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Cloudflare vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 29, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.9
Customer service is highly rated, especially for Enterprise plans, but response times could improve for complex issues.
Sentiment score
6.8
Support quality for Microsoft Defender for Cloud varies, with mixed feedback on response speed, support levels, and documentation effectiveness.
The representatives are knowledgeable and online documentation is great.
Enterprise support is amazing. It's 10 out of 10.
This would help us address issues promptly, especially during unforeseen events like DDoS attacks.
The support team was very responsive to queries.
Even for high-severity cases, response or resolution time can extend to three or four weeks.
Being a Microsoft partner company, we have direct lines into Microsoft.
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
5.3
Users suggest Cloudflare improve analytics, CDN errors, support, DNS, APIs, pricing, server access, DDoS features, and documentation.
Sentiment score
5.3
Microsoft Defender for Cloud needs improvements in usability, integration, false positives, policy management, pricing, support, and advanced features.
In CloudFlare's case, I need to get an external server, set up the redirection there using Apache or NGINX and put my own SSL certificates there.
The feature shows a cached version of your live site if your host is offline.
Hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud.
There is always room for more transparency, especially in pricing.
I recommend that they extend the scope for legacy infra assets.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Cloudflare is highly regarded for its scalability, smoothly accommodating various user needs and handling significant traffic across business sizes.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is praised for scalability and flexibility, despite potential cost increases and manual configuration challenges.
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.
Scalability is not a problem for CloudFlare since they are a cloud based solution.
They're expanding and have enough resources worldwide.
We are using infrastructure as a code, so we do not have any scalability issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud implementation because our cloud automatically does it.
The solution seems scalable.
 

Setup Cost

Sentiment score
6.3
Cloudflare provides free and paid plans from $20, with straightforward pricing catering to small, medium, and enterprise businesses.
Sentiment score
5.2
Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers competitive pricing but is costly for startups; bundling with other services provides savings.
currently we are using the $20 a month plan
The monthly cost is around $30 for three sites using the Business Cloudflare plan.
You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level.
Every time we consider expanding usage, we carefully evaluate the necessity due to cost concerns.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Cloudflare is generally praised for stability and reliability, despite occasional issues and past outages, requiring proper configuration for best performance.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is highly stable, though occasional deployment bugs and configuration changes may require extra work.
There were a few times when some of their CDN nodes would fail, creating serious speed issues with the site without any warning or notification from their side.
Once the webserver is installed with CloudFlare, it should work like a charm.
Since we switched to the business plan, we encounter no problems.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very stable.
Microsoft sometimes changes settings or configurations without transparency.
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
8.3
Cloudflare provides speed enhancement, security, and ease of use with CDN, DDoS protection, SSL, and traffic analytics for website optimization.
Sentiment score
8.4
Microsoft Defender for Cloud enhances security with daily recommendations, multi-cloud support, AI threat detection, and automated incident management.
The aggressive caching and DDOS mitigation are the most valuable features offered by Cloudflare.
DDoS protection is what CloudFlare is known for.
Web optimization features such as ‘Automatic Content Caching’, ‘Rocket Loader’, and ‘AutoMinify’, which help to minimize the website loading time and increase the website response.
The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available.
The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security.
The most valuable features are the different plans it offers and the visibility within them, such as the Defender for Servers plan includes capabilities for vulnerability findings on machines and configurations at the OS level.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (10th), Container Security (5th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 2.1%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 12.7%, down from 13.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
 

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.
Anurag Awasthi - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers excellent firewall management and visibility into threats in a stable, integrated security suite
The solution's robust security posture is the most valuable feature. We have a lot of firewalls, and we can manage them in the solution through the firewall manager. We can set up an Azure firewall and centralize the management policy. The solution provides excellent visibility into threats, and it's a cloud-based integrated solution, so we don't have to worry about any third-party products or services. Microsoft provides so many options, and that's great. Defender for Cloud generates reports we can use as an assessment, as it allows us to see the services in our environment and our points of highest risk. The solution's threat intelligence helps us prepare for threats before they hit and take proactive steps, which is very useful for analysis.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions are best for your needs.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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.
How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?
Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...
What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The pricing is good. It is license-based, and we are not utilizing all of the features, like API and other functionalities, so the cost is not that high.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

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.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.