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Cloudflare vs Windows Azure CDN comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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 CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Windows Azure CDN
Ranking in CDN
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 22.7%, up from 21.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Windows Azure CDN is 3.1%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN
 

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.
Muhammad ZaheerNazir - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps to handle edge cases and has purge features
I believe Windows Azure CDN can improve monitoring and measuring overall end-user performance. Providing monitoring tools or agents that can be integrated into our pages would be highly beneficial. Setting up a custom domain with Windows Azure CDN involves proving domain ownership, which can take some time. The process is relatively straightforward if your DNS or domain registrar is already integrated with Microsoft. However, the verification process may be more time-consuming if you use a different service provider.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare has many features."
"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 web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."
"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"It is a stable solution."
"I enjoy engaging in discussions with colleagues possessing unique expertise. I leverage the three platforms—Azure, Google, and AWS extensively. This allows me to offer diverse solutions to customers, commonly referred to as a multi-cloud approach."
"I like that CDN offers a routing feature."
"The geolocation feature is very important because many colleagues travel worldwide and need to access information from anywhere. The product has improved security."
"The UI is very intuitive."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that one can access Windows Azure CDN from anywhere."
"We use the product for faster content delivery with low latency."
"The most valuable feature of Windows Azure CDN is its effectiveness."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"Support response time could be improved."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"The high price of Windows Azure CDN is an area of concern where improvements can be made."
"Windows Azure CDN should lower its prices."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"Azure is continuously improving its CDN but the documentation should be up-to-date."
"The response time of the support team must be improved."
"There were a few bugs that were very disappointing. So, that is a part of the reason why we started using Fastly."
"They should include configuration for cache rules."
"Exploring shared access solutions with cloud accounts would be a beneficial choice."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We don't have any issues with the price."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The pricing of the solution depends on usage and varies based on the company's needs. If you want additional features like advanced logging, it will be pricier. However, it could be cheaper if you don't need those features. It all depends on the resources and requirements."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"The solution's price is above the medium range."
"I rate the price of Windows Azure CDN a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is high."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"It comes at a relatively affordable cost."
"The pricing is extremely high, almost 9 out of 10."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
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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
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
36%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
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 do you like most about Windows Azure CDN?
One of the tool's best features is its ability to handle edge cases. For instance, we encountered a situation where we needed to remove certain files from public access. The solution offered a purg...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Windows Azure CDN?
The pricing of the solution depends on usage and varies based on the company's needs. If you want additional features like advanced logging, it will be pricier. However, it could be cheaper if you ...
What needs improvement with Windows Azure CDN?
Windows Azure CDN should lower its prices.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data 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.
NORAD, Agreeya Mobility
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. Windows Azure CDN and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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