Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Arbor DDoS vs Cloudflare 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Arbor DDoS increases ROI by ensuring uptime, protecting revenue, saving bandwidth, and supporting business continuity against cyber threats.
Sentiment score
7.0
Cloudflare improves speed, security, and stability, leading to significant financial benefits with an ROI of 318% for businesses.
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.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
Arbor DDoS customer service receives mixed reviews, praised for expertise but criticized for inconsistent response times across regions.
Sentiment score
7.2
Cloudflare's support is praised for responsiveness, though non-paying users and regions without local offices face challenges.
The technical support team is very effective in resolving issues.
Although the team is good, they are not fast, and they lack the skills to manage dynamic attackers.
The technical support for Arbor DDoS is great, though sometimes it can be stalling.
This would help us address issues promptly, especially during unforeseen events like DDoS attacks.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
We'd like a dedicated account manager.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Arbor DDoS excels in scalable, efficient cloud and hardware-based mitigation for enterprises, though pricing and upgrades may challenge.
Sentiment score
8.2
Cloudflare efficiently handles increased traffic and growth, offering scalability, robust network performance, and seamless expansion for enterprises.
This would enhance the knowledge about scalability options available for Arbor DDoS, making it more accessible and useful for users.
I find Arbor DDoS to be very scalable.
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
8.3
Arbor DDoS is praised for stability, occasional minor bugs, and consistent long-term performance despite configuration challenges.
Sentiment score
7.7
Cloudflare is generally stable and reliable, but occasional issues with downtime, speed, and DDoS protection are reported.
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

Arbor DDoS needs improved mitigation, scalability, integration, pricing, and AI for better traffic handling and competitive advantage.
Cloudflare needs analytics, threat insights, improved support, user-friendly dashboards, and simplified pricing, with consistent caching and security features.
I would like to see an option to decrypt the traffic with Arbor DDoS, as some clients are interested in this, particularly for application layer attacks on port 443.
Enhancing the handshakes between Arbor DDoS and third-party solutions is essential for obtaining better and real-time data that supports any organization’s support team effectively.
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

Arbor DDoS pricing is high but justified, ideal for large enterprises requiring advanced features, yet costly for small businesses.
Cloudflare offers flexible pricing with plans for small businesses to enterprises, balancing cost with comprehensive features and protection.
For some customers, the cost is expensive, but for enterprises looking to protect their services, it is affordable.
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.
 

Valuable Features

Arbor DDoS offers advanced features like automated mitigation, AI-based anomaly detection, and flexible integration to enhance security.
Cloudflare offers caching, DDoS protection, and CDN services, enhancing website speed and security with intuitive interface and global reach.
The platform offers quick mitigation of attacks because Arbor DDoS uses BGP Flowspec, enabling very quick mitigation.
The most valuable feature was the ability to detect attacks within two seconds and gain visibility of all the traffic.
The feature I find most valuable is the packet capture, which beautifully shows the communication between the client and the server, identifying potential malicious activity.
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.
 

Categories and Ranking

Arbor DDoS
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cloudflare
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Arbor DDoS is 13.9%, up from 12.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.6%, up from 19.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Leandro Di Maria - PeerSpot reviewer
Rapid attack detection and traffic visibility improve security management
The solution was intended for the big clients of Telefonica to clean their internet pipe. We deployed the service to clean the pipe. In some clients' data centers, we implemented a solution that detects and mitigates attacks using Arbor DDoS, our data center solution For me, the most valuable…
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.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.
849,686 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
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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?
I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other solutions, Imperva is a great choice.
Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would prefer Arbor.
What do you like most about Arbor DDoS?
The quality of the technical support provided by Arbor DDoS is premium.
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Arbor Networks SP, Arbor Networks TMS, Arbor Cloud for ENT
Cloudflare DNS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Xtel 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 Arbor DDoS vs. Cloudflare and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.