Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] vs Exinda comparison

Citrix and GFI are both solutions in the WAN Optimization category. Additionally, 90% of Citrix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of GFI users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 12, 2025

Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] and Exinda compete in the network performance management category. Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] seems to have the upper hand with its cloud management capabilities and cost-effectiveness due to MPLS replacement.

Features: Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] offers VPN, load balancing, and zero-touch deployment. It supports dynamic bandwidth management, ensuring optimized business continuity. Exinda emphasizes application traffic management with detailed throughput control and real-time network visibility. Its ability to prioritize applications effectively at the application layer highlights its efficiency.

Room for Improvement: Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] could benefit from more intuitive configuration, better pricing strategies, and improved reporting capabilities. Users also recommend enhanced support systems. Exinda users highlight the need for faster update processes for new applications, improved support services, and quicker resolution times.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] is versatile with on-premises and public cloud deployment, though support experiences vary. Exinda is solely on-premises, with minimal first-line support but fewer challenges if expertise is available.

Pricing and ROI: Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] is often considered expensive, but perpetual licensing may offset costs with significant savings from reduced reliance on MPLS. Exinda offers competitive pricing with fair licensing for self-managed environments. ROI for Exinda is beneficial, especially for smaller setups, whereas Citrix's ROI is tied to network savings and flexible licensing.

To learn more, read our detailed WAN Optimization Report (Updated: October 2025).

Buyer's Guide

WAN Optimization

October 2025

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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

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

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.

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Sammy Mukuna

Network Admin at Naivas Ltd

Seamlessly combines Internet and MPLS

Citrix has made my work easier and more cost-effective. It lowered our Internet costs and gave me the flexibility to choose providers based on each location's connectivity. Unlike before, I'm not tied to a specific provider. The central deployment feature allows easy configuration updates for all boxes from the head office, streamlining network management. This simplification has been a big plus for our operations.

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Marek Jaworski

Senior Engineer, Team Lead, Network Operations at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Allows us to have better control over our network by shaping traffic more gently

There might be room for improvement in the speed and throughput of some of their devices. They're getting a bit slow on some of the bigger devices. It would be helpful if there were some sort of an ISP model. Also, while I don't think it would be possible for them to do, it would be better if they had the Citrix support and the visualization to visualize your network. Besides that, it fits its purpose as a shaper and accelerator. Some people would say things like, "Add a firewall to it," but I disagree. I think a firewall's a firewall, and Exinda's a shaper and accelerator.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."

"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"

"The most valuable feature is its usability."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is its usability."

"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."

"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."

"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."

More Cloudflare pros

"The stability is the main feature of Citrix SD-WAN. You can also upgrade the data packages or have less transmission."

"The zero-touch deployment is most valuable for us."

"The main advantage of Citrix SD-WAN is that it enables fast communication between our branches and data centers. And, with its cloud management features, it also makes the process of adding new branches into our company network much easier."

"The most valuable feature is its reliability."

"The solution's most valuable feature is load balancing."

"The SD-WAN solution as it is already is quite feature-rich and the upgrade process is very simple."

"We are using it widely for the local record for SaaS-based applications. Another valuable feature is a local breakout."

"It lowered our Internet costs and gave me the flexibility to choose providers based on each location's connectivity."

More Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] pros

"It has the ability to prioritize, providing an automatic optimization. I can put it in a hierarchy and know that certain devices will be prioritized over others. It is able to identify the traffic. It can pick out whether if its a Zoom meeting (or something like that), then it's able to put that somewhere in the hierarchy based on the traffic type."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to create policies where we can tailor them to the customer. It enables us to prioritize apps and users for bandwidth."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to manage the traffic at the application layer. It makes things a lot easier. We're not digging for port numbers and IP addresses and different services... It makes us far more responsive in our ability to do things and speed up the process. We're a very small shop, so having something that's straightforward and easy to use is a big help."

"The most valuable features are the shaper, accelerator, and the reporting... it will shape the traffic better than, for example, a Cisco, because it's more gentle on the shaping side of things. Suppose you were selling a 20-meg link. Because you can shape to the nth degree of traffic, the 20-meg link feels like about a 30 to 40-meg link."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to provide very granular classes of service. That's important because it allows us to prioritize certain traffic types over others, to a very granular level."

"Exinda can show you which product uses how much throughput and can help you manage it."

Cons

"The product needs to improve its automation."

"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."

"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."

"Technical support is lacking."

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."

"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."

"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."

"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."

More Cloudflare cons

"The price could be improved, it's an expensive solution."

"There are a few things that can be improved, are domain-based routing and the slowness of virtual parts, and it may be due to the wrong configuration, which we have been unable to find out."

"Given that Citrix SD-WAN solved all our problems by providing us with everything we needed to unify communications with our branches and data centers, I cannot suggest anything further in terms of improvements."

"I would like to see more customization to adjust for the WAN lock-out due to our unexpected power outages."

"The reports need to be improved. We need to have them customized but they don't have that right now. I would like for them to have better system predictions. We don't have that right now. My system may be working fine right now but after making some changes, that can change."

"The initial setup could be a bit easier."

"Citrix should continue to offer a perpetual licensing model because it is very important to us."

"I am happy with this product. If anything, its price can be reduced. It is a bit expensive."

More Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] cons

"In terms of improvement, one thing that has always frustrated me about it is that when you look at real-time monitoring, you can only filter it by IP address. You can't filter it by anything else. It would be good if we could filter by VLAN."

"There might be room for improvement in the speed and throughput of some of their devices. They're getting a bit slow on some of the bigger devices. It would be helpful if there were some sort of an ISP model."

"It should improve the quality of service. It can improve their connection to the internet and your IP."

"The updating of applications that the system knows about could be a little quicker. For example, Zoom had been out for a while, but it took a while for it to show up as an application that Exinda could natively handle. We had to write some things in order to handle Zoom, initially."

"What I don't like is the fact that I haven't purchased the overall management interface. That is the interface that allows you to manage multiple Exindas. Personally, I think Exinda should provide that for free. I think that if you buy more and more Exinda boxes, you shouldn't then have to incur a charge for the overall management software. While I can manage each Exinda separately, if they provided me with the overall management platform for free that would probably encourage me to buy more appliances."

"A lot of working with this solution is really intuitive. I have picked it up mostly on my own. I'm sure that there are some things that maybe I hadn't thought of or really hadn't considered, and I think it would be good just to promote some day courses. I don't really see a whole lot that comes out for Exinda as far as training or informational sessions through our normal resellers. It would be cool to know more about the solution by utilizing educational resources or even have Exinda promoted a bit better."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We don't have any issues with the price."

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

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

"A free version of the solution is available."

"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."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The price is relatively expensive."

"It depends on the scale. In our case, it would have been better if we had known about the life cycling steps, but otherwise, it is worth the money."

"The price of the subscription should be cheaper."

"Citrix SD-WAN is quite an affordable product."

"As NetScaler is now, I find it quite pricey."

"It is a bit expensive. A cheaper product would be good, but everybody likes things to be cheaper. We bought the devices up front, and then we pay for the annual support."

"It's a little bit on the high side compared to the other products."

"It would be helpful to have a demo license available for customers who want to prove the concept and conduct a proof of concept (POC) before committing to the solution. This is particularly important for customers in Egypt who often require a demonstration of the solution's features and compatibility with their needs before making any investment or incurring costs. Providing a demo license would allow customers to assess whether the solution would meet their needs or not."

More Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] pricing and cost advice

"It is priced well for the market, for what it needs to do."

"The pricing and licensing are pretty fair and really competitive. There are other SD-WAN solutions that are pretty costly because they build in a service where they'll manage it for you, which is really great. I don't know if Exinda has that option as well. However, we are a small shop and cost-conscious. For things like this, we are accustomed to self-managing and this solution suits us just fine. For a tool that gives you, like the graphs and reporting, it has a fair price point."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

30%

Government

Retailer

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

20%

University

Government

Real Estate/Law 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	7
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	10

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	1
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	4

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...

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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...

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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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Citrix SD-WAN?

It lowered our Internet costs and gave me the flexibility to choose providers based on each location's connectivity.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix SD-WAN?

It is on the expensive side. I would give it an eight out of ten in terms of costliness. In my region, the approximat...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Citrix SD-WAN?

The solution's licensing model could be improved. Citrix SD-WAN is a good product from a technical point of view. How...

See all answers

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Compared 50% of the time

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Compared 50% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

October 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Citrix SD-WAN [EOL]

October 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Exinda

October 2025

Download Exinda product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Citrix CloudBridge, WOC, NetScaler SD-WAN

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity 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 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's 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.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] enhances connectivity and performance by optimizing bandwidth utilization, ensuring reliable communication across branch offices and headquarter data centers. It offers centralized management, efficient deployment options, and improved network reliability.

Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] is designed for businesses seeking enhanced connectivity solutions that boost application performance while reducing costs. With HDX WAN Optimization and reliable Active-Active connectivity, it assures improved bandwidth management. Tailored for both cloud and on-premise deployments, it supports fast communication and seamless integration, making it user-friendly even for those with limited technical expertise. Security features and zero-touch deployments further enhance its appeal. However, users highlight areas needing improvement, such as configuration intuitiveness, pricing alignment for specific markets, and stability. Enhanced reporting, networking features, and technical support are desired. Integration with Windows, security elements like firewalls, and licensing clarity require attention to meet user expectations.

What are the key features of Citrix SD-WAN [EOL]?

HDX WAN Optimization: Enhances application performance and traffic.
Load Balancing: Ensures efficient traffic distribution across networks.
Reliable Connectivity: Provides seamless failover and reduced costs through MPLS replacement.
Cloud Management: Simplifies deployment and management via the cloud.
Zero-Touch Deployment: Facilitates easy setup and provisioning.
Active-Active Lines: Optimizes bandwidth utilization and performance.
Backup Capabilities: Centralizes data management for security.

What benefits should users look for in Citrix SD-WAN [EOL]?

Enhanced Connectivity: Improves stability and reduces downtime.
Cost Reduction: Efficiently decreases expenses by replacing MPLS.
Network Optimization: Offers better bandwidth for diverse communication types.
Secure Interconnectivity: Ensures secure and reliable network connections.
Management Flexibility: Supports cloud or on-premise deployment options.

Industries benefit from Citrix SD-WAN [EOL] by leveraging its features to ensure stable, redundant connectivity between branches and data centers. Organizations experiencing frequent line failures or high reliance on bandwidth-heavy applications find it particularly useful. It caters to sectors needing reliable data management and enhanced networking.

Citrix

Exinda is designed to help Network Managers solve pressing IT problems in today's complex network. Our award winning technology combines interactive analytics, an intelligent recommendation engine and powerful actions like shaping and optimization, all in one solution.

GFI

Sample Customers

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

AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Cornerstone Home Lending Inc., Dallara, ecVision, Essar, Eurofred, Groupe Promutuel, HMSHost Corporation, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines Ltd, Royal Caribbean International

UMass Dartmouth, MLB Network, R&R Ice Cream, Savills, Manhattan School of Music, Blum Shapiro, Cincinnati Public Schools, City of Richmond, Genting Casinos, The Salvation Army, VoIP Unlimited, Frontier Silicon, Lakeshore Toltest, CTI Foods

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