Cloudflare vs Palo Alto Networks WildFire comparison

 

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)
Palo Alto Networks WildFire
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (3rd)
 

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 Palo Alto Networks WildFire is 1.0%, down from 1.8% 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%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
13.5%
 

Featured Reviews

MM
Jun 3, 2023
Helps to create DNS records and connect Cloudflare to the original server
The product helps to create DNS records and connect Cloudflare to the original server. You can also do load balancing configuration. I work with SaaS solutions.  In a single product and with minimal costs, you can get multiple features.  The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS.…
JeffReese - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 11, 2023
Well priced with great updates and competitive technology
Most competitors call themselves a layer seven inspection device yet are not in the true sense able to do this task as well as Palo Alto. Some require additional subscriptions to enable their version of a layer seven inspection service. Details as to how that accomplishes the tasks of layer seven inspections, how often their updates are published and available to the public, their method of publishing these updates to protect the internal production traffic, and the cost of the subscription, if required to fulfill the layer seven protection, should be asked of all vendors being considered. I have worked as a VAR and an MSSP and know that the labor cost of Palo Alto is much lower than its competition in every way.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."
"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."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"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."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"We have found that Palo Alto Networks WildFire is scalable. We currently have six thousand users for the product."
"What I like about Palo Alto is that it is a complete product, with everything in it."
"The most effective feature of WildFire for threat analysis is its collaboration with other security profiles on our Palo Alto firewall."
"The solution is scalable."
"You have better control because you define apps. You just don't define ports. You define apps, and the apps are monitored in the traffic. It is more specific than the Cisco firewall when it comes to our needs."
"The most valuable features of the solution are user-friendliness, price, good security, and cloud-related options."
"Using WildFire has reduced the number of viruses and the amount of malware that comes into our system, which means that I don't have to rely on the end-users to identify it."
"The backup is the best feature."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."
"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."
"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."
"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."
"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"The free version does not have real-time updates. It is slow."
"There are certain changes that I was expecting in the previous version, and I hope that they are soon fixed. All of the problems that I have faced so far have been resolved."
"Palo Alto Networks WildFire should be more real-time in nature. The signature updates should happen in a minute or less than a minute to be a very good feature for the customer."
"As a firewall and 360 degrees of security, there needs to be more maturity."
"There are some formats that the solution cannot support ."
"The cyber security visibility and forensics features to receive more information about incidents could improve in Palo Alto Networks WildFire."
"The automation and responsiveness need improvement."
"​The VPN and decryption need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"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 solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"The price is fair and comparable to other solutions."
"Pricing could be improved."
"The physical appliance is around €3,000 or €4,000, and then, you have the licensing for a year for around €3,000."
"It is a reasonable price compared to other solutions on the market."
"The price is a bit higher than the other products such as TrendMicro, or FireEye."
"The price is expensive but is reasonable considering overall functionality."
"It is expensive, a feature more accessible to enterprise class customers, but provides an enhanced possibility that Zero- or near-Zero-day threats may be identified and mitigated. The cost of the product weighed against the potential impact of even one successful crypto malware-type exploit may justify the expense."
"We are on an annual subscription. When we purchased the firewall, we had activated this solutions license for a minimum of one year. The price of the solution is fair."
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Comparison Review

it_user206346 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 11, 2015
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto Networks
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto: Management Goodies You often have comparisons of both firewalls concerning security components. Of course, a firewall must block attacks, scan for viruses, build VPNs, etc. However, in this post I am discussing the advantages and disadvantages from both vendors concerning…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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.
How does Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks Wildfire?
The Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is a very powerful and very complex piece of anti-viral software. When one considers that fact, it is all the more impressive that the setup is a fairly straightf...
Which is better - Wildfire or FortiGate?
FortiGate has a lot going for it and I consider it to be the best, most user-friendly firewall out there. What I like the most about it is that it has an attractive web dashboard with very easy nav...
How does Cisco ASA Firewall compare with Palo Alto's WildFire?
When looking to change our ASA Firewall, we looked into Palo Alto’s WildFire. It works especially in preventing advanced malware and zero-day exploits with real-time intelligence. The sandbox featu...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
 

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.
Novamedia, Nexon Asia Pacific, Lenovo, Samsonite, IOOF, Sinogrid, SanDisk Corporation
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.