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Cloudflare vs F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 29, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Ranking in Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (11th)
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall...
Ranking in Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.8%, down from 20.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is 1.5%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Richard Polyak - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 21, 2022
Straightforward setup with very good granularity and performance
Our company uses the solution as a data center firewall.  It is hard to determine all users within our infrastructure. It depends on systems we put behind the solution. Its internal but also a data center firewall. Sometimes, there are hooks from the solution to our external infrastructure or…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."
"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."
"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."
"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 solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"We use the solution for load balancing and WAF (web application firewall)."
"The solution is very straightforward. The usability is great."
"It blocks various attacks and mitigates disasters from occurring."
"The decryption is great."
"The protection is very useful."
"The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP AFM is all of my workers enjoy using it."
"I find the signature base is very helpful to see traffic"
"The most valuable features of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) are the web gateway, load balancing, services, and applications available."
 

Cons

"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."
"Technical support is lacking."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."
"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."
"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"DNS Management."
"We needed to protect the database but the solution didn't offer a certain feature to do so."
"It doesn't compare to next generation firewalls"
"F5 could provide a distributed cloud version."
"The solution's UI could be improved."
"The solution doesn't really meet our requirements for an edge firewall."
"This would be absolutely the best network security solution if the price were not so high."
"Currently, we have eighty F5s and we need some kind of management software. It would be very helpful."
"The solution’s initial setup is not easy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"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."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"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 tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"As per pricing, I would not say cheap, but little higher than cheap, but not very expensive. So you can say kind of value for money solutions."
"It is somewhat on the expensive side although it is worth the additional cost."
"F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is not an expensive solution."
"It's very expensive, and you pay extra for the models."
"The product is expensive."
"We have purchased a five-year licensing package for the product."
"The price of F5 BIG-IP AFM is a little more expensive than other firewalls on the market."
"The solution is slightly on the higher priced side."
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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
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
18%
Insurance Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
As per pricing, I would not say cheap, but little higher than cheap, but not very expensive. So you can say kind of value for money solutions.
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
NGINX, which F5 purchased, has room for improvement in its features, particularly its load balancing or application load balancing features.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
F5 AFM, F5 Advanced Firewall Manager
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.