Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall comparison

Barracuda Networks and Cloudflare are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Barracuda Networks is ranked #32 with an average rating of 6.0, while Cloudflare is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.4. Additionally, 75% of Barracuda Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Cloudflare users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service and Cloudflare Web Application Firewall compete in the web application security market. Data indicates Cloudflare has an edge due to its superior feature set despite a higher price point.

Features: Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service offers automatic scaling, robust security policies, and ease of configuration. Cloudflare Web Application Firewall includes DDoS protection, CDN integration, and comprehensive security measures.

Room for Improvement: Barracuda could enhance its feature set and performance capabilities. It could benefit from more expansive integration options. Improved documentation would also aid users. Cloudflare would be better served with more straightforward pricing, additional support for smaller businesses, and enhanced usability for less technical users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Barracuda provides straightforward deployment and quick customer service, suitable for fast integration. Cloudflare's deployment model supports large-scale implementations with efficient setup processes. Both services have responsive support, but Barracuda is typically faster in resolving issues.

Pricing and ROI: Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service is budget-friendly with low initial costs, providing solid ROI for small to mid-sized operations. Cloudflare's higher expense is justified by its extensive security features, offering substantial ROI for enterprises needing comprehensive protection. Barracuda is attractive to cost-sensitive organizations, while Cloudflare serves those requiring extensive security infrastructure.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Cloudflare Web Application Firewall Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

January 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

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.

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Hadar Eshel

Co-Founder and CEO at Cloudway

Easy to install platform with valuable policy management features

We use the product for securing email systems, protecting websites, and safeguarding web-based applications and portals One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strategy. Additionally, it could operate in a local data center.…

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SachidDoshi

Senior Enterprise Security Architect at HGS - Hinduja Global Solutions

Offers a huge signature repository and is superiorly effective in mitigating DDoS attacks

The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced, which presently stands at two or three months. The product has a custom rule set that users can modify and manifest as needed. The vendor can probably shorten the learning curve using cutting-edge technologies like AI. The solution provider can also work around the web applications and identify the toolset that needs to be implemented to deploy the solution in less time. The vendor has launched a SASE product that can function with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall, but many improvements are needed in terms of features, such as the web filtering feature, and CASB has not yet been added.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"

"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."

"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."

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

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

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

More Cloudflare pros

"I like its ability to identify known attacks, including DDOS attacks. It's valuable because software must be able to stop known attacks. Application attacks are evolving all the time. When it comes to software-as-a-service, we need to have software that knows about all the latest attacks. It should also protect against major unknown attacks."

"The most valuable features of the solution are it is plug and play, has automated policies, a simple configuration, and is easy to create rules."

"The solution can be used for threat prevention or as a cloud-to-cloud backup system"

"The product's bot protection feature is valuable for our company."

"It provides an ease of policy management."

"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."

"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."

"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."

"It is configurable via API."

"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."

"The product has a valuable security control functionality."

"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."

"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

Cons

"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."

"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."

"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."

"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."

"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."

"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."

"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."

"Technical support is lacking."

More Cloudflare cons

"We found it a bit slow when accessing it through the web browser. The URL also exposed the user name and the hashed password. When I log into my Barracuda WAF user portal, I could see the username and the hashed password on the URL itself. So, it is not very secure, and it is important to take that off."

"It's a very specific solution that is only requested for a customer's web code or their global IT policy."

"One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strategy."

"The solution can improve by bundling Security Operation Center (SOC) with the WAF-as-a-Service, it would provide a lot more value to customers."

"The stability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"Its stability could be better."

"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."

"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."

"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."

"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."

"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."

"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"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 pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The product is expensive but it offers flexible pricing. It could be affordable."

"I rate the product's price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high. There are no additional costs to be paid apart from the standard licensing fees attached to the solution."

"It's very difficult for me to give an estimate of the cost. All I know is that we sell the box itself as a service."

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."

"The solution is expensive."

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."

"It is not too pricey."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."

"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."

"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

24%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

19%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

28%

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

It provides an ease of policy management.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strateg...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

We use the product for securing email systems, protecting websites, and safeguarding web-based applications and portals.

See all answers

What do you like most about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The product has a valuable security control functionality.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available. This improvement wo...

See all answers

Comparisons

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 2% of the time

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Fortinet FortiWeb vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 12% of the time

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Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 21% of the time

AWS WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 15% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 14% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

Radware Cloud WAF Service vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

February 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

January 2025

Download Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

February 2025

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Barracuda WAF as a Service

Cloudflare WAF

Overview

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

Cloudflare

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service is a comprehensive solution designed to provide application security, DDoS protection, SSL authentication, protocol support, and application delivery. It is a plug-and-play solution with automated policies, simple configuration, and easy rule creation.

The solution can be used for threat prevention or as a cloud-to-cloud backup system based on email protection with cloud security. It is also a web application firewall and covers major protection and threat management functions. With Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service, customers can ensure the security of their web code and comply with global IT policies.

Barracuda Networks

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.

Cloudflare

Sample Customers

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

Salvation Army

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

January 2025

Free Report: Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

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