Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cloudflare vs Cloudflare One comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 16, 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
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Cloudflare One
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (11th), Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (7th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (7th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (7th), Access Management (5th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (3rd), ZTNA (2nd), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (6th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.6%, up from 19.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare One is 4.1%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
The solution enables seamless security management and fosters a learning environment
Feedback could be enhanced. While I work efficiently with Clover as a partner in Mexico City, sometimes the information and requests are easier to manage with more concrete solutions. For the solution stopping us for e-learning, I appreciate the concept yet need more resources or courses in Mexico, preferably in Spanish. Certifications are easy, however, I require more real-world environments and instructors.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"Cloudflare is simple to use."
"The capabilities of the software are strong enough for me to do what it's supposed to do. For me, we don't need to do a lot of configuration on our site. We just enable it and monitor it."
"Cloudflare DDoS mitigates DDoS attacks."
"Enables me to work from two locations."
"Cloudflare, in my opinion, was easy to implement."
"This solution is easy to understand and easy to configure."
"The best feature is rate limiting. If I'm expecting 500 visits per hour, Cloudflare will limit the requests if I suddenly get 50,000."
"Clover is the best product globally."
 

Cons

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"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."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"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."
"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."
"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."
"The pricing is an area that can be improved. Pricing, as far as I recall, was the source of our problems."
"Lacks a VPN feature to provide a secure connection to the data center."
"The software has automated alerts, but the automated alerts are not available in the mobile app."
"The response time for support must be reduced."
"There are premium tier live service and lower tier live service, so we opted for the lower tier. But there is no medium tier where we pay a little extra and get a bit more service. So if that can be improved."
"When there are any dynamic changes in complex applications, the tool takes a lot of time, making its analytics-related area a major matter of concern where improvements are needed."
"Our subscription plan for the solution has a limitation of bot signatures."
"The free plan has limitations. For example, I can only set up three rules, and the application firewall is unavailable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The solution is not that expensive."
"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 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 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 do you like most about Cloudflare Access?
The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Access?
The price of Cloudflare Access is the same as compared to Akamai, but I get better performance from Cloudflare. My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the so...
What needs improvement with Cloudflare Access?
Cloudflare Access has strong integration with Microsoft, among other platforms. However, when it comes to Kaspersky, we have clients who typically encounter challenges. The usual setup involves con...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
 

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.
23andMe
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. Cloudflare One and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.