Amazon CloudFront vs Cloudflare comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon CloudFront
Ranking in CDN
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cloudflare
Ranking in CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2024, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 7.7%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 23.5%, up from 20.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN
Unique Categories:
No other categories found
Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection
15.5%
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
2.4%
 

Featured Reviews

Bireshwar Adhikary - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 31, 2023
Straightforward deployment, stable, and scalable
The most valuable feature of the solution is the speed of delivery. For example, if we have HTML, CSS, PHP, images, and media files, CloudFront can deliver them quickly and reliably through its worldwide network of edge locations. This reduces latency, allowing webpages to open faster, while also providing high performance. If the content is not stored in the Amazon CloudFront location, it will be retrieved from an origin, such as Amazon S3, a MediaPackage Channel, or an HTTP file server. For example, if the content is stored on a web server, that server can be identified as the source for the requested content. Suppose that we are hosting an image on a traditional web server, such as a PNG file. We might place the image on a website with the image name adhikary.png. This way, our users can easily navigate to the URL and see the image. When we use Amazon CloudFront, however, they may not be aware that the request is routed from one network to another. This is because the complex connections of interconnected networks that comprise the internet are hidden until the image is found.
it_user851871 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 8, 2018
Brings enterprise-grade features to my small business clients at low or no cost
I use this for DNS for many of my former clients and personal sites. When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers.  The second major use case is as a CDN where I will…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to deliver content to users nearby."
"The most valuable feature is the number of servers they can put your content in while being reliable."
"The speed and usability of the solution are valuable."
"The image loading process is easy and cost-effective too."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the speed of delivery."
"The product is very well interconnected with other Amazon services."
"The tool is highly available and reliable. It helps to access server applications easily. Integrating Amazon CloudFront with other AWS services was very easy, I would rate it eight out of ten."
"Its main advantage is that it offers something in this region that wasn't available before; previously, you had to go outside of the region to get the same level of service that you can now access right here in Bahrain. It's truly incredible. Building this IX has significantly changed how traffic is handled. The technical support is good. The initial setup is very straightforward. I rate the solution a perfect ten."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"Cloudflare has many features."
"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."
"The UI is good."
"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
 

Cons

"They should have more Edge locations so that CloudFront can be used much more. If they can make it a little bit cheaper and better than other networks, we will be able to use it more."
"Support needs to be enhanced."
"The solution can benefit from expanding its data center and server locations to multiple places for smoother content delivery with even lower latency. The latency we experience is sufficient for our needs, and we are doing well. However, if they expand their locations in the future, it could be a positive factor. Its competitors have multiple data and server locations."
"Sometimes, the server goes down automatically."
"Amazon CloudFront can improve by accurately determining the latency of a non-defined URL that the solution encounters."
"A lot of caching features must be added to the solution."
"Amazon CloudFront's setup is a bit difficult, and we would love it if they made it easier."
"The support must be improved."
"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."
"Support response time could be improved."
"DNS Management."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."
"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We do not have many options to optimize costs."
"The tool is affordable."
"Compared to competitors like Azure and Google, we find AWS pricing to be advantageous."
"Amazon's pricing varies depending on the data transfer."
"The product has a mid-range pricing."
"Amazon CloudFront is an expensive solution."
"Its price is really on the high side. It should be cheaper in general."
"The product could improve its price."
"The price is reasonable."
"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."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CDN solutions are best for your needs.
789,135 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
20%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
38%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How do I choose between AWS Global Accelerator and Amazon CloudFront?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Global Accelerator or Amazon CloudFront global content delivery network was the better fit for us. We decided to go w...
What do you like most about Amazon CloudFront?
The solution has good security features.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudFront?
I used to work with AWS and Azure, and we provided cost comparisons for customers to help them choose the right services. Azure tends to be more user-friendly and easier to understand, while AWS ma...
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 ...
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 Cloudflare?
The tool's pricing is moderate. I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Unilever, Spotify, Pinterest, MLB Advanced Media, Foursquare, PBS, Airbnb, Netflix, WIX, Comcast, Automobili Lamborghini, Rovio, Discovery Communications
Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudFront vs. Cloudflare and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
789,135 professionals have used our research since 2012.