Azure Front Door vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) comparison

Azure Front Door vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

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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

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility

I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.

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reviewer2226693

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.

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reviewer2161107

Staff Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Room for improvement with user interface while competitive pricing impresses

It is managed through Infrastructure as Code, so all configurations can be managed in the code itself, which is beneficial. Because it uses rules, it is easy to set up, and we have many different sites where the configurations are straightforward. Though the UI is not very interactive, which is a downside, we can manage many things. The UI is not very intuitive and could be better. However, we manage all the configurations through code, which is easy to maintain. It has extensive anomaly detection capabilities, so the traffic is classified into several categories where thresholds can be defined and customized based on false positives and false negatives. This is advantageous because you do not need to tweak it very often. Once you set it up, an audit once a quarter would suffice. Because The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is API-driven, we have integrations with the CI/CD pipeline through GitHub Actions, making it easy to integrate.

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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

"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."

"It's a great product because it's scalable, has great coverage, and is mature with good defenses against DDoS attacks."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."

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

"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 price is one of the most important aspects of the product. It's quite affordable."

"Azure Front Door provides DDoS protection and features related to WAF."

"The most valuable feature is that you can implement resources globally. It does not depend on location and ability or something like that. This is to connect clients around the world."

"Azure Front Door's advanced routing rules for traffic management are highly effective, allowing you to configure HTTP tags, change different header or header response values, configure origin domains, and add security to your Layer 7 using these routing rules."

"Has a great application firewall and we like the security."

"The most valuable feature is that I can have CDN and load-balancing capabilities in a single service instead of managing two separate tools."

"I find the technical support excellent, and I rate it a ten."

"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."

More Azure Front Door pros

"When configuring a web application firewall using Signal Sciences, we configure a rule whereby no one except a few people can access the application."

"Because The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is API-driven, we have integrations with the CI/CD pipeline through GitHub Actions, making it easy to integrate."

"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily."

"Fastly (Signal Sciences) integrates and tags the intermittent traffic based on patterns. It generates signals and provides them in a dashboard where we can view them and decide whether to allow or deny traffic. It's a more advanced and easy-to-navigate dashboard."

Cons

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

"DNS Management."

"Technical support is not well developed. While there are good engineers, Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model."

"Technical support is lacking."

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."

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

"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."

More Cloudflare cons

"The product needs to improve its latency."

"There's a limitation on the amount of global rules we can add."

"We should be able to use Front Door defenders with multiple cloud vendors. Currently, they can be used only with the Azure cloud. Azure Front Door should also be able to do global load balancing and provide internal front door services. Microsoft should clearly define what Traffic Manager, Application Gateway, and Azure Front Door products do. These are similar products, and people get confused between these products."

"This is a relatively expensive solution."

"The tool should improve its cost."

"In the tool, there needs to be a good amount of monitoring in the area of health probes to capture in front of what is happening."

"I dislike the URL set parameters."

"My suggestion for improvement would be to enhance the Data Export feature to include specific tables, particularly the Azure Diagnostics table."

More Azure Front Door cons

"The areas that could be improved in Signal Sciences include the effectiveness of rules, as many didn't function optimally and required custom rule-writing to address bypasses for WAF."

"The UI is not very intuitive and could be better."

"Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai."

"Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

"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 pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

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

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"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

"Considering the standard licensing of the tool, even though we have not checked the billing as of now, it might not be very costly."

"The pricing of the solution is good."

"The transition to the premium tier has led to increased costs, making it more expensive than the classic tier."

"The solution is a bit expensive."

"The product is expensive."

"It is on a pay-as-you-go basis."

"The product has an affordable cost."

"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."

"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

10%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	25

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	9

No data available

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...

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'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...

What do you like most about Azure Front Door?

Rules Engine is a valuable feature.

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 do you like most about Signal Sciences?

The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Signal Sciences?

The pricing is very competitive compared to other providers. The pricing is definitely a factor in our decision-makin...

What needs improvement with Signal Sciences?

We do use it, but the UI can be improved as we mostly work through the CI/CD. It provides support, but sometimes it i...

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Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 52% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Compared 3% of the time

Myra Security DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Radware DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Amazon CloudFront vs Azure Front Door

Compared 14% of the time

Akamai vs Azure Front Door

Compared 11% of the time

AWS Global Accelerator vs Azure Front Door

Compared 8% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Azure Front Door

Compared 5% of the time

Azure Firewall vs Azure Front Door

Compared 4% of the time

More Azure Front Door Competitors

AWS WAF vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 15% of the time

Sqreen vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 13% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 11% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 8% of the time

NGINX App Protect vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 5% of the time

More The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare

Download Cloudflare product report

Azure Front Door

Download Azure Front Door product report

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Download The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) product report

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Azure Front-Door

Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

Azure Front Door enhances web application performance and security by leveraging traffic inspection, SSL offloading, and a web application firewall. It enables intelligent routing, load balancing, and global resource deployment while providing essential features for online application security.

Azure Front Door integrates GitOps for seamless deployment, offering significant capabilities in giant networks like CDN functionalities and DDoS protection. Its advanced configurations include traffic analytics and transit layer security. Despite its affordability and scalability, users see room for improvement in global load balancing and private IP address support, citing integration challenges with other cloud vendors. The interface may appear complex, and some users desire more transparent pricing, better DDoS defenses, and enhanced monitoring. This platform is especially beneficial for securing external traffic and optimizing content delivery, providing DNS integration and disaster recovery mechanisms.

What are the key features of Azure Front Door?

Traffic Inspection: Enhances security with comprehensive traffic analysis at the network level.
SSL Offloading: Streamlines SSL certificate management and encryption processes.
Web Application Firewall: Offers protection against web vulnerabilities and threats.
Global Resource Implementation: Facilitates deployment across multiple regions.
Intelligent Routing and Load Balancing: Optimizes traffic distribution for efficient performance.
Bot and DDoS Protection: Shields applications from malicious traffic and attacks.
CDN Capabilities: Accelerates content delivery with local caching and optimized routing.

What benefits and ROI should users expect?

Affordability: Provides robust features at competitive pricing.
Scalability: Adapts easily to growing traffic demands and business needs.
Security: Delivers comprehensive defenses against cyber threats.
Performance Optimization: Enhances application responsiveness and delivery speed.
Global Reach: Supports globally distributed applications with ease.

In industries focusing on online presence and global user engagement, Azure Front Door is invaluable for optimizing web application performance. E-commerce platforms deploy it to secure transactions and enhance load times. Media companies leverage its CDN and security features to ensure seamless content delivery. Enterprises with international operations find it crucial for reliable and secure data access across regions.

Microsoft

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) provides web application and API protection, RASP, rate limiting, bot protection and DDoS purpose built to eliminate the challenges of legacy WAF.

Fastly

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus

Azure Front Door vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)