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

Amazon CloudFront vs Windows Azure CDN comparison

Sponsored
 

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
72
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
34
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 February 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 22.6%, up from 21.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 8.6%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Windows Azure CDN is 3.1%, up from 2.3% 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.
Parth Buch - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."
"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 technical support is good."
"The tool is user-friendly."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"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."
"Cloudflare has many features."
"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"If you're using AWS entirely, it's smooth sailing."
"The speed and usability of the solution are valuable."
"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to deliver content to users nearby."
"The image loading process is easy and cost-effective too."
"The solution is very easy to use."
"Feature-wise, I like the solution's signed URL because it provides security for me."
"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."
"Amazon CloudFront provides valuable security by ensuring secure file access when accessing files from S3."
"It is a stable solution."
"The fact that it just delivers what it is supposed to do is its most valuable feature...The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that one can access Windows Azure CDN from anywhere."
"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."
"We use the product for faster content delivery with low latency."
"The most valuable feature of Windows Azure CDN is its effectiveness."
"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."
 

Cons

"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"With a mixed stack, things become a problem. With GCP and Azure, the DNS setup gets tricky when using CloudFront."
"CloudFront could improve in the areas of auto-scaling, reports, and insights. End clients desire more detailed reports to understand usage patterns better."
"The user interface could be improved."
"Amazon CloudFront's setup is a bit difficult, and we would love it if they made it easier."
"There is a bit of a workaround required for custom domain management on CloudFront."
"The product could support any network load balancer. At present, we can use only Amazon’s load balancer application."
"Amazon CloudFront seems to have too many unnecessary products, which makes it cluttered."
"There were a few bugs that were very disappointing. So, that is a part of the reason why we started using Fastly."
"We have experienced issues with switch connectivity."
"Windows Azure CDN should lower its prices."
"They should include configuration for cache rules."
"The high price of Windows Azure CDN is an area of concern where improvements can be made."
"I aim to enhance the reporting."
"Exploring shared access solutions with cloud accounts would be a beneficial choice."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"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."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The product has a mid-range pricing."
"The tool is affordable."
"Amazon's pricing varies depending on the data transfer."
"Amazon CloudFront is an expensive solution."
"Its price is really on the high side. It should be cheaper in general."
"For CloudFront, I'm quite satisfied with the pricing. Initially, it doesn't require many resources for this specific solution."
"The solution’s price is reasonable."
"I rate Amazon CloudFront's pricing a five out of ten."
"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."
"It comes at a relatively affordable cost."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"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."
"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 is extremely high, almost 9 out of 10."
"The solution's price is above the medium range."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CDN solutions are best for your needs.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
39%
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 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...
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
No data available
No data available
 

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.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.