Azure DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare comparison

Read 71 Cloudflare reviews

9,184 Views
6,460 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Azure DDoS Protection

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Cloudflare and Azure DDoS Protection are key players in the DDoS mitigation industry. Cloudflare's simplicity and cost-effective support make it appealing to businesses prioritizing ease of use, whereas Azure DDoS Protection, with its extensive feature set and deep integration capabilities, might be preferred for comprehensive security, despite potentially higher costs.

Features: Cloudflare provides robust DNS protection, always-on support, and an intuitive setup process ideal for those seeking straightforward solutions. Azure DDoS Protection offers seamless integration with Azure services, enhanced threat intelligence, and automatic mitigation of attacks, offering users a thorough security framework.

Room for Improvement: Cloudflare could enhance its offerings by incorporating more advanced features and deeper customization options, addressing concerns about its basic feature set. Azure DDoS Protection might benefit from a simplified setup process and more budget-friendly pricing options to appeal to smaller businesses with limited resources.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cloudflare stands out for its user-friendly deployment and efficient support, making it a convenient option for users seeking quick deployment. Azure DDoS Protection requires more technical knowledge for configuration but provides comprehensive support through Azure's extensive network, assisting users with complex security requirements.

Pricing and ROI: Cloudflare offers budget-friendly initial setups with flexible pricing options, delivering attractive ROI for businesses looking to save on security expenditures. Azure DDoS Protection, despite a higher upfront investment, promises significant long-term value through its broad range of security tools, ensuring a high ROI for businesses requiring detailed security features.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure DDoS Protection vs. Cloudflare Report (Updated: January 2025).

Azure DDoS Protection vs. Cloudflare

Download the complete report

Helped 831,158 peers since 2012

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

Azure DDoS Protection

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

12th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Microsoft Security Suite (23rd)

Cloudflare

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Azure DDoS Protection is 4.1%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 18.8%, down from 19.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Venkat Raju Mallipudi

Group Chief of Enterprise Architecture & S/W Engineering/ CTO at Aventra Group

Acts as an additional layer of protection, provides endpoint security but not very easy to configure

It's not very easy to configure, in my view. We have to do some work behind the scenes. It's not very simple. We have to do it very carefully, and we need to monitor this enablement as well. But apart from that, I didn't see any kind of challenges. So, in my opinion, configuration is the main trouble for them. It is something that can be done to be better. Not just configuration. You need an expert who knows the ins and outs of these security solutions. In my experience, people struggle with configuration. While configuring, we get this error, we get that error, and then we try to fix those issues. I have seen those. It's not straightforward.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Azure DDoS Protection offers superior protection against denial-of-service attacks."

"The most valuable feature of Azure DDoS Protection is that it performs well."

"This solution is the best option for us because we use a lot of Microsoft products. So, it is easy for us to deploy or integrate any features or products."

"AI capabilities are very good. I would rate them an eight out of ten."

"DDoS Protection is simple to deploy and integrates seamlessly with the Azure environment. Ease of deployment is a crucial feature for us."

"The tool is user-friendly."

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."

"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."

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."

"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."

More Cloudflare pros

Cons

"Azure DDoS Protection could improve on the reporting."

"The visibility could be better. We would like to have better metrics, so we could see all the information in a central place."

"The implementation of Azure DDoS Protection results in a decrease in our bandwidth capacity and should be optimized to reduce resource consumption."

"It's not very easy to configure, in my view."

"Sometimes, it is hard for our staff to keep track of changes (in the GUI) between different projects, because there are constant changes. As a result, it is hard to manage, recall, and see all the features because they have been moved from one place to another."

"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."

"DNS Management."

"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."

"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."

"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."

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

More Cloudflare cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You can test it for a certain period of time free of charge. You can have a free account. You can test it to compare its pros and cons with other products that you are testing."

"It is an expensive solution."

"We are using the free version."

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

"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 product's pricing is cheap."

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

"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."

"A free version of the solution is available."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user68487

Security Expert with 51-200 employees

Nov 6, 2013

CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall

CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Azure DDoS Protection?

Azure DDoS Protection offers superior protection against denial-of-service attacks.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure DDoS Protection?

It is an expensive solution. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, where one is a cheap solution and ten is an expensive one.

What needs improvement with Azure DDoS Protection?

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 GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds ...

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 that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...

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.

AWS Shield vs Azure DDoS Protection

Comparisons

Compared 26% of the time

Azure Firewall vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 8% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs Azure DDoS Protection

Compared 7% of the time

More Azure DDoS Protection Competitors

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 49% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Product Reports

Azure DDoS Protection

Download Azure DDoS Protection product report

Download Cloudflare product report

Also Known As

No data available

Cloudflare DNS

Learn More

Microsoft

Overview

Azure DDoS Protection, combined with application design best practices, provides defense against DDoS attacks.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

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

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Azure DDoS Protection vs. Cloudflare