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Cloudflare vs NGINX App Protect 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
6.2
Cloudflare's services enhanced security and efficiency, resulting in significant ROI, cost savings, and improved WordPress performance for businesses.
Sentiment score
5.8
NGINX App Protect offers notable ROI, enhancing security, integrating with CICD pipelines, and providing compliance and time-saving benefits.
WordPress security can be tricky, and that's where Cloudflare can be absolutely helpful for small businesses.
Product Manager at Infozion
We have had ROI with the tool's use since it never gave us downtime and made us lose millions.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a transportation company with 201-500 employees
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
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Cloudflare's support is responsive and knowledgeable, with varying experiences depending on the plan and need for faster escalation.
Sentiment score
5.8
NGINX App Protect's support is reliable and helpful, though costs and occasional delays affect accessibility for some users.
This would help us address issues promptly, especially during unforeseen events like DDoS attacks.
General Manager at bKash Limited
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
We'd like a dedicated account manager.
Head Of Technology Department & Transformation at Yoma Bank
They were quick and efficient when we had issues.
Project Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
I would rate the customer support a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10.
Tech Lead at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Cloudflare excels in scalability, supporting seamless transitions and performance during high-traffic periods, highly rated by users.
Sentiment score
6.1
NGINX App Protect offers strong scalability praised by users, despite challenges with policy limits and deployment delays.
I would rate the solution's scalability a ten out of ten since I didn't encounter any issues with it.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a transportation company with 201-500 employees
I rate its scalability a ten out of ten because I had no issues with it.
DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.
Technical Solutions Specialist-Cyber security at Liquid Telecom
The scalability of NGINX App Protect is good and open source at its best.
Tech Lead at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Cloudflare is reliable with high stability ratings, minimal issues, improved network connectivity, and praised fast DNS services.
Sentiment score
8.4
Users praise NGINX App Protect's stability and reliability, outperforming competitors, handling high traffic efficiently, and receiving high ratings.
For DDoS protection, I would not recommend Cloudflare.
General Manager at bKash Limited
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
It is a quality solution, and I would rate its stability as eight out of ten.
IT Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Users suggest improvements in Cloudflare's features, pricing, support, analytics, documentation, and partner relations for better service experience.
NGINX App Protect needs enhancements in automation, UI, security, performance, and support, with complex setup and integration issues.
There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features.
General Manager at bKash Limited
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
There was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service.
IT Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
For now, I think NGINX App Protect is good, but maybe I would like to see the logging feature added.
Dev Ops Engineer at BARQ Systems
The GUI and web GUI configuration could be improved to be easier to manage and use.
Dev Ops Engineer at adesso AG
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare provides cost-effective, feature-rich plans for varying traffic needs, offering significant value compared to competitors like Akamai.
NGINX App Protect offers reasonable annual pricing, ranging from $25,000 to $400,000, aligning with industry-leading solutions.
That's where Cloudflare shines for smaller businesses – it's ten times cheaper than Akamai.
Product Manager at Infozion
I find it to be cheap.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
It's cost-effective, but I think they should have a custom pricing model for enterprise customers based on the features you use.
Head Of Technology Department & Transformation at Yoma Bank
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare offers superior caching, DNS management, and security, enhancing performance, global reach, and domain management with innovative features.
NGINX App Protect provides comprehensive security features including automation, real-time threat detection, DDoS protection, and flexible deployment options.
Our scenario consisted of two web servers in different allocations to control access demands, and the load balancer did the job as expected, bringing security and stability to access points.
Analista de Infraestrutura SêniorAnalista at Unifique Telecomunicações
For me, the valuable feature is DDoS protection.
Technical Solutions Specialist-Cyber security at Liquid Telecom
The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.
Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)
The most valuable feature is the ability to operate in a DevOps environment and to be configured through API and pipeline by the developers themselves.
IT Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Some threats like injection and running scripts, SQL injections, these all get stopped and rejected by the server.
Dev Ops Engineer at BARQ Systems
Detecting bots and blocking IPs have proven effective for securing applications.
Project Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (3rd), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th)
NGINX App Protect
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (14th), Container Security (28th), API Security (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Cloudflare is designed for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection and holds a mindshare of 14.9%, down 18.8% compared to last year.
NGINX App Protect, on the other hand, focuses on Web Application Firewall (WAF), holds 2.1% mindshare, up 1.7% since last year.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare14.9%
Imperva Application Security Platform8.3%
Arbor DDoS7.8%
Other69.0%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NGINX App Protect2.1%
Imperva Application Security Platform7.6%
Fortinet FortiWeb6.5%
Other83.8%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

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.
Valerio Guaglianone - PeerSpot reviewer
Dev Ops Engineer at adesso AG
Long-term web protection has supported reliable traffic management but needs a simpler interface
NGINX App Protect is a good product. I have used both versions from F5 -also the free version- (I mean the NGINX/NGINX One/App Protect free trial period), and I think it is a good product. It's stable, affordable, and easy to manage. NGINX App Protect is a comprehensive security solution that combines advanced WAF, DoS protection, API security, and DevSecOps automation in a lightweight, scalable package ideal for modern cloud-native architectures. The adaptive machine learning capabilities are truly commendable, as the solution can establish traffic baselines and detect anomalies in real time. It automatically adjusts security policies, minimizing the need for manual intervention and reducing false positives. Additionally, it supports scalable deployment across diverse environments, including on-premises, cloud, Kubernetes, and containers, offering both flexibility and scalability I have experience with the web server, F5 load balancer, and similar products provided by Ergon, for eg. the web application firewall and the Microgateway for K8S. I'm also familiar with F5 BIG-IP products.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.
886,906 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise12
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare?
The tool's pricing is moderate. I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?
I will not be able to answer about my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for NGINX App Protect, as something different handles that in my team.
What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?
I did not face any issues with NGINX App Protect. The only issue that we had is that someone was trying to install the POC for the customer, and he by mistake installed the Instance Manager on the ...
What is your primary use case for NGINX App Protect?
I have been dealing with NGINX App Protect and the WAF policy. I usually recommend NGINX App Protect for banking and telecom, and for anyone that has their own database or servers that they host we...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall
 

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.
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Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. NGINX App Protect and other solutions. Updated: May 2020.
886,906 professionals have used our research since 2012.