varies based on the company's needs. If you want additional features like advanced logging, it will be pricier. However, it could be cheaper if you don't need those features. It all depends on the resources and requirements."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
38%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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 do you like most about Windows Azure CDN?
One of the tool's best features is its ability to handle edge cases. For instance, we encountered a situation where w...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Windows Azure CDN?
The pricing of the solution depends on usage and varies based on the company's needs. If you want additional features...
What needs improvement with Windows Azure CDN?
Windows Azure CDN should lower its prices.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
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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
NORAD, Agreeya Mobility
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudFront vs. Windows Azure CDN and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.