Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (11th)
Linode
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (6th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 20.2%, down from 23.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Linode is 1.4%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection
Unique Categories:
CDN
21.9%
Managed DNS
111.6%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
11.8%
 

Featured Reviews

RI
Jun 1, 2023
A stable and scalable DNS management tool to secure websites and servers
The most valuable feature of the solution is the proxy, so I can hide my servers. So no one can scan them, especially for port scanning, since we were hacked once. I did buy a VPS server, and I was just getting started. So I started MongoDB and left the port open. Someone scanned the website and saw the open port, and since I was just starting, I didn't set a password. He managed to get in, and he locked the database and locked all the data (ransomware). When using Cloudflare, I was sure that no one knew my real server IP address.
KB
Oct 10, 2022
Great service and support, easy to resize and scale, and easy to manage
It would be wonderful to have the person that is most familiar with an issue when you call up available on the phone immediately, but I understand that can't always be the case. There are too many different kinds of issues and you need a hierarchy for people to handle concerns. I've had some difficulties with some of their IP addresses being banned by certain mail servers. I think it's based on the size of their network that they manage and the fact that they have different users within C-blocks of IPs that might be spam sources affecting anybody else that's on that same network. It's a difficult problem to address, but it does affect us occasionally, and having your email rejected is not something any of us like dealing with. Typically, we try to reach out to the party that is blocking the IP address. On occasion, it takes contacting Linode and having them also reach out and request that the IP be unblocked. So far, that's been adequate.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very user-friendly."
"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. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"Cloudflare has many features."
"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 of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."
"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."
"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."
"Linode offers cost-effective pricing, and it enables me to swiftly deploy my services."
"Service availability is the most valuable feature. It gives every user 100 percent uptime."
"When it comes to the Linode Kubernetes Engine and the amount of automation it provides, it's awesome, it's a game-changer. If a process randomly dies, it could take me a while to notice that it has died, if I haven't set up monitoring. With Kubernetes, it will just restart itself using Heartbeats."
"I very much like the support that you get, and I think that it's excellent."
"The solution integrates easily."
"They have a very nice web interface to allow you to manage and reorganize your server."
"The number one thing we like about Linode isn't necessarily a service, it's their support. We've found their support to be absolutely fantastic. They've been so outstanding with their support. Every single time we call them and we ask for advice or help, they go above and beyond and it's really made us appreciate what they do."
"Because of the way that their pricing model is set up, I can scale up or down the size of a customer's server very easily. It makes life very easy for me when they run out of space, need more speed or RAM, etc. I can very easily pay the difference and reboot the machine, and now I have the upgrade that I wanted. That just makes it extremely simple."
 

Cons

"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"There are some issues with the CDN services."
"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."
"DNS Management."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"Its cost can be improved."
"It would be helpful if they provided the additional Linux distributions that I prefer using. But there is still a workaround. I can do it without direct support. It's a bit more complicated, but it can still be done."
"Right now, they don't have multiple data centers. They have limited data centers. I am currently using the Singapore and Mumbai data centers, but I am looking for data centers in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. They need to improve the availability of their data centers and partnership engagements with cloud Panda solution providers, like us."
"The network between different servers isn't very good. I have to install additional solutions to link the servers with each other."
"Because they are a smaller company, they do not have, for example, all of the ways for authentication that Amazon or Azure has."
"I'm not sure what could be improved at Linode since they're likely already making enhancements, especially with the Akamai acquisition and, I don't have any specific suggestions as I haven't encountered any major issues. I might consider using API for managing DNS records, but overall, I'm satisfied with Linode."
"Our primary concern is always the latency."
"I would like Linode (without cluttering things) to provide some type of DevOps workflow where people are configuring their pipelines from running their tests and deploying to their test server. Once approved by clicking a button, it just gets deployed to production. I would like something like Azure DevOps, which we use for large applications, and would be something nice to have in Linode."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"We are using the free version."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"The pricing model is very simple. If you have very small applications, you can use the plan which costs $5 per month. That gives you 50 GB of memory and almost 1 GB of RAM. If you need more than you have to select the next plan which is $10 per month, which has about 70 GB of data and 2 GB of RAM."
"Being that they are small, their prices are slightly higher than the large providers like Amazon if you compare raw computing power."
"The monthly cost depends on your requirements."
"The solution is neither cheap nor expensive."
"Compared to other providers, I find Linode's pricing a bit higher. Storage could be more affordable."
"Pricing is very good and flexible, according to the resources required."
"At this point, I'm paying more like $35 per month for a slightly bigger machine, and the backup, and the object service."
"It is quite affordable, which makes it a great choice."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.
793,295 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
25%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
18%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
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 Linode?
When I started using Linode, I found its functionality easy to navigate, user-friendly and responsive to my needs. It provides clear reminders about services I'm not using, like DNS zones, which I ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Linode?
Compared to other providers, I find Linode's pricing a bit higher. Storage could be more affordable.
What needs improvement with Linode?
I'm not sure what could be improved at Linode since they're likely already making enhancements, especially with the Akamai acquisition and, I don't have any specific suggestions as I haven't encoun...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
 

Learn More

 

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.
Best Buy, Panasonic, Giphy, Marco Polo, World Health Organization, Font Squirrel
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, NETSCOUT, Akamai and others in Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection. Updated: June 2024.
793,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.