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Azure DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Azure DDoS Protection offers cost-effective security for enterprises, simplifying management and providing ROI, though costs vary by business size.
Sentiment score
6.7
Businesses see financial benefits from Cloudflare through improved uptime, security, and performance, enhancing returns despite measurement challenges.
You would only lose money if you had an attack and you need to calculate the cost against the risks.
WordPress security can be tricky, and that's where Cloudflare can be absolutely helpful for small businesses.
We have had ROI with the tool's use since it never gave us downtime and made us lose millions.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Azure DDoS Protection's support is well-regarded, with educational clients valuing communication; experiences vary by service agreements.
Sentiment score
7.1
Customer service is highly rated, especially for Enterprise plans, but response times could improve for complex issues.
This would help us address issues promptly, especially during unforeseen events like DDoS attacks.
We'd like a dedicated account manager.
You can get a support engineer with the best qualifications.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
Azure DDoS Protection is highly rated for security and scalability, especially valued by larger enterprises over smaller organizations.
Sentiment score
8.2
Cloudflare is highly regarded for its scalability, smoothly accommodating various user needs and handling significant traffic across business sizes.
I would rate the solution's scalability a ten out of ten since I didn't encounter any issues with it.
I rate its scalability a ten out of ten because I had no issues with it.
I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Azure DDoS Protection is praised for stability and reliability, though configuration issues and downtimes are occasionally noted.
Sentiment score
7.6
Cloudflare is generally praised for stability and reliability, despite occasional issues and past outages, requiring proper configuration for best performance.
For DDoS protection, I would not recommend Cloudflare.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
I rate Cloudflare eight out of 10 for stability.
 

Room For Improvement

Azure DDoS Protection users face GUI changes, complex setup, reduced capacity, false positives, and need better reporting and services.
Users suggest Cloudflare improve analytics, CDN errors, support, DNS, APIs, pricing, server access, DDoS features, and documentation.
I have noticed some false positives with the Web Application Firewall yet not with DDoS Protection.
I suggest adding more services and additional services, which would be beneficial.
There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
Compared to other vendors and Cloudflare, there will be more downtime.
 

Setup Cost

Azure DDoS Protection offers a free trial, competitive pricing, and inclusive safeguards, optimizing costs for enterprises.
Cloudflare provides free and paid plans from $20, with straightforward pricing catering to small, medium, and enterprise businesses.
If used with Front Door or Web Application Firewall, DDoS Protection is included without additional cost.
Compared to competitors, it is good.
That's where Cloudflare shines for smaller businesses – it's ten times cheaper than Akamai.
It is cheaper than other options.
It's cost-effective, but I think they should have a custom pricing model for enterprise customers based on the features you use.
 

Valuable Features

Azure DDoS Protection offers seamless integration, AI capabilities, scalability, and effective security for DNS and web applications with flexible pricing.
Cloudflare provides speed enhancement, security, and ease of use with CDN, DDoS protection, SSL, and traffic analytics for website optimization.
The ability to do research and development quickly without waiting for infrastructure is a plus.
The integration of various tools with Azure Firewall, like DDoS Protection, Web Application Firewall, and Azure Front Door, is quite effective.
Our scenario consisted of two web servers in different allocations to control access demands, and the load balancer did the job as expected, bringing security and stability to access points.
For me, the valuable feature is DDoS protection.
The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure DDoS Protection
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (24th)
Cloudflare
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Azure DDoS Protection is 4.2%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 18.8%, down from 19.4% 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 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
Compared to competitors, it is good. The pricing is mostly okay.
What needs improvement with Azure DDoS Protection?
I suggest adding more services and additional services, which would be beneficial.
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.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cloudflare DNS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about Azure DDoS Protection vs. Cloudflare and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
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