Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform vs Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] comparison

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Citrix are both solutions in the WAN Optimization category. Additionally, 100% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Citrix users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 30, 2025

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform and Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] compete in the SD-WAN category. Aruba EdgeConnect has a slight advantage due to its comprehensive feature set and flexible pricing.

Features: Aruba EdgeConnect excels with deployment flexibility, advanced routing, and robust integration with Aruba tools. Its single-controller architecture simplifies management. Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] is noted for its connectivity, customization options, and strengths in bandwidth management and stability.

Room for Improvement: Aruba EdgeConnect could improve security integration, documentation, and advanced firewall features. Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] requires updates to its licensing model, enhanced security, and domain-based routing options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both platforms offer versatile deployment options across on-premises and cloud environments. Aruba's technical support is known for responsiveness, though there is some post-acquisition decline. Citrix's support is praised for transparency but lacks regional presence.

Pricing and ROI: Aruba EdgeConnect offers competitive pricing with flexible licensing, demonstrating cost-effectiveness compared to Cisco but higher than Huawei. The ROI is achieved through bandwidth savings and reduced MPLS dependency. Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] is viewed as expensive but valuable for its stability and features, contributing to ROI through cost savings and efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed WAN Optimization Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

WAN Optimization

April 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

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.

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JOHN UNAMBA

Lead Regional Engineer at Weco Systems Group

Integrated security features and robust support improve network management

The solution was installed across two branches for a financial institution. One location had a data center, and the other was a branch office. For SaaS applications, traffic broke out from EdgeConnect directly to the cloud. Applications using the data center were channeled through the MPLS link…

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Rohit Ghorpade

Cloud network engineer at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Co. Ltd.

A scalable solution for MCN controller but lacks technical supports, upgrades

There are a few things that can be improved, are domain-based routing and the slowness of virtual parts, and it may be due to the wrong configuration, which we have been unable to find out. Previously, we faced some issues with the slowness part. Apart from that, feature like end gateway level antivirus. We are currently using a NetFlow proxy to establish a virtual position for the NetFlow. Our current environment has many use cases, but we are not using them on the Citrix SD-WAN. When I navigate the NCL part, it involves configuration. I want to highlight this disadvantage. Sometimes, when we push the configuration, it tries to push it to all branch locations. This process takes a lot of time, nearly 30 minutes, to push a single change from the NCL. Overall, I don't think Citrix meets our use cases what we have. This is based on my feedback after using it for the past year and working on this Citrix SD-WAN. However, from my experience, it is the worst solution I have seen. There's no domain-based routing, which is horrible. That's why we are moving to other products. We have checked our use case requirements with Fortinet, Palo Alto, and they meet them. I will consider the PoC or another OEM. There are many things in the area you need to be prompt, like the automation part. If any link or device goes down, alerting notification, etc. We need to perform and highlight so many things to your management. This should be improved.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."

"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 overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."

"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."

"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."

"Cloudflare has many features."

More Cloudflare pros

"The tool is easy to configure due to the existing pre-configured templates. It is easy to manage compared to legacy systems, which takes time. We can complete a site within 30 minutes. The tool's best feature is outdoor onboarding. You need to bring the box to the site with the internet. It is a simple plug-and-play. The solution offers a zero-touch procedure."

"The solution includes features for SD-WAN and WAN such as batch conditioning and optimization."

"Many features are valuable for automation, connectivity, and throughput."

"The most valuable feature of Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect is the boost."

"The file and data reduction capabilities are very good. Without it, we have a great deal of network congestion."

"Many features are valuable for automation, connectivity, and throughput."

"I really love the auto-tunnel creation feature."

"First and foremost, it enables the customer to deploy high availability connections. This kind of solution enables them to deploy these HA connections for policies mostly automatically. It's a more automated approach than with other vendors."

More Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform pros

"The stability is the main feature of Citrix SD-WAN. You can also upgrade the data packages or have less transmission."

"The tool is quite cost-effective because it replaces the need for MPLS, which is a bit expensive...Citrix SD-WAN doesn't need much maintenance."

"The main advantage of Citrix SD-WAN is that it enables fast communication between our branches and data centers. And, with its cloud management features, it also makes the process of adding new branches into our company network much easier."

"The VPN and the load balancing are the most valuable features."

"It allows you to combine two asymmetrical connections."

"The solution is brilliant, the way it calculates its paths and trails is great."

"They have a zero downtime failover mechanism, where, when there's a link failure or a link weakness, or bad link conditions, they provide the ability to fail back seamlessly."

"The most valuable feature is security, as it gives me the port bindings that cannot be accomplished using other solutions."

More Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] pros

Cons

"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."

"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."

"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."

"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."

"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."

"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."

"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

More Cloudflare cons

"The support, which is the direct support from Aruba, has shortcomings and needs to be improved."

"I would like to have a physical appliance to use with the orchestrator for managing all EdgeConnect appliances."

"We would like to have better features for path selection. For example, if we know the network is going to go down then we would like to set up an alternate route for data packets in real-time."

"Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform needs to improve integrations with other vendors."

"The security can be improved, with the firewall for example, because they supply a basic one but not a UTM."

"One area for improvement is the Intel support integration. The security could also improve."

"Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform’s stability and technical features need improvement."

"I would like to have a physical appliance to use with the orchestrator for managing all EdgeConnect appliances. Currently, it's a virtual appliance."

More Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform cons

"The price is the only thing that could be improved. Citrix is not a cheap solution."

"Citrix SD-WAN's knowledge base has a few missing things, so you may need to seek help from support."

"I would like to either see the price reduced or have it packaged with other products to give better value for the money."

"I am happy with this product. If anything, its price can be reduced. It is a bit expensive."

"I would like to see support for additional reporting."

"I would like to see more customization to adjust for the WAN lock-out due to our unexpected power outages."

"Enhancements are needed to improve the stability."

"The communication around the life cycle would have been really helpful. The main issue we have had is related to the life cycle because some of the things that we are using were discontinued. They were discontinued within a year after we had purchased it, which is a bit painful. If we had known that, we would've made some other decisions."

More Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] cons

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 product's pricing is cheap."

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"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."

"We are using the free version."

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"You typically will license the hardware and you license the software to access the hardware capabilities. The price will range anywhere from a hundred to $300 a month. There are no additional costs."

"The license for Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect is paid annually."

"You can get both yearly and monthly options in licensing. It is not expensive."

"The price of Silver Peak VX is expensive compared to competitors. There are licenses, renewals, and support that need to be paid."

"The licensing fees depend on the bandwidth. As an example of what we charge our customers, for 100MB without Boost, the price is approximately $2,000. That includes the licensing and the unit."

"There is an annual license required to use Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect."

"The pricing for this product is good."

"Compared to other solutions, I think it is a cheap product in the market."

More Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform pricing and cost advice

"The price is relatively expensive."

"As NetScaler is now, I find it quite pricey."

"The license was a one-time purchase. It's expensive."

"It would be helpful to have a demo license available for customers who want to prove the concept and conduct a proof of concept (POC) before committing to the solution. This is particularly important for customers in Egypt who often require a demonstration of the solution's features and compatibility with their needs before making any investment or incurring costs. Providing a demo license would allow customers to assess whether the solution would meet their needs or not."

"It's a little bit on the high side compared to the other products."

"It depends on the scale. In our case, it would have been better if we had known about the life cycling steps, but otherwise, it is worth the money."

"The price of the subscription should be cheaper."

"It is a bit expensive. A cheaper product would be good, but everybody likes things to be cheaper. We bought the devices up front, and then we pay for the annual support."

More Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

26%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Financial Services Firm

Retailer

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 GR...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Silver Peak NX?

The tool's most valuable feature is bandwidth optimization.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Silver Peak NX?

It is an affordable product and yet still a bit expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Silver Peak NX?

One area for improvement is the Intel support integration. The security could also improve.

See all answers

What do you like most about Citrix SD-WAN?

It lowered our Internet costs and gave me the flexibility to choose providers based on each location's connectivity.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix SD-WAN?

It is on the expensive side. I would give it an eight out of ten in terms of costliness. In my region, the approximat...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Citrix SD-WAN?

The solution's licensing model could be improved. Citrix SD-WAN is a good product from a technical point of view. How...

See all answers

Comparisons

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

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Fortinet FortiGate vs Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform

Compared 27% of the time

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform

Compared 19% of the time

Prisma SD-WAN vs Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform

Compared 13% of the time

Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform

Compared 10% of the time

VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN vs Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform

Compared 7% of the time

More Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform Competitors

Fortinet FortiGate vs Citrix SD-WAN [EOL]

Compared 35% of the time

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs Citrix SD-WAN [EOL]

Compared 32% of the time

More Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform

April 2025

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform report

Download Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform product report

Buyer's Guide

Citrix SD-WAN [EOL]

April 2025

Download Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Silver Peak NX, Silver Peak VX, Silver Peak Unity EdgeConnect

Citrix CloudBridge, WOC, NetScaler SD-WAN

Overview

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

Cloudflare

The EdgeConnect SD-WAN platform secures and powers a self-driving wide area network for cloud-first enterprises.

In today’s edge-to-cloud enterprise, user experience and security are not optional

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN provides a secure network foundation for Zero Trust and SASE. It includes a first-class SD-WAN paired with a next-generation firewall delivering unmatched quality of experience and advanced security.

Best-of-breed SASE with no compromise

EdgeConnect SD-WAN enables a best-of-breed SASE architecture that meets the security requirements of today’s digital organizations. It provides comprehensive SD-WAN and security services including next-generation firewall, fine-grained segmentation, IDS/IPS, and tightly integrates with many SSE (Security Service Edge) solutions.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] enhances network stability, redundancy, and reliability, supporting connectivity between branches, optimizing internet access, and enabling secure, redundant networks, both on-premises and cloud-based.

Corporations utilize Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] to improve network performance, minimize downtime, and ensure high availability. Combining communication methods and supporting interbranch internet routing, it assists businesses in transitioning from MPLS, centralizing monitoring, and optimizing bandwidth use. Its functionality includes secure connections, cost reductions, and effective management of internet access. The support for multiple communication methods, application reliability, and ease of implementation make it a valuable tool for modern network management.

What key features does Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] offer?

Security: Enhanced protection to safeguard network data
IPv6 layering over IPv4: Ensures compatibility and future-proofing
Active-Active bandwidth use: Maximizes bandwidth utilization
Zero downtime failover: Maintains continuous operation during failures
Zero-touch deployment: Simplifies the installation process
Application reliability: Ensures high performance for critical applications
Cost-effectiveness: Reduces overall networking expenses
Central deployment: Facilitates easy configuration updates and management

What benefits should users look for in Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] reviews?

Enhanced performance: Improved application and connectivity speed
Increased reliability: Minimized network downtime and interruptions
Centralized monitoring: Streamlined network oversight and control
Scalable security: Adaptable protection for evolving network needs
Cost savings: Lower operational costs compared to traditional MPLS
Flexibility: Ability to handle multiple network functions effectively

Industries implement Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] to replace costly MPLS setups with more flexible VPN and NetScaler options, benefiting sectors like finance, healthcare, and retail that require robust, secure, and scalable network solutions. Organizations achieve better device management and efficient connectivity across multiple branches, enhancing their operational effectiveness.

Citrix

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Group Dekko, Kingston Technology, American Student Assistance, Ares Management, Charlotte Metro Credit Union, Colonial Savings, Community Bank, Denali Credit Union, Bed Bath & Beyond, Breweries of Cameroon, Carnival Australia, Coastal Beverages, Toshiba Electronics, Tru Blu Beverages, WAXIE Sanitary Supply, Charleston Area Medical Center, Community Health Plan, Healthcare Company, Mercy Health, Linklaters, Miles & Stockbridge, Thomson Snell & Passmore

AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Cornerstone Home Lending Inc., Dallara, ecVision, Essar, Eurofred, Groupe Promutuel, HMSHost Corporation, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines Ltd, Royal Caribbean International

Find out what your peers are saying about Cato Networks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Riverbed and others in WAN Optimization. Updated: April 2025.

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