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Cloudflare vs F5 Silverline Managed Services comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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
6.5
Cloudflare enhanced speed, security, and data protection, providing significant ROI and improved operations and client satisfaction for businesses.
Sentiment score
6.6
F5 Silverline Managed Services offers effective cybersecurity solutions, with variable ROI perceptions and appreciation for time and cost savings.
WordPress security can be tricky, and that's where Cloudflare can be absolutely helpful for small businesses.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Cloudflare's customer service is efficient for paying users, but responses can vary in speed and effectiveness for others.
Sentiment score
6.1
F5 Silverline's customer support is responsive but varies; users praise personalization but note challenges with escalations and response times.
This would help us address issues promptly, especially during unforeseen events like DDoS attacks.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
The key factor is the language in which the support is offered, which, in this case, is in Thai.
Their support team is responsive, and they deliver timely updates, addressing any glitches promptly.
They resolve the issues by joining me to fix them.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Cloudflare is praised for seamless scalability, managing enterprise-level traffic efficiently and earning high customer satisfaction during peak events.
Sentiment score
7.8
F5 Silverline offers scalable managed services, efficiently handling enterprise demands with flexible expansion and seamless capacity management.
It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.
The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.
I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.
F5 Silverline Managed Services is scalable enough without observed limitations.
The solution is fully scalable, and I would give it a rating of ten on a scale of one to ten for scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cloudflare is widely regarded as stable and reliable, with improvements noted in uptime and performance on higher plans.
Sentiment score
7.3
F5 Silverline delivers stable performance with strong monitoring, minimal downtime, effective support, and high stability ratings despite occasional issues.
For DDoS protection, I would not recommend Cloudflare.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
They offer regular updates, and overall, I would rate the stability of the solution as nine out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudflare requires improvements in analytics, CDN speed, API, technical support, DNS management, documentation, pricing clarity, and international and reseller support.
F5 Silverline needs improved pricing, integration, user interfaces, automation, API, and enhanced features like AI and bot detection.
There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version.
Introducing preemptive support prompts would reduce the manual effort required for creating policies or blocking specific IPs.
Improvements could include the creation of highly optimized profiles.
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare offers cost-effective, scalable plans with no setup fees, starting from free for small businesses to enterprise-level solutions.
Enterprise users view F5 Silverline pricing as competitive but costly, with room for negotiation and flexible licensing options.
That's where Cloudflare shines for smaller businesses – it's ten times cheaper than Akamai.
I find it to be cheap.
I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high.
On a scale where ten is very expensive, I would rate the pricing as three.
The solution is expensive
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare enhances security, speed, and SEO with easy-to-use features like CDN, SSL, DDoS protection, and centralized management.
F5 Silverline Managed Services provides easy setup, robust security features, excellent scalability, and effective DDoS protection with comprehensive reporting.
The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.
Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.
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.
It allows for centralized management of certificates, protecting applications from top ten attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
The monitoring tab displays GET and POST requests in a readable format, making it accessible even to non-tech-savvy individuals.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
F5 Silverline Managed Services
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (22nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.6%, up from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Silverline Managed Services is 1.3%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

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.
Archana Heeralal - PeerSpot reviewer
A reasonably priced product with a good UI, but the navigation is difficult, and the support team takes a long time to respond
Since we use the solution’s cloud, the product has more control over the back end. The customer will not have control. It is part of the product’s feature. When we get more complex requirements or if we want to write more complex tools, the support team will have the visibility to write them because they have control. The navigation is difficult to use. The navigation should be improved. Other products are quite straightforward. If I try to implement a new application and do an onboarding, it is not very easy. We must go to one feature, inside which there will be more features. It should be simplified, and a menu should be provided.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.
859,687 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
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
 

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.
Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?
For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Silverline Managed Services?
The solution is quite reasonably priced, with costs being lower in comparison to competitors. On a scale where ten is very expensive, I would rate the pricing as three. It offers cost savings and i...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, F5 Silverline DDoS Protection
 

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.
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. F5 Silverline Managed Services and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,687 professionals have used our research since 2012.