Amazon CloudFront vs Cloudflare vs Windows Azure CDN comparison

Read 76 Cloudflare reviews

45,170 Views
6,776 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Windows Azure CDN

Read 13 Windows Azure CDN reviews

862 Views
862 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Amazon CloudFront

Windows Azure CDN

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon CloudFront, Cloudflare, and Windows Azure CDN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in CDN.

To learn more, read our detailed CDN Report (Updated: August 2025).

Download the complete report

CDN

August 2025

Helped 865,140 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 7.8%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 22.2%, up from 21.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Windows Azure CDN is 3.2%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

CDN

Featured Reviews

Parth Buch

Infrastructure Architecture at Capgemini

Seamlessly manages security and dynamic content hosting in diverse applications

Hosting static content or with engineering dynamic content is beneficial. CloudFront provides a common access point, manages routing to different methods, and serves as an access point plus API routing. With AWS, maintenance is not required as it's a service offered by AWS which maintains itself. Security concerns are manageable through AWS's security mechanisms, with additional security enhancement possible through options like WAF and NACL.

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients

It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.

Helps to handle edge cases and has purge features

Muhammad ZaheerNazir

Team Lead and Solutions Architect at Systems Arabia

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.

More Amazon CloudFront pros

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Amazon CloudFront provides valuable security by ensuring secure file access when accessing files from S3."

"The solution is very easy to use."

"The solution has good security features."

"Hosting static content or with engineering dynamic content is beneficial."

"The product is very well interconnected with other Amazon services."

"The support team is knowledgeable."

"The solution makes our platform fully accessible and available globally, helping us to ensure that our customers can rely on it being up and running."

"The most beneficial aspect of Amazon CloudFront is its capacity to automatically arrange resources depending on user needs, eliminating the need for on-premises management."

"It's very user-friendly."

"The UI is good."

"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 most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service."

"Cloudflare has many features."

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"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."

More Cloudflare pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that one can access Windows Azure CDN from anywhere."

"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 UI is very intuitive."

"It is a stable solution."

"The fact that it just delivers what it is supposed to do is its most valuable feature...The initial setup is very straightforward."

"We use the product for faster content delivery with low latency."

"One of the most valuable aspects is the capability to store extensive datasets and objects in the cloud, enabling their download through shared access signatures."

More Windows Azure CDN pros

Cons

"The user interface could be improved."

"The product could support any network load balancer. At present, we can use only Amazon’s load balancer application."

"They could be expanding the number of locations available. It will help users easily access content."

"I would like to see an increase in distribution regions in Africa. There are currently only a few regions available."

"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."

"The UI could be more user-friendly."

"The solution could be more simplified for new users. It could be more user-friendly."

"Support needs to be enhanced."

More Amazon CloudFront cons

"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."

"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

"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."

"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."

"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."

"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."

"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."

More Cloudflare cons

"Exploring shared access solutions with cloud accounts would be a beneficial choice."

"The response time of the support team must be improved."

"We have experienced issues with switch connectivity."

"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."

"Azure is continuously improving its CDN but the documentation should be up-to-date."

"The high price of Windows Azure CDN is an area of concern where improvements can be made."

"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."

More Windows Azure CDN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution’s price is reasonable."

"For CloudFront, I'm quite satisfied with the pricing. Initially, it doesn't require many resources for this specific solution."

"I rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten. The licensing follows a pay-as-you-go model."

"We do not have many options to optimize costs."

"Amazon's pricing varies depending on the data transfer."

"Compared to competitors like Azure and Google, we find AWS pricing to be advantageous."

"The tool is affordable."

"The product could improve its price."

More Amazon CloudFront pricing and cost advice

"We are using the free version."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"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 price is reasonable."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"The tool's pricing is cheap."

"The solution's price is above the medium range."

"It comes at a relatively affordable cost."

"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 pricing is extremely high, almost 9 out of 10."

"The tool's pricing is cheap."

More Windows Azure CDN pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CDN solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

865,140 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user68487

Security Expert with 51-200 employees

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…

How do I choose between AWS Global Accelerator and Amazon CloudFront?

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Global Accelerator or Amazon CloudFro...

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 find Amazon's pricing good, rating it eight out of ten and considering it affordable and rightly placed, not expens...

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 GR...

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...

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 w...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Windows Azure CDN?

In terms of pricing for Windows Azure CDN and the whole Microsoft products, you cannot compare networking alone or co...

What needs improvement with Windows Azure CDN?

It is not a weakness of Windows Azure CDN; rather, it is the fact that it is outside Saudi Arabia, leading to some re...

Azure Front Door vs Amazon CloudFront

Comparisons

Compared 51% of the time

Akamai vs Amazon CloudFront

Compared 13% of the time

Fastly vs Amazon CloudFront

Compared 4% of the time

AWS Global Accelerator vs Amazon CloudFront

Compared 4% of the time

AWS WAF vs Amazon CloudFront

Compared 3% of the time

More Amazon CloudFront Competitors

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Myra Security DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Akamai vs Windows Azure CDN

Compared 26% of the time

Uplynk vs Windows Azure CDN

Compared 19% of the time

Fastly vs Windows Azure CDN

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Windows Azure CDN

Compared 3% of the time

F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Windows Azure CDN

Compared 3% of the time

More Windows Azure CDN Competitors

Product Reports

Download Amazon CloudFront product report

Amazon CloudFront

August 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

August 2025

Download Windows Azure CDN product report

Windows Azure CDN

July 2025

Also Known As

No data available

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Overview

Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) service that accelerates delivery of your websites, APIs, video content or other web assets. It integrates with other Amazon Web Services products to give developers and businesses an easy way to accelerate content to end users with no minimum usage commitments. Amazon CloudFront can be used to deliver your entire website, including dynamic, static, streaming, and interactive content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your content are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance. Amazon CloudFront is optimized to work with other Amazon Web Services, like Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, and Amazon Route 53. Amazon CloudFront also works seamlessly with any non-AWS origin server, which stores the original, definitive versions of your files. Like other Amazon Web Services products, there are no long-term contracts or minimum monthly usage commitments for using Amazon CloudFront – you pay only for as much or as little content as you actually deliver through the content delivery service.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“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.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company