Cloudflare One vs Fortinet FortiDDoS comparison

Cloudflare and Fortinet are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Cloudflare is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.7, while Fortinet is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.0. Cloudflare holds a 4.2% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Fortinet’s 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cloudflare users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 12, 2024

Fortinet FortiDDoS and Cloudflare One offer network security solutions, primarily competing in DDoS protection. Cloudflare One often takes the lead due to its comprehensive cloud-based security suite, appealing to those seeking integrated solutions beyond basic DDoS protection.

Features: Fortinet FortiDDoS offers hardware-based protection, real-time threat reporting, and mitigates DDoS attacks at layers 3 through 7. Cloudflare One provides a cloud-native security platform with integrated Zero Trust, Secure Web Gateway features, and effective CDN performance for increased accessibility.

Room for Improvement: Fortinet FortiDDoS could enhance its ease of use and streamline its integration process for less complex deployment. It might also benefit from reducing the need for specialized IT support. Cloudflare One could improve its granular control over traffic filtering and offer more options for on-premises solutions. Additionally, clearer documentation on feature utilization could enhance usability for new users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fortinet FortiDDoS requires on-premises deployment, which can be complex, needing specialized IT support. Cloudflare One excels in swift cloud-based implementation, providing a simplified setup process and comprehensive customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Fortinet FortiDDoS involves substantial upfront hardware costs with long-term value in targeted protection. Cloudflare One operates on a scalable subscription model, offering flexibility and quick ROI, appealing to those with cloud infrastructure and variable budget considerations.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloudflare One vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare One vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS

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

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 18.8%, down from 19.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare One is 4.2%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiDDoS is 3.0%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

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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Leandro Soares Costa

Coordinator of the Architecture Security Team at TOTVS

Replaces traditional VPN and enables endpoint exposition

It's the endpoint exposition. We don't need to expose our VPN server to the internet and need a zero-test solution. I can apply some conditional access to the endpoint that's connecting to our network to check their security policies or the security condition of their workstation. Once the workstation is trying to connect to my internal network, then I would like to check the discrete condition of these endpoints that are trying to access my internal network. We created some conditional access. We have CrowdStrike, to check if the CrowdStrike is installed, to check if it's updated, and to check for Windows updates. We created some conditional policies to check it.

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Yazan Omar

Systems Engineer at aic²

An easy-to-use tool with great GUI

The product's initial setup phase was really easy. There is a lot of time involved in the testing phase and other processes related to the area of deployment, so it may take up to two weeks to deploy the solution. The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. One person is enough to take care of the deployment phase of the product. The person involved in the deployment phase needs to better understand topologies when dealing with Fortinet.

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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 solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."

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

"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."

"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"

"Cloudflare has many features."

"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."

"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."

More Cloudflare pros

"This solution is easy to understand and easy to configure."

"Cloudflare, in my opinion, was easy to implement."

"Cloudflare DDoS is better than its competitors for its security, deployment, and scalability."

"Enables me to work from two locations."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform removes the risk of exposing the applications to the public."

"For Cloudflare Access, I am using the free plan...The most valuable feature is their protection."

"It is a stable solution."

"The blocking feature is very good."

More Cloudflare One pros

"It is a user-friendly product in terms of monitoring and updating policies."

"The protection resources and the support are valuable features of the solution."

"The solution is very user-friendly and very easy to use."

"The product allows the users to adjust the thresholds."

"Among its key features: Detects and mitigates DDoS attacks at L3 to L7; negligible to zero false-positives; Generates and sends reports without the need for an expensive third-party solution."

"It allows me to see all the traffic on my network."

"The most valuable feature is the cloud DDoS scrubbing capability."

"I find the interface easy to use."

More Fortinet FortiDDoS pros

Cons

"Support response time could be improved."

"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."

"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."

"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."

"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."

"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."

"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."

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

More Cloudflare cons

"There are premium tier live service and lower tier live service, so we opted for the lower tier. But there is no medium tier where we pay a little extra and get a bit more service. So if that can be improved."

"They don't have a person to provide support for customers using the solution under their free plan."

"The onboarding process can be improved a little bit."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform needs to improve its documentation. It took time to do the implementation."

"When there are any dynamic changes in complex applications, the tool takes a lot of time, making its analytics-related area a major matter of concern where improvements are needed."

"Cloudflare DDoS has poor technical support."

"The free plan has limitations. For example, I can only set up three rules, and the application firewall is unavailable."

"Our customers no longer use Cloudflare because its service is subpar."

More Cloudflare One cons

"All the thresholds that need to be configured should be included in the default so that user will not forget or misconfigure."

"The web interface could be much better."

"There aren't really any aspects of the solution we are unhappy with. It's been a positive experience overall."

"The only thing they need to do is to automate it. Today, you must create tools that do not require the use of an expert or anyone with special skills."

"The challenge lies within the customer environment, particularly in Brazil, where companies have stringent security requirements for implementing solutions."

"I find that there have been issues in the past year with the solution hanging. It freezes often."

"I would like to see analytics, big data."

"The primary area for improvement is the on-premises capacity limit, currently fixed at 10 GB."

More Fortinet FortiDDoS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."

"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."

"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."

"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."

"The prices are slightly expensive."

"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."

"The solution is not that expensive."

"It's quite pricey."

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."

"The solution is reasonably priced."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

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 GR...

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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 Cloudflare Access?

The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Access?

The price of Cloudflare Access is the same as compared to Akamai, but I get better performance from Cloudflare. My co...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Access?

Cloudflare Access has strong integration with Microsoft, among other platforms. However, when it comes to Kaspersky, ...

See all answers

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would...

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What do you like most about Fortinet FortiDDoS?

The product's initial setup phase was really easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiDDoS?

The product's pricing is comparable to other products.

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 3% of the time

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Twingate vs Cloudflare One

Compared 12% of the time

AWS Shield vs Cloudflare One

Compared 8% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cloudflare One

Compared 8% of the time

Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs Cloudflare One

Compared 6% of the time

Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform vs Cloudflare One

Compared 4% of the time

More Cloudflare One Competitors

Arbor DDoS vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 26% of the time

Radware Cloud DDoS Protection Service vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 13% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 10% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 7% of the time

AWS Shield vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 6% of the time

More Fortinet FortiDDoS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare One

January 2025

Download Cloudflare One product report

Buyer's Guide

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

January 2025

Download Fortinet FortiDDoS product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform

Fortinet DDoS, FortiDDos

Learn More

Cloudflare

Fortinet

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 One is a single-vendor Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform that enables Zero Trust security and any-to-any connectivity across enterprise applications, users, devices, and networks. Cloudflare One helps organizations simplify, modernize, and consolidate their IT architecture by converging security and networking services on our single global network and control plane.

Many organizations start by adopting our Security Service Edge (SSE) services — like ZTNA, SWG, CASB, and DLP — to reduce their attack surface, stop threats like phishing and ransomware, protect data, and apply identity-based Zero Trust verification across web, SaaS, and private app environments. Others prioritize simplifying network connectivity across offices, data centers, and cloud environments with our WANaaS.

Every service is available for customers to run in every location across Cloudflare’s global network, which today spans 330+ cities in 120+ countries, so you can scale connectivity with fast, consistent protections everywhere.

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are ever-evolving and use a variety of technologies. To successfully combat these attacks, you need a dynamic, multi-layered security solution. FortiDDoS protects from both known and zero day attacks with very low latency. It’s easy to deploy and manage, and includes comprehensive reporting and analysis tools.

Sample Customers

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

23andMe

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare One vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS

January 2025

Free Report: Cloudflare One vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare One vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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We monitor all Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.