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Cisco OpenDNS vs Cloudflare comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cisco OpenDNS
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cloudflare
Ranking in Domain Name System (DNS) Security
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (2nd), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Domain Name System (DNS) Security category, the mindshare of Cisco OpenDNS is 2.9%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 6.0%, up from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Domain Name System (DNS) Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare6.0%
Cisco OpenDNS2.9%
Other91.1%
Domain Name System (DNS) Security
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1678521 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead - Global IT Networks at a recruiting/HR firm with 10,001+ employees
A stable solution that can be used for upgrades, vulnerability remediation, configuration, and standardization
I am using the latest version of Cisco OpenDNS. Users should prioritize the challenges that they have before implementing the solution. They need to be very clear about what they are looking for. Those parameters need to be defined, success criteria need to be checked, and then they can proceed with the solution that meets the requirements. Overall, I rate Cisco OpenDNS a nine out of ten.
M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use Cisco OpenDNS for upgrades, vulnerability remediation, configuration, and standardization."
"The platform is highly stable."
"If someone is looking for a secure and optimized wrapper over an open website, I would suggest CloudFlare services."
"The technical support on offer is excellent; they are very helpful and responsive, and we are quite happy with the level of service they provide to their customers."
"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"Cloudflare has many features."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."
"The tool is user-friendly."
"Cloudflare has made management of my website much easier by combining various functions in one platform without compromising quality."
 

Cons

"The solution’s dashboard could be improved."
"The platform's DNS database area needs improvement."
"I have observed only one weakness with Cloudflare, which is the slowness of their web UI."
"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"It looks like they don't support as many TLDs as other registrars, but since they are very new as a registrar, I expect this may improve soon."
"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."
"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."
"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution."
"The product is expensive yet cost-effective. I rate the pricing an eight out of ten."
"We are using the free version."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"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."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
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914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
23%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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 GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds ...
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 that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare DNS?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cloudflare DNS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Netflix 2. IBM 3. Deloitte 4. Airbnb 5. Pinterest 6. Box 7. LinkedIn 8. Adobe 9. Spotify 10. Uber 11. Twitter 12. Cisco Systems (the parent company) 13. The New York Times 14. Verizon 15. Coca-Cola 16. General Electric 17. Microsoft 18. Facebook 19. Apple 20. Amazon 21. Google 22. Intel 23. Oracle 24. AT&T 25. Cisco Meraki 26. Salesforce 27. Cisco Webex 28. Cisco Umbrella 29. Cisco Talos 30. Cisco AMP for Endpoints 31. Cisco AnyConnect 32. Cisco Stealthwatch
Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco OpenDNS vs. Cloudflare and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.