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Arbor DDoS vs Cloudflare vs Fortinet FortiDDoS comparison

 

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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Arbor DDoS is 7.8%, down from 13.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 14.9%, down from 18.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiDDoS is 2.3%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Arbor DDoS7.8%
Cloudflare14.9%
Fortinet FortiDDoS2.3%
Other75.0%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

SZ
Team Lead Network Engineer at Artco Group d.o.o Sarajevo
Reliable protection ensures robust network defense and simplifies DDoS management
I am not sure if we plan to use additional features because we have many vendors and platforms that we support. We use the main function and that is it. The prices for Arbor DDoS are expensive. The licensing is subscription-based. From our sales department, they discuss that prices are very high. A potential improvement could be establishing a contract with Cisco to sell via their channel. This could be beneficial because we work extensively with Cisco. If you are a Cisco partner, you can sell Arbor DDoS. That would be good for customers that are Cisco-based because many customers in Bosnia are Cisco-based customers. BH Telecom, our main customer, sells Arbor DDoS to other customers for protection. They buy Arbor and sell the product services to others via Internet links. They sell add-on DDoS protection via Arbor DDoS. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Arbor DDoS is not present in many customers. Some customers try to sell it, but they sell other vendors such as F5. Arbor DDoS is mainly seen in telecom operators but not much in other customers.
M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.
MO
IT Analyst at Evapco, Inc.
Reliable protection and smooth setup enhance company security
Currently, I have two firewalls, with one located in Sorocaba, model 90D, and the other in São Paulo, model 30D. They are connected by VPN. I use the firewalls for VPN and final protection for my company, and my equipment is maintained by an internet company called Multiprox The equipment works…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Don't worry that it is complex because, out-of-the-box, it protects you from the basics."
"Analytics and its attack mitigation capabilities are valuable features of the solution."
"Very user-friendly GUI Simplest way of mitigation Predefined filters/techniques to easily stop the attacks and start mitigation."
"Companies that live from their presence on the internet will get a very high return on investment from Arbor."
"I have a lot of experience with the technical support for multiple vendors (HPE, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Imperva, etc.) and the Arbor support is really good; usually, they respond with the workaround for your issue."
"The artificial intelligence feature is most appreciated. This solution can lower the throughput and clear the traffic, which is something really important for us. It also provides good protection. It is user-friendly, and its integration has also been really fast. We have many critical applications, and it was easy to integrate Arbor DDoS with our website, mobile application, and web banking."
"Its scalability is big. It is for large deployments of big organizations and service providers."
"We use it not only for DDoS detection and protection, but we also use it for traffic analysis and capacity planning as well. We've also been able to extend the use of it to other security measures within our company, the front-line defense, not only for DDoS, but for any kind of scanning malware that may be picked up. It's also used for outbound attacks, which has helped us mitigate those and lower our bandwidth costs..."
"If someone is looking for a secure and optimized wrapper over an open website, I would suggest CloudFlare services."
"The aggressive caching and DDOS mitigation are the most valuable features offered by Cloudflare."
"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."
"The initial setup is extremely easy but will require access to your Domain Name Servers."
"There is no service as mature as Cloudflare that is also as easy to use, reliable, and hosted from excellent infrastructure."
"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."
"Cloudflare has positively impacted our organization by giving us flexibility to manage the DNS part, being quite fast, and allowing us to manage everything from a single dashboard, which is quite handy."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"Among its key features: Detects and mitigates DDoS attacks at L3 to L7; negligible to zero false-positives; Generates and sends reports without the need for an expensive third-party solution."
"The product allows the users to adjust the thresholds."
"This solution can protect Layer 3, Layer 4 and Layer 7 attacks of applications for us."
"I find the interface easy to use."
"This solution can protect Layer 3, Layer 4 and Layer 7 attacks of applications for us, and this is important."
"The solution already has security profiles and it can protect from DDoS attacks and other kinds of attacks."
"The most valuable feature is the cloud DDoS scrubbing capability."
"I find this product the best on-premises (in-line) DDoS mitigation solution that suits my current and future requirements."
 

Cons

"There is definitely room for improvement in third-party intelligence and integrations."
"New versions are sometimes released before the bugs are worked out."
"I think the diversity of protection is extremely limited. It must be expanded in future upgrades and versions."
"The solution needs to enhance its features to compete with other tools."
"If we want to see live traffic, we can do so, but once an attack that lasts for five minutes is done, the data is no longer there."
"They should improve the reporting section and make it a little bit more detailed. I would like to have much better and more detailed reports."
"Auto mitigation is a feature provided when DDoS is observed on any of link/customer (configured under auto mitigation). It automatically starts mitigation with default filters. In default filter mode, there could be an impact on the customer’s link,"
"Arbor's SSL decryption is confusing and needs external cards to be installed in the devices. This is not the best solution from an architectural point of view for protecting HTTPS and every other protocol that is SSL encrypted."
"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."
"The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall."
"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"I rate technical support quite badly."
"The installation was complex until I learned what I had to learn."
"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."
"There aren't really any aspects of the solution we are unhappy with. It's been a positive experience overall."
"The primary area for improvement is the on-premises capacity limit, currently fixed at 10 GB."
"The tool needs to focus more on the area of application traffic management, where it currently has some shortcomings."
"Alerts and reporting features must be improved."
"Earlier versions of firmware had bugs that limit my options."
"The solution can be a little more user-friendly and it can be more affordable."
"The only thing they need to do is to automate it. Today, you must create tools that do not require the use of an expert or anyone with special skills."
"I find that there have been issues in the past year with the solution hanging. It freezes often."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Arbor is striking a good balance between pricing and what they deliver."
"There is room for improvement with the pricing. It is an expensive solution. The issue with the pricing is more the way it is built. Right now we're paying per router, and there's a limitation there. I would like to see bundle-pricing where there is an overall solution cost."
"Start with a small license. Measure your bandwidth requirements."
"The price of this solution is a little high in the African market, it should be lower."
"I believe that the price of Arbor DDoS falls under the bracket of medium to high price."
"Our customers always complain about the price of the product."
"As far as I know, they are the best in this sector, in DDoS protection. They know it, I know, because their service prices are too high. They provide cloud DDoS protection for ISPs, but that is also too expensive."
"The solution's pricing is based on a licensing model that is expensive when compared to other tools."
"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."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"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."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The solution is reasonably priced."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"It's quite pricey."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other soluti...
Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Arbor DDoS?
The prices for Arbor DDoS are expensive. The licensing is subscription-based. From our sales department, they discuss...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare?
The tool's pricing is moderate. I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expens...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiDDoS?
Fortinet FortiDDoS offers lower costs compared to other solutions. The licensing costs are annually renewed.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiDDoS?
There is a need for more features that protect personal information, especially given the PDP issue in Indonesia.
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiDDoS?
I am looking for a UTM for my customers as I am from a system integrator company.
 

Also Known As

Arbor Networks SP, Arbor Networks TMS, Arbor Cloud for ENT
Cloudflare DNS
Fortinet DDoS, FortiDDos
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Xtel Communications
Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Find out what your peers are saying about Radware, NETSCOUT, Cloudflare and others in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection. Updated: March 2026.
886,719 professionals have used our research since 2012.