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Cloudflare vs Google Cloud DNS 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Ranking in Managed DNS
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Google Cloud DNS
Ranking in Managed DNS
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Managed DNS category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 35.7%, up from 33.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud DNS is 6.2%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed DNS
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Shikar Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Constantly improving and adapting to customer needs
The effectiveness of Google Cloud DNS largely depends on where an organization stands in its cloud journey and its overall technology landscape. For those heavily invested in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and already embracing cloud solutions, Google Cloud DNS can be rated quite high, ranging from seven to nine out of ten.Deployment times for Google Cloud DNS can vary depending on the complexity of the infrastructure and configuration requirements. For straightforward setups and cloud-ready cases, deployment can typically be completed within a few minutes to an hour. However, in more complex infrastructure scenarios involving extensive configuration, deployment may take longer, possibly spanning days or weeks.

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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"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"
"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."
"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."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The initial setup process is easy."
"The scalability is good."
"The most significant features are the internal and external endpoints using Google Cloud DNS, which are very beneficial for dependent apps."
"Google Cloud DNS continues to evolve based on customer feedback and technological advancements."
"The tool is well integrated. We don’t need the interface of another provider. The product helps me manage my domain and write in Google Cloud."
 

Cons

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"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 console should be made more user-friendly."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."
"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."
"More features around rules-based configurations would be beneficial."
"Migrating away from Google Cloud DNS can be difficult."
"The solution's price could be better."
"It needs to provide better integration."
"The UX of the product is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The cost of using Google Cloud DNS can be relatively high compared to other options, especially considering the cloud environment."
"The UI is tricky to understand for people who have not worked with DNS records. People with little to no experience with DNS records can find it hard to understand. For example, you need to know the hallmarks to input records since they need to be matched in a specific format."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"It is expensive but cost-effective."
"The product is expensive."
"I am not sure about the pricing. However, I can give you a rough estimate which is like ten cents per month per zone."
"The cost of using Google Cloud DNS can be relatively high compared to other options, especially considering the cloud environment. I would rate it 6 out of 10. Cheaper alternatives might be desirable, but the decision depends on various factors such as vendor lock-in, organizational adaptability, and alignment with other technologies in use."
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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
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 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.
What do you like most about Google Cloud DNS?
Google Cloud DNS continues to evolve based on customer feedback and technological advancements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud DNS?
Pricing and support are really good. There are no complaints about the pricing.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud DNS?
I am not heavily involved with Cloud DNS, but from an end-user perspective, the customization part could be improved. More features around rules-based configurations would be beneficial.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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MeilleursAgents
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. Google Cloud DNS and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.