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Cloudflare vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Cloudflare enhances performance, reduces operational costs, and boosts revenue, with reported benefits of $903,000 over three years.
Sentiment score
7.4
Organizations saw mixed financial results with F5 BIG-IP LTM, noting benefits in performance and security but varied financial returns.
WordPress security can be tricky, and that's where Cloudflare can be absolutely helpful for small businesses.
We have had ROI with the tool's use since it never gave us downtime and made us lose millions.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
The major return on investment is the security of our data.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Cloudflare's service is praised for responsiveness, but some users face delays, often relying on extensive documentation for solutions.
Sentiment score
6.8
F5 BIG-IP LTM support is praised for responsiveness, but users report delays with complex issues and inconsistency in non-premium support.
This would help us address issues promptly, especially during unforeseen events like DDoS attacks.
We'd like a dedicated account manager.
You can get a support engineer with the best qualifications.
I would rate the technical support of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) nine out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Cloudflare's scalable architecture is praised for efficient traffic handling, seamless expansion, and meeting diverse enterprise needs globally.
Sentiment score
7.5
F5 BIG-IP LTM efficiently scales for most users, though some face hardware and licensing challenges necessitating careful planning.
I would rate the solution's scalability a ten out of ten since I didn't encounter any issues with it.
I rate its scalability a ten out of ten because I had no issues with it.
I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Users praise Cloudflare for improved reliability, effective DDoS protection, and excellent DNS services despite initial configuration needs.
Sentiment score
8.0
F5 BIG-IP LTM is highly reliable with minimal downtime, swiftly resolved issues, and commendable performance in demanding environments.
For DDoS protection, I would not recommend Cloudflare.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudflare users seek better analytics, integration, support, pricing clarity, and enhanced features like caching and multi-user access.
F5 BIG-IP LTM is expensive, complex, lacks pay-as-you-grow, with room for improving support, integrations, and user-friendliness.
There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
the ability to integrate with the on-site active directory instead of just AD through Azure AD
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare offers flexible pricing plans from free to $1,500 monthly, ideal for businesses of different sizes and traffic needs.
F5 BIG-IP LTM is expensive but valued for robust security, performance, with potential savings through strategic bundling and negotiation.
That's where Cloudflare shines for smaller businesses – it's ten times cheaper than Akamai.
I find it to be cheap.
It's cost-effective, but I think they should have a custom pricing model for enterprise customers based on the features you use.
The product is costly.
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare enhances performance and security with CDN, caching, DDoS protection, easy DNS management, analytics, and intuitive interface.
F5 BIG-IP LTM enhances application performance with load balancing, iRules, SSL offloading, and customizable, intuitive interface for complex environments.
Our scenario consisted of two web servers in different allocations to control access demands, and the load balancer did the job as expected, bringing security and stability to access points.
For me, the valuable feature is DDoS protection.
The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.
One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
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), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cloudflare and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Cloudflare is designed for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection and holds a mindshare of 18.9%, down 19.3% compared to last year.
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), on the other hand, focuses on Application Delivery Controllers (ADC), holds 15.7% mindshare, up 15.7% since last year.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

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.
Bonieber  Orofeo - PeerSpot reviewer
Identifying compromised traffic and securing data has been a significant advantage
One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) ( /products/f5-big-ip-local-traffic-manager-ltm-reviews ) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication. Additionally, the security aspect of it provides a significant advantage as it helps us secure our data, which is a major investment and benefit for us. Before using this system, we had difficulties in storing our data and managing the traffic that comes in and out.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.
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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
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
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 needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?
There are no specific areas for improvement as it is already well-resolved and doesn't require further enhancements.
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?
The primary use case includes load balancing to serve application servers and basic web application firewall solutions. Our customers use it for that purpose.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
 

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.
Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
842,690 professionals have used our research since 2012.