Cloudflare vs Steelhead comparison

Cloudflare and Riverbed are both solutions in the WAN Optimization category. Cloudflare is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.4, while Riverbed is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.4. Cloudflare holds a 1.7% mindshare in WO, compared to Riverbed’s 14.0% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cloudflare users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Riverbed users who would recommend it.

Cloudflare

Read 77 Cloudflare reviews

38,465 Views
0 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Steelhead

Read 26 Steelhead reviews

982 Views
540 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Cloudflare

Steelhead

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cloudflare and Steelhead based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two WAN Optimization solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloudflare vs. Steelhead Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare vs. Steelhead

December 2025

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Helped 879,310 peers since 2012

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 users experienced increased performance, security, and cost-effectiveness, leading to improved loyalty and revenue despite difficult ROI calculations.

Sentiment score

4.8

Steelhead optimized WAN usage, saving £50,000 in costs, improving bandwidth efficiency, and enhancing user experience without extra investments.

For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.

Wellington Malagutti

Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

In terms of return on investment with Cloudflare, it costs my time to set them up, but basically once they're set up, it's done.

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Without Steelhead, we would have spent much more on bandwidth costs.

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

For more quotes and insights, download the Steelhead report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

7.0

Cloudflare's customer service is quick, but technical support feedback is mixed, with improvement needed in responsiveness and detailed assistance.

Sentiment score

7.0

Steelhead's customer service is efficient and knowledgeable, but local support and handling complex issues need improvement.

Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.

reviewer1245303

Senior Consultant CDN at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

I have primarily worked not with the tool's customer support but with the product's sales engineers and technical sales engineers, who seem to know their stuff.

reviewer2541525

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Steelhead's support is generally good for typical issues yet can be time-consuming during complex problem-solving across teams, particularly for Active Directory integration.

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

I have no issues with technical support from Riverbed.

Chaudhary Muhammad Moez Manzar

Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Riverbed's customer service and technical support would be rated an eight.

JaimeVasquez

Commercial Manager at IT-Experience

For more quotes and insights, download the Steelhead report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

8.1

Users praise Cloudflare for seamless scalability, effective traffic management, easy upgrades, and robust global infrastructure without disruptions.

Sentiment score

6.9

Feedback on Steelhead scaling varies, with easy deployment praised, but licensing and bandwidth limitations noted by some users.

It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.

reviewer2541525

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

Prajith Chowthee

Independent Consultant at Unaikui

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

If a customer has 1 GB traffic, they will only be able to utilize 600 MB of traffic with Steelhead.

Chaudhary Muhammad Moez Manzar

Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

It allows us to maximize use from our MPLS providers by handling traffic efficiently across phased deployments.

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

For more quotes and insights, download the Steelhead report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.6

Cloudflare is highly rated for stability and uptime, with few past issues, especially on higher-tier plans.

Sentiment score

8.6

Steelhead offers reliable network optimization with stability, smooth upgrades, and effective technical support for seamless traffic flow and high availability.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

Prajith Chowthee

Independent Consultant at Unaikui

The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

It's quite stable and provides all necessary alerts if something is wrong.

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

For instance, even if there is a power failure, Riverbed still works.

Chaudhary Muhammad Moez Manzar

Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Steelhead helps significantly with large data transfers.

JaimeVasquez

Commercial Manager at IT-Experience

For more quotes and insights, download the Steelhead report

Room For Improvement

Enhancements needed in Cloudflare: analytics, CDN latency, API integration, user support, DNS, pricing, documentation, server coverage, WAF, and cache.

Steelhead users desire improved traffic handling, integration, scalability, security features, intuitive setup, and comprehensive monitoring amid cost concerns.

Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.

Bilal Mujahid

Managed Services Manager at Adapture Technology Group

Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements.

Darryl Wethington

Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)

There are some performance considerations when it comes to dynamic content that involves fetching data from databases or using APIs.

Animesh.Kumar

Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Steelhead is very expensive, and the vendor should work on handling Oracle type of traffic better.

Chaudhary Muhammad Moez Manzar

Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

It would help if Riverbed could prevent such drastic impacts during updates.

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

It could still be useful in places with satellite communications, such as the south of Chile, or in the mining industry.

JaimeVasquez

Commercial Manager at IT-Experience

For more quotes and insights, download the Steelhead report

Setup Cost

Cloudflare offers scalable pricing, from free to enterprise plans, providing significant value especially for mid-sized companies.

Steelhead is costly but valued for performance and support, with complex licensing and varied pricing by usage.

I find it to be cheap.

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

Animesh.Kumar

Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions

The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.

reviewer2541525

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Buying the hardware initially is costly, but yearly maintenance and licenses are not as expensive.

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

Steelhead is considered an expensive solution in our country.

JaimeVasquez

Commercial Manager at IT-Experience

For more quotes and insights, download the Steelhead report

Valuable Features

Cloudflare enhances performance and security with CDN caching, DDoS protection, and an easy-to-use dashboard, benefiting many users.

Steelhead enhances WAN efficiency with data compression, TCP optimization, and caching, benefiting performance, bandwidth, and cloud migration cost savings.

The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.

Darryl Wethington

Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)

Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.

Animesh.Kumar

Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions

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.

reviewer2541525

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Cloudflare report

Functions like acting as an NTP server, DNS, DHCP, and auto-optimization mode enhance efficiency.

Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

My actual traffic is around 2 GB, but I purchased a link from the ISP for only around 700 to 800 MB. All the prices that need to be paid monthly to the ISP are saved, which is a significant saving for my company after using Riverbed.

Chaudhary Muhammad Moez Manzar

Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Steelhead's most valuable feature is its ability to hash and send only the important parts of the information, avoiding the resending of data.

JaimeVasquez

Commercial Manager at IT-Experience

For more quotes and insights, download the Steelhead report

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare

Ranking in WAN Optimization

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)

Steelhead

Ranking in WAN Optimization

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

WAN Edge (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the WAN Optimization category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 1.7%. The mindshare of Steelhead is 14.0%, up from 13.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

WAN Optimization Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Steelhead	14.0%
Cloudflare	1.7%
Other	84.3%

WAN Optimization

Featured Reviews

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility

I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.

Read full review

Chaudhary Muhammad Moez Manzar

Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Reduces operational costs through bandwidth optimization but struggles with high traffic licensing and complex deployments

The logs in Steelhead are fantastic. There is a deep level of logs such as top 10 docker and top 50 docker. I can check from the top 50 docker which type of application is optimizing well and which type of traffic is not optimized. Steelhead provides logs and percentage levels, which is good. I can see any type of log report, report security, different types of report availability, but it is not customizable. Overall, this is a good feature. Steelhead provides real-time optimization with graphs and tables on real-time optimization, informing us packet by packet including port, source IP, destination IP, and destination port number. This reporting and real-time monitoring is fantastic, although I faced a problem in Oracle. Steelhead mainly saves the money that needs to be paid to ISPs. My actual traffic is around 2 GB, but I purchased a link from the ISP for only around 700 to 800 MB. All the prices that need to be paid monthly to the ISP are saved, which is a significant saving for my company after using Riverbed.

Read full review

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Comparison Review

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Security Expert with 51-200 employees

Nov 6, 2013

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

19%

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	25

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	14

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 ...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

We just did an assessment for our 47 datacenters around North America. The top two enterprise-level network monitoring solutions were ExtraHop first, Riverbed SteelCenter second. Their negotiated c...

See all answers

What do you like most about Riverbed Steelhead?

One of our most valuable features is Steelhead's cloud migration optimization. Moving to the cloud helped optimize our workflow, improving performance for end-users.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Riverbed Steelhead?

I am currently working with Riverbed for replication between PR to DR for synchronization purposes, and for WAN optimization between replication from one data center to another data center. The mai...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 52% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Myra Security DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

WAAS vs Steelhead

Compared 15% of the time

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs Steelhead

Compared 12% of the time

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform vs Steelhead

Compared 10% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Steelhead

Compared 9% of the time

Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs Steelhead

Compared 8% of the time

More Steelhead Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

December 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Steelhead

December 2025

Download Steelhead product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

RIverbed Steelhead

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

Steelhead is the leading network optimization and application performance solution chosen by over 30,000 organizations worldwide. The performance of networks and applications directly impacts business productivity. Riverbed draws from nearly two decades of experience in driving network and application performance over Wide Area Networks with its flagship offering, SteelHead. SteelHead delivers the underlying technology that helps enterprises of all sizes maximize the efficiency and performance of the networks and applications used to run modern business.

SteelHead is proven to dramatically speed up the performance of applications anywhere in the organization while delivering the best end-user experience even under sub optimal network conditions. Reduce bandwidth utilization by up to 95%, deferring costly network bandwidth upgrades. Increase performance by up to 100x for on-premises applications.

Riverbed

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

ElAraby, SFK Leblanc, Bobst Group, Northwest Pipe Company, Halkbank, Tradebridge, EFG Hermes

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare vs. Steelhead

December 2025

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