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.
My experience with the pricing or licensing of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is that many features can be accessed for free, so the pricing is definitely reasonable.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
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.
Without Steelhead, we would have spent much more on bandwidth costs.
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to contact them.
The technical support of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between five and seven at maximum.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.
We use other solutions where support is available through Slack channels and is more interactive, with someone responding within a couple of minutes or seconds.
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.
I have no issues with technical support from Riverbed.
Riverbed's customer service and technical support would be rated an eight.
The scalability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between 8 to 9, as it depends upon the use cases and what exactly the client 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.
If a customer has 1 GB traffic, they will only be able to utilize 600 MB of traffic with Steelhead.
It allows us to maximize use from our MPLS providers by handling traffic efficiently across phased deployments.
The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10.
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
It's quite stable and provides all necessary alerts if something is wrong.
For instance, even if there is a power failure, Riverbed still works.
Steelhead helps significantly with large data transfers.
The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available.
I think they're doing a good job with DNS and as support for any domains that I create or that my clients create, it's mandatory for me to ensure they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider.
And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
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.
There are some performance considerations when it comes to dynamic content that involves fetching data from databases or using APIs.
Steelhead is very expensive, and the vendor should work on handling Oracle type of traffic better.
It would help if Riverbed could prevent such drastic impacts during updates.
It could still be useful in places with satellite communications, such as the south of Chile, or in the mining industry.
I find it to be cheap.
I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.
The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.
Buying the hardware initially is costly, but yearly maintenance and licenses are not as expensive.
Steelhead is considered an expensive solution in our country.
The custom rules and the geo-redundant geographical rule feature, which allows me to implement geographical rules for customers, add significant value.
The best features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall are multiple, including the WAF, rate limiter, and bot attack protection.
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools add a layer that we're able to visualize and see before it actually hits the local firewall.
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.
Most of our DNS records that are presented to the internet are proxied whenever possible, providing another layer of defense from our perspective.
Functions like acting as an NTP server, DNS, DHCP, and auto-optimization mode enhance efficiency.
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.
Steelhead's most valuable feature is its ability to hash and send only the important parts of the information, avoiding the resending of data.


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 16 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 6 |
| Large Enterprise | 6 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 46 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 8 |
| Large Enterprise | 26 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 5 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 7 |
| Large Enterprise | 14 |
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.
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?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.
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.
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