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Cloudflare vs Fortinet FortiADC 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
7.0
Cloudflare improves speed, security, and stability, leading to significant financial benefits with an ROI of 318% for businesses.
Sentiment score
6.6
Fortinet FortiADC is chosen for reliable load management, security, and support, offering moderate ROI and essential performance.
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.
The alert system is efficient, sending alerts within a fraction of a second if any power issues arise.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Cloudflare's support is praised for responsiveness, though non-paying users and regions without local offices face challenges.
Sentiment score
6.1
Fortinet FortiADC customer service is praised for effective support but varies in response time and relies on ticket prioritization.
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.
The support team is knowledgeable and efficiently assists with automation and configuration problems.
The service is helpful yet not excellent.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Cloudflare efficiently handles increased traffic and growth, offering scalability, robust network performance, and seamless expansion for enterprises.
Sentiment score
7.5
Fortinet FortiADC provides scalable solutions with virtual and cloud options, though performance varies by model and infrastructure needs.
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.
It is scalable for some versions, however, as components reach their end of support, upgrades are necessary to maintain scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Cloudflare is generally stable and reliable, but occasional issues with downtime, speed, and DDoS protection are reported.
Sentiment score
8.2
Fortinet FortiADC is praised for stability, reliable operation, effective support, and minor issues resolved through firmware updates.
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.
The support system is reliable when issues like automation or configuration arise.
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudflare needs analytics, threat insights, improved support, user-friendly dashboards, and simplified pricing, with consistent caching and security features.
Fortinet FortiADC needs advancements in algorithms, UI, support, documentation, scalability, features, pricing, licensing, performance, cloud, and AI integration.
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.
The limitation of managing all components and the differing versions pose challenges.
If I need design help, they do not assist; they say it is a design issue they cannot support, and I must approach the system integrator.
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare offers flexible pricing with plans for small businesses to enterprises, balancing cost with comprehensive features and protection.
Fortinet FortiADC is affordable compared to competitors, with flexible licensing, varying costs, and potential discounts based on configurations.
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.
This solution is quite expensive compared to Kemp.
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare offers caching, DDoS protection, and CDN services, enhancing website speed and security with intuitive interface and global reach.
Fortinet FortiADC excels in load balancing, security, and ease of integration, offering scalable, reliable, and comprehensive traffic management solutions.
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.
I use server load balancing and employ layer seven features, which provide more granular traffic shaping and detailed logs.
FortiADC provides load-balancing capabilities needed for integration with other Fortinet platforms.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
Fortinet FortiADC
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cloudflare and Fortinet FortiADC aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Cloudflare is designed for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection and holds a mindshare of 19.8%, up 19.1% compared to last year.
Fortinet FortiADC, on the other hand, focuses on Application Delivery Controllers (ADC), holds 10.1% mindshare, up 8.1% since last year.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

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.
OusaidAbaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrates load balancing efficiently within existing technology environments
FortiADC provides load-balancing capabilities needed for integration with other Fortinet platforms. It allows for the creation of virtual IPs and applying various algorithms for traffic management. Although it offers fewer algorithms than competing platforms like F5, its capability to manage load balancing makes it valuable. The security features depend on the environment, relying on firewalls like FortiGate.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.
856,873 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
14%
Educational Organization
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
17%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
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.
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.
Do you recommend Fortinet FortiADC?
I recommend Fortinet FortiADC. My experience with Fortinet has been very positive. Our company has been using it for around five years. We mainly use FortiADC for the load balancing of application ...
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiADC?
The user interface is very easy and integrates with Sandbox easily.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
FortiADC Application Delivery Controller, FortiADC
 

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.
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Radware, NETSCOUT and others in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.