AWS Shield vs Cloudflare comparison

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) Logo
3,145 views|2,705 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Cloudflare Logo
9,048 views|7,709 comparisons
96% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between AWS Shield and Cloudflare based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It is integrated with AWS. So, it gives you a good first step.""The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events.""I am impressed with the product's multiple features like security.""The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature.""We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, which is crucial for us. It's easy to use and set up and stops attacks on our servers. We haven't encountered any attack problems because the solution stops them in real-time. AWS Shield specifically focuses on defending against denial-of-service attacks, making it a great solution for that type of threat."

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"The solution is very good at mitigating threats.""The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks.""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.""The UI is good.""From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet""The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules.""I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection.""Cloudflare has many features."

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Cons
"The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements.""We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need.""The product needs to improve its logs and reports to make it read better.""The product is expensive.""The management of it is a bit hard. If you don't engineer it on the front side, it is hard to go back in and change it. It could be improved in terms of architecture requirements and then ongoing support requirements as a secondary component to it. People tend to set up things like this, and they just expect it to work without the care and feeding that needs to go back into it either from an application team or a network environment team."

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"The pricing could be improved.""There are some issues with the CDN services.""Latencies are always a problem.""In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM.""There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers.""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.""Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript.""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."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It depends on your subscription level and the volume that you're spending with AWS. So, it is very relative to the consumption alignment in your subscription level. It is a well-constructed, scalable pricing option, but it is relative to how much you're spending on AWS. Because the more you spend, typically, the more you get off on services like this. I find it to be comparable to other solutions."
  • "The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."
  • "We pay $3000 per month for the solution."
  • "The tool's pricing is good."
  • More AWS Shield Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
  • "I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
  • "There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
  • "The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
  • "We don't have any issues with the price."
  • "The price is reasonable."
  • "The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
  • "It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
  • More Cloudflare Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:I am impressed with the product's multiple features like security.
    Top Answer:We pay $3000 per month for the solution. We have to purchase on the organizational level. We should have one organization for billing. Otherwise, we must pay for every organization, increasing the… more »
    Top Answer: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 by… more »
    Top Answer:Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
    Ranking
    Views
    3,145
    Comparisons
    2,705
    Reviews
    4
    Average Words per Review
    672
    Rating
    8.5
    Views
    9,048
    Comparisons
    7,709
    Reviews
    16
    Average Words per Review
    515
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Learn More
    Overview

    AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection.

    Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distribution Denial of Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global 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 use the solution and 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 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.” A PeerSpot user who is a Competence Center Manager at a tech services company. 

    Sample Customers
    netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code
    Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm23%
    Comms Service Provider23%
    Energy/Utilities Company9%
    Marketing Services Firm9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization38%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Comms Service Provider5%
    Company Size
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise64%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business64%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise23%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise46%
    Large Enterprise36%
    Buyer's Guide
    AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    AWS Shield is ranked 9th in Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection with 5 reviews while Cloudflare is ranked 1st in Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection with 56 reviews. AWS Shield is rated 8.6, while Cloudflare is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of AWS Shield writes "The solution automatically scales according to traffic, only takes minutes to deploy, and is maintenance-free". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cloudflare writes "It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes". AWS Shield is most compared with Cloudflare DDoS, Azure DDoS Protection, Akamai App and API Protector, Prolexic and Arbor DDoS, whereas Cloudflare is most compared with Akamai, Azure Front Door, Imperva DDoS, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and Arbor DDoS. See our AWS Shield vs. Cloudflare report.

    See our list of best Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection vendors.

    We monitor all Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.