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Azure Front Door vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Front Door
Ranking in CDN
5th
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
15th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (24th)
F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in CDN
6th
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
API Security (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Azure Front Door is 4.7%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 2.3%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Azure Front Door4.7%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services2.3%
Other93.0%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2226693 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Optimizing global application performance with robust security measures and advanced traffic management
DDoS capabilities in Azure Front Door could certainly be improved. Although Microsoft states it comes with basic DDoS protections out of the box, I find it often ineffectual in mitigating thousands of requests from a single source in a short span of time. User then have to rely on the WAF module where users must configure rate-limiting rules, as it does not automatically sense malicious spikes in traffic. I believe Front Door should have an out-of-the-box premium DDoS protection that can automatically detect and block malicious traffic. I would appreciate improvements in the turnaround time for support, especially since issues with Azure Front Door are usually critical for businesses. If there is an issue, it often results in downtime for line of business applications. I have faced this situation multiple times as one of the largest financial institutions in India is hosted there, adhering to strict SLAs that require prompt responses.
US
Senior Network Consultant at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
Unified cloud security has reduced bot attacks and is improving multi‑channel protection
There is always room for improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services. Sometimes the UI/UX console navigation is a bit tricky, and the deep configuration menus can feel overly complex and could be simplified. Additionally, expanding regional presence should be done in specific local telecom markets to further lower the latency of our hyper-local load latency workloads. Long-term log retention and cold storage analytics need to improve. Native SIEM log retention on the console is limited. Introducing deeper built-in historical analytics would avoid having to offload all raw security logs to external SIEMs such as Splunk for long-term compliance audits. Regarding backend TLS verification enforcements, custom edge routes strictly enforce TLS validation on backend endpoints, which requires manual management and uploading of private and public root CAs rather than providing simple certificate bypass toggles for development environments.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It works perfectly and you can assign as many web application firewall policies as you want to the same instance of Front Door."
"The web application firewall is a great feature."
"I find the technical support excellent, and I rate it a ten."
"I am impressed with the tool's integrations."
"It inspects the traffic at the network level before it comes into Azure. We can do SSL offloading, and it can detect abnormalities before the traffic comes into the application. It can be used globally and is easy to set up. It is also quite stable and scalable."
"Rules Engine is a valuable feature."
"The price is one of the most important aspects of the product. It's quite affordable."
"The most valuable feature is that I can have CDN and load-balancing capabilities in a single service instead of managing two separate tools."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well."
"Elastic environments are the most valuable features because I can pull these apps and migrate the on-premises environment to the Distributed Cloud environment, and this capability is very strong and the security regarding the apps is really very powerful."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments."
"In terms of return on investment for F5 Distributed Cloud Services, we have seen at least a 30% reduction in infrastructure and compute costs, with 20 to 30% engineering time saved and 85% reduction in support desk overheads."
"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."
"F5 is known for being the best load balancer in the market. Customers with an existing module can easily adopt additional modules without investing in new hardware."
"Technical support from F5 is good compared to Cisco and HP."
"I appreciate the UI of F5 Distributed Cloud Services and the backend cost, alongside the actual value proposition that they provide with the load balancer, which is excellent."
 

Cons

"I dislike the URL set parameters."
"We should be able to use Front Door defenders with multiple cloud vendors. Currently, they can be used only with the Azure cloud."
"My suggestion for improvement would be to enhance the Data Export feature to include specific tables, particularly the Azure Diagnostics table."
"They can lower the price. Lowering the price should encourage customers to use and adopt Azure Front Door, especially since some customers are not using any security features."
"There is room for improvement and they're working on it."
"There's a limitation on the amount of global rules we can add."
"The product needs to improve its latency."
"The product's features are limited compared to Cloudflare. The tool also doesn't work well in a hybrid environment. I would like to see a way to add personalized APIs in the system."
"For small players, it is completely not worth it."
"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."
"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the perspective of implementation and customer expectations, which sometimes differ from reality."
"One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced."
"The worst experience is that with so many solutions available, it is very complicated to know all of the solution modules, and the offers from F5 Distributed Cloud Services are vast."
"Sometimes the UI/UX console navigation is a bit tricky, and the deep configuration menus can feel overly complex and could be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is on a pay-as-you-go basis."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"The product is expensive."
"The transition to the premium tier has led to increased costs, making it more expensive than the classic tier."
"The pricing of the solution is good."
"Considering the standard licensing of the tool, even though we have not checked the billing as of now, it might not be very costly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides excellent support. Azure Front Door can quickly detect abnormalities before the...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Front Door?
I am not sure about the pricing but believe Azure Front Door might require a higher cost due to its entry point nature.
What needs improvement with Azure Front Door?
DDoS capabilities in Azure Front Door could certainly be improved. Although Microsoft states it comes with basic DDoS protections out of the box, I find it often ineffectual in mitigating thousands...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is affordable. I think it is very affordable. I do not think it is expensive.
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced.Specifically, the confidence level on API security that F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
My main use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services is WAF protection.I am using F5 Distributed Cloud Services primarily for securing my infrastructure with layer 7 protection, which F5 provides. Th...
 

Also Known As

Azure Front-Door
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Front Door vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
911,602 professionals have used our research since 2012.