Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs Cloudflare comparison

Barracuda Web Application F...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Barracuda Web Application Firewall and Cloudflare based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. Cloudflare Report (Updated: May 2020).

Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. Cloudflare

May 2020

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Helped 814,649 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Barracuda Web Application F...

Average Rating

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF) (15th)

Cloudflare

Average Rating

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CDN (1st), Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (11th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Barracuda Web Application Firewall is designed for Web Application Firewall (WAF) and holds a mindshare of 2.0%, down 2.2% compared to last year.
Cloudflare, on the other hand, focuses on Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection, holds 19.8% mindshare, down 20.6% since last year.

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Carlo Bertini

It consultant and Project Manager/ CTO technology officer at Cabar at Cabar SRL

Sep 8, 2023

Provides strong issue discovery capabilities; enhance the security parameters of web applications and suitable for medium to large enterprises

The Barracuda support depends. Sometimes, they solve the issue promptly, but normally, they are not so fast and are not entirely focused on the problem. For example, sometimes I write many requests on the tickets, asking for one, two, three, or four steps and asking for one to three resolutions. Often, they respond with only one or two. So, I need to push again and again. In other cases, I ask questions and get positive feedback immediately, depending on who the technician is. Barracuda has engineers in the USA, UK, and other countries, so it depends on the technician's location and expertise. So, I am not completely satisfied, but sometimes it is okay, and sometimes it is not okay. So, depending on the region and depending on the person who actually receives these tickets, the technical support could be more knowledgeable. So they may need some training or education for the entire staff to respond immediately without any delays. Often, it happens that they respond because they need to, not because they understand the technology I'm using. So they respond just because it's required by the service level agreement, which specifies a response time within four hours. But this is just a response, not a resolution of the case. Sometimes, the response is within the agreed time, but the solution takes much longer.

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Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

Dec 1, 2022

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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the automatic content filtering."

"We only need one subscription to be protected against both active DDoS and offline DDoS attacks."

"The stability of the solution is good. I don't think we've experienced bugs, crashes, or glitches."

"The product's advanced bot and threat protection capabilities are valuable."

"If an attack is coming continuously, you can ask the device to block it temporarily for two to three minutes. F5 has not provided us with an option to block certain IPs for some time. Barracuda can help you block someone if the source is from a different IP. You can apply the rule to the device and block it for whatsoever time you want. The solution will unblock the IP after the prescribed time as well."

"The installation is straightforward."

"The volumetric DDoS defense is very good because I had a problem with a lot of volumetric DDoS attacks on my servers. After using Barracuda, those attacks have stopped and all the traffic is going smoothly to my servers and the system is working really well."

"Has a good dashboard."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall pros

"The UI is good."

"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."

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

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

"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."

"The technical support is good."

"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."

"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."

More Cloudflare pros

Cons

"It is not stable nor mature."

"We've had some blocks of the application and some false positives."

"I think the main area for improvement in this product is learning it, as can be seen when comparing it to the F5 web application firewall. F5 has a very powerful learning phase when you start using your web application firewall against your site. Barracuda has something like this, but not with the same functionality from my point of view."

"I would suggest that someone implementing this product is knowledgeable in the IT field, and with the network needs. It is complex."

"Sometimes when we put it in action, we have some blogs that appear as false positives. I think that it's improving. Barracuda should minimize false positives."

"An area for improvement in Barracuda Web Application Firewall is attack identification. Other banks identified attacks and tracked logs that the solution wasn't able to identify because of its ready-made rules pre-deployed by the vendor. My organization raised this issue with the technical support team. Another area to improve in Barracuda Web Application Firewall is its service desk. The team resorted to stonewalling because they couldn't accept that a feature was missing in the solution, and it was only after a lot of drilling down that the service desk team accepted that, and would be adding that feature in the future. My organization had to submit a report to the Reserve Bank of India with information on the logs identified and the attacks that happened, and that there was a failure on the part of the Barracuda Web Application Firewall. The Reserve Bank of India conducts a tri-monthly cyber risk audit in all Indian banks. Even smaller banks identified and caught attacks that my organization wasn't able to do, so I was looking into other solutions that competitor banks could be using because Barracuda Web Application Firewall failed to identify some of the attacks."

"They should improve their features, so they easily compare to the competition."

"As most people are aware, the implementation is not easy."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall cons

"Support response time could be improved."

"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."

"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."

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

"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."

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

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

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

More Cloudflare cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They only offer a yearly licensing plan."

"Barracuda costs us $8,000 per year. Barracuda costs $20,000 for a full subscription, when you try to protect multi-site infrastructure, in different geographical zones and for different data centers. If you have only one site, Barracuda will be cheaper."

"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."

"The product pricing was competitive for the value it offers regarding security features."

"The product is expensive."

"The price of the solution is a little expensive. There is a license for this solution and it can be purchased every one, two, or five years."

"The pricing is less compared to other web applications."

"For small companies, the price is very expensive because the WAF is an enterprise-level application, not intended for smaller businesses. In my opinion, the price is right for enterprise-level use."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

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

"The product's pricing is cheap."

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

"The price is reasonable."

"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."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

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

More Cloudflare 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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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

20%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Educational Organization

Government

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall?

It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs in our environment.

What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?

I use the solution in my company to protect our website.

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

Cost is a bit on the higher side. Big companies can afford it.

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.

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Comparisons

Compared 22% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

NetScaler vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

HAProxy vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall Competitors

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 49% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door 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

Barracuda Web Application Firewall

November 2024

Barracuda Web Application Firewall report

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November 2024

Also Known As

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Cloudflare DNS

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Barracuda Networks

Overview

Barracuda Web Application Firewall is a game-changing cloud-connected security solution that enables organizations to safeguard both their applications and their data from an ever-growing array of advanced cyber threats. It offers protection from cyber attacks that target not only data and applications stored on the cloud but also those that are housed on web servers. 43% of the time a breach takes place via a compromised application. Barracuda Web Application Firewall prevents these types of breaches from occurring.

Barracuda Web Application Firewall denies hackers the ability to penetrate your system by using a number of techniques to keep your organization safely insulated. The first method of protection consists of two parts. The first part involves a thorough scanning of all inbound web traffic. This solution monitors everything that comes into the system. It employs IP reputation intelligence, which filters all incoming data. If the source of the data has a bad reputation, it is blocked by the firewall. Administrators now have a way of locking out many common threats that could otherwise compromise sensitive networks. These scans can also allow administrators to protect their systems from within as DLP (Data Loss Prevention) protocols. If any sensitive data attempts to leave, administrators will automatically be alerted and the data will be blocked from exiting.

Barracuda Web Application Firewall can also be set up to apply the AAA (Authentication, Authorization & Accounting) framework to an organization’s network. If an intruder manages to get past the authentication stage, the authorization protocols kick in. After the authorization stage comes accounting, which works by tracking and logging users’ activities so that administrators will be in a position to prevent long-term damage from being done. This three-step process can be implemented without requiring administrators to make changes to their applications.

Key Features

Some of Barracuda Web Application Firewall’s key features include:

The ability to employ adaptive profiling. Administrators will have an easier time enforcing security policies once this feature is enabled. It takes data from safe sources and builds profiles that can be used to create whitelisting protocols that prevent unsafe actions from occurring on the system.
The ability to assess threats in real time. Barracuda Web Application Firewall uses machine learning to detect new threats and attacks as they emerge.
The ability to manage the Barracuda Web Application Firewall system from a single interface. Administrators can manage their Barracuda Web Application Firewall configurations from one centralized location.

Reviews from Real Users

Barracuda Web Application Firewall stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. One of the main ones is the robustness of the solution. Users are given access to a vast variety of security features in a single product.

PeerSpot user Muhammed S., a Presales Solutions Architect at Hilal Computers, notes this when he writes, "The solution offers multiple security features. There are machine learning features and great URL encryption. It also offers multi-protocol support against DDoS attacks."

Other reviewers note that Barracuda Web Application Firewall is user-friendly, easy to set up, stable, and reliable.

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distribution Denial of Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global 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 use the solution and 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 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.” A PeerSpot user who is a Competence Center Manager at a tech services company.

Sample Customers

Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar

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