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Cloudflare vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.1
Cloudflare improves performance, security, and financial outcomes with affordable plans, enhancing user satisfaction and operational efficiency significantly.
Sentiment score
6.9
Users experienced mixed returns from F5 BIG-IP, praising deployment and security, despite some criticisms of pricing and cloud transitions.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
In terms of return on investment with Cloudflare, it costs my time to set them up, but basically once they're set up, it's done.
Owner at Hga consulting
The major return on investment is the security of our data.
IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Cloudflare's customer service is praised for promptness, but technical support feedback varies, especially favoring Enterprise tier users.
Sentiment score
6.7
Customer service is generally praised for professionalism and expertise, but some experience delays and inconsistent response quality.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
Senior Consultant CDN at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.
Owner at Hga consulting
We use other solutions where support is available through Slack channels and is more interactive, with someone responding within a couple of minutes or seconds.
General Manager at bKash Limited
I would rate the technical support of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) nine out of ten.
IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital
Overall, my experience with F5 is very good compared to Radware.
Project Manager at IBM
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Users praise Cloudflare's scalability, flexibility, and seamless tier transitions for maintaining high performance under increasing traffic and demands.
Sentiment score
7.4
F5 BIG-IP LTM offers scalable solutions with flexible deployment, efficiently managing large environments, preferred for modular growth and adaptability.
It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.
Independent Consultant at Unaikui
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Cloudflare is generally stable and reliable, with some initial setup challenges but excellent performance and positive user feedback.
Sentiment score
8.0
F5 BIG-IP LTM is stable and resilient, with users rating its reliability high despite occasional hardware or update issues.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
Independent Consultant at Unaikui
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudflare needs enhancements in speed, support, reliability, pricing, and documentation, while expanding integration, security, and analytics capabilities.
F5 BIG-IP LTM faces criticism for high costs, inflexible licensing, complex management, and needing improved UI, synchronization, and security.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
Managed Services Manager at Adapture Technology Group
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.
General Manager at bKash Limited
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.
Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)
The pricing of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is on the higher side compared to competitors, but it is worth it.
Project Manager at IBM
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users find Cloudflare cost-effective, with valuable upgrades and competitive pricing, despite unclear enterprise price lists.
F5 BIG-IP LTM is costly but offers performance benefits, with various licensing options and potential discounts to match competitors.
I find it to be cheap.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.
Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions
The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare provides caching, DDoS protection, and CDN services with enhanced security features, making it vital for optimized web performance.
F5 BIG-IP LTM provides efficient traffic management, security features, and customization options with a user-friendly interface and robust performance.
The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.
Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)
Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.
Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions
The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
The impact of SSL offloading on reducing server load and latency is very much positive because whatever traffic we receive, we encrypt at our F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) level, which has definitely reduced the additional load and SSL decryption load on the servers, so it has very much helped us and it is very smooth; it will not take much time and will not impact our regular traffic.
Project Manager at IBM
One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication.
IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
123
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Enterprise Networking solutions, they serve different purposes. Cloudflare is designed for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection and holds a mindshare of 16.7%, down 18.0% compared to last year.
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), on the other hand, focuses on Application Delivery Controllers (ADC), holds 15.3% mindshare, up 15.3% since last year.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudflare16.7%
Arbor DDoS9.8%
Radware DDoS8.2%
Other65.3%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)15.3%
NetScaler13.2%
HAProxy9.9%
Other61.6%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Bonieber  Orofeo - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital
Identifying compromised traffic and securing data has been a significant advantage
One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication. Additionally, the security aspect of it provides a significant advantage as it helps us secure our data, which is a major investment and benefit for us. Before using this system, we had difficulties in storing our data and managing the traffic that comes in and out.
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880,490 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Expert with 51-200 employees
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
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise32
Large Enterprise85
 

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 needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?
The pricing of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is on the higher side compared to competitors, but it is worth it.
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?
Our main use cases involve multiple applications, so we are using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) services, and we are using WAF and ASM services to secure those applications and load balance...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
 

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.
Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
880,490 professionals have used our research since 2012.