Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway comparison

Barracuda Networks and Microsoft are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Barracuda Networks is ranked #32 with an average rating of 6.0, while Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 7.2. Additionally, 75% of Barracuda Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 78% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service compete in providing web application firewall solutions. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has an upper hand in cost-effectiveness and integration, while Barracuda excels in security and features despite a higher cost.

Features: Microsoft Azure Application Gateway offers robust load balancing, SSL termination, and seamless integration with Azure services for scalability. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service provides comprehensive security features, automated threat updates, and detailed reporting tools, offering a proactive security management approach.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure Application Gateway could improve by enhancing advanced threat protection, more customizable reporting, and better multi-cloud support. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service needs improvement in cost-effectiveness, streamlined integration with non-native cloud services, and more intuitive user management interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is straightforward for existing Azure users due to its integration and excellent documentation, facilitating a smooth setup process. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service provides a cloud-native deployment model with quick installation and responsive customer support for diverse infrastructures.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is seen as cost-effective, especially for Azure-dependent businesses, with scalable pricing based on usage. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service, while having higher initial costs, justifies the expense with substantial ROI due to its advanced security features and long-term application protection benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

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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Shehzad Ali

Information Security and Compliance Officer at Carnation

Offers time and cost savings with integration, but user interface needs improvement

We are using it for our internal application development. We are testing those features of application gateways. We are integrating it with our solutions, application, Azure Application Gateway Microsoft has a vast variety of tools, and it blends very well. It provides a range of services, so it…

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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

"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."

"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

"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."

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

"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."

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

"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."

More Cloudflare pros

"It provides an ease of policy management."

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

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

"We find it valuable because it is compatible with our existing Azure solution."

"Azure Application Gateway's most valuable feature is ease of use. The configuration is straightforward. It isn't difficult to adjust the size of your instances in the settings. You can do that with a few clicks, and the configuration file is the same way. You can also set rules and policies with minimal time and effort."

"The tool is easy to use and quite flexible. It has policy management features as well. The solution screens all traffic to our web applications before passing it to the application. We recently tested it on one of our poorly developed applications, and the upgrade gave us a 100% result based on our tests. It's very effective as a security measure, and people can detect threats even through the web application."

"The solution's most valuable feature is an HTTP solution and SSL certificate. It is also easy to use."

"We use the product in front-end and back-end applications to do the load balancing smartly."

"It is a scalable solution...The installation phase of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is very easy."

"It does an excellent job of load balancing."

"I like the tool's stability and performance."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway pros

Cons

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."

"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."

"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."

"Latencies are always a problem."

"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."

"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."

"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."

"Support response time could be improved."

More Cloudflare cons

"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."

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

"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."

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

"The tool's pricing could be improved."

"The solution can sometimes feel a little cumbersome unless you're a professional infrastructure person."

"Customer service can be improved. There is room for improvement, specifically in paid support, by providing more direct contact."

"The solution needs improvements in integrating different services and creating a better application balance."

"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway's first deployment is complex. It needs to improve its pricing."

"The graphical interface needs improvement because it is not user friendly."

"Application Gateway’s limitation is that the private and the public endpoint cannot use the same port."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"A free version of the solution is available."

"The price is reasonable."

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

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

"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 minimal compared to other products."

"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."

"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."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"The solution is paid monthly. The solution is highly expensive."

"I would rate the pricing a three out of ten, with ten being cheap and one being expensive."

"The solution's pricing is not complex. It is not expensive from our point of view."

"The cost is not an issue."

"The product is not expensive."

"There is a need to pay a fixed price per month to use the product. There are no additional payments to be made to Microsoft apart from the charges paid towards the monthly licensing costs attached to the solution."

"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is expensive."

"I rate the pricing seven out of ten because some third-party solutions are even costlier than this."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.

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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

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?

We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...

See all answers

How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?

Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?

Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the...

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

Radware DDoS Protection Service vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

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

Compared 88% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 12% of the time

More Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service Competitors

F5 Advanced WAF vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 12% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 12% of the time

AWS WAF vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 10% of the time

HAProxy vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 9% of the time

NetScaler vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 8% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

February 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

February 2025

Download Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

February 2025

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Download Microsoft Azure Application Gateway product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Barracuda WAF as a Service

Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway

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

Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. Traditional load balancers operate at the transport layer (OSI layer 4 - TCP and UDP) and route traffic based on source IP address and port, to a destination IP address and port.

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

Microsoft

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

Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

January 2025

Free Report: Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

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