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Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)
Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (34th)
Cloudflare Web Application ...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Hadar Eshel - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to install platform with valuable policy management features
We use the product for securing email systems, protecting websites, and safeguarding web-based applications and portals One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strategy. Additionally, it could operate in a local data center.…
SachidDoshi - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a huge signature repository and is superiorly effective in mitigating DDoS attacks
The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced, which presently stands at two or three months. The product has a custom rule set that users can modify and manifest as needed. The vendor can probably shorten the learning curve using cutting-edge technologies like AI. The solution provider can also work around the web applications and identify the toolset that needs to be implemented to deploy the solution in less time. The vendor has launched a SASE product that can function with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall, but many improvements are needed in terms of features, such as the web filtering feature, and CASB has not yet been added.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"I like its ability to identify known attacks, including DDOS attacks. It's valuable because software must be able to stop known attacks. Application attacks are evolving all the time. When it comes to software-as-a-service, we need to have software that knows about all the latest attacks. It should also protect against major unknown attacks."
"The product's bot protection feature is valuable for our company."
"It provides an ease of policy management."
"The most valuable features of the solution are it is plug and play, has automated policies, a simple configuration, and is easy to create rules."
"The solution can be used for threat prevention or as a cloud-to-cloud backup system"
"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."
"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."
"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."
"I'm highly satisfied. It's remarkably user-friendly, enabling me to quickly identify issues, and deploy solutions, and it offers the necessary features."
"It protects web applications efficiently."
"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"The initial setup process is simple."
"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."
 

Cons

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"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."
"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."
"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."
"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."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strategy."
"The stability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"We found it a bit slow when accessing it through the web browser. The URL also exposed the user name and the hashed password. When I log into my Barracuda WAF user portal, I could see the username and the hashed password on the URL itself. So, it is not very secure, and it is important to take that off."
"The solution can improve by bundling Security Operation Center (SOC) with the WAF-as-a-Service, it would provide a lot more value to customers."
"It's a very specific solution that is only requested for a customer's web code or their global IT policy."
"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."
"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."
"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."
"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The price is reasonable."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"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."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"It's very difficult for me to give an estimate of the cost. All I know is that we sell the box itself as a service."
"The product is expensive but it offers flexible pricing. It could be affordable."
"I rate the product's price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high. There are no additional costs to be paid apart from the standard licensing fees attached to the solution."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"The solution is expensive."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"It is not too pricey."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Media Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
 

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 needs improvement with Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?
One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strateg...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?
We use the product for securing email systems, protecting websites, and safeguarding web-based applications and portals.
What do you like most about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
The product has a valuable security control functionality.
What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't really use the rule-based logic feature or utilize the WAF's ability to scale as a cloud-based service. I don...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Barracuda WAF as a Service
Cloudflare WAF
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Salvation Army
crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Cloudflare Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,655 professionals have used our research since 2012.