Cloudflare vs Windows Azure CDN comparison

Cloudflare and Microsoft are both solutions in the CDN category. Cloudflare is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.4, while Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.0. Cloudflare holds a 19.1% mindshare in CDN, compared to Microsoft’s 3.4% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cloudflare users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Cloudflare

Read 77 Cloudflare reviews

38,465 Views
5,770 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Windows Azure CDN

Read 13 Windows Azure CDN reviews

885 Views
885 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Cloudflare

Windows Azure CDN

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Cloudflare and Windows Azure CDN compete in the CDN solutions category, offering diverse features to cater to different needs and budgets. Cloudflare appears to have an advantage with its aggressive caching, DDoS protection, and global CDN reach, while Windows Azure CDN excels in dynamic content acceleration and integration with Azure services.

Features: Cloudflare offers speed improvements, efficient DDoS protection, and flexible SSL, providing enterprise-level features at no cost. It also enhances ease of use with its web application firewall. Windows Azure CDN provides superior integration with Azure services, dynamic content acceleration, and integrated WAF, facilitating seamless scalability and robust performance.

Room for Improvement: Cloudflare could enhance analytics, reduce error rates, and improve support responsiveness. It also faces challenges with offline site caching and support for non-www redirection. Windows Azure CDN should consider lowering its pricing and improving support response times while integrating more monitoring tools for better performance measurement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cloudflare is known for simple deployment and minimal technical support, though users desire improved documentation and support responsiveness. Windows Azure CDN offers responsive technical support but could improve in-depth issue resolution and SLA communication.

Pricing and ROI: Cloudflare's pricing ranges from a free plan with robust features to tiers for larger needs, providing high ROI for small businesses. Windows Azure CDN, considered more expensive, offers significant ROI through its integration and performance benefits within the Azure ecosystem, suiting Azure-integrated enterprises more.

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

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare vs. Windows Azure CDN

December 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare

Ranking in CDN

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)

Windows Azure CDN

Ranking in CDN

7th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.1%, down from 21.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Windows Azure CDN is 3.4%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

CDN Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cloudflare	19.1%
Windows Azure CDN	3.4%
Other	77.5%

CDN

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

AlaaMadkhana

Pre Sales at eSense Software

Has provided exceptional performance for handling high web traffic

In my opinion, Windows Azure CDN is one of the best CDNs. We tried to replace it and made a business case to check other options such as Cloudflare, and we are using Cloudflare and tried Akamai, wanting to explore alternatives from OCI. One of the best features of Windows Azure CDN is that it has integrated WAF; it is not only CDN alone and it is a very smart and capable WAF. Windows Azure CDN is easily integrated with Azure services such as Azure Storage and Azure Web Apps, and sometimes we are using just Azure Front Door while the back end and database will be on OCI. The impact of Windows Azure CDN's dynamic content acceleration on our application performance is very significant. For one of our clients, we could not use anything other than Azure Front Door.

Read full review

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 is the web application firewall."

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

"The most valuable feature is its usability."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."

"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."

"The most valuable feature is its usability."

More Cloudflare pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that one can access Windows Azure CDN from anywhere."

"The geolocation feature is very important because many colleagues travel worldwide and need to access information from anywhere. The product has improved security."

"It is a stable solution."

"One of the most valuable aspects is the capability to store extensive datasets and objects in the cloud, enabling their download through shared access signatures."

"The UI is very intuitive."

"We use the product for faster content delivery with low latency."

"One of the best features of Windows Azure CDN is that it has integrated WAF; it is not only CDN alone and it is a very smart and capable WAF."

"The fact that it just delivers what it is supposed to do is its most valuable feature...The initial setup is very straightforward."

More Windows Azure CDN pros

Cons

"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."

"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."

"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."

"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."

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."

"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."

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."

More Cloudflare cons

"They should include configuration for cache rules."

"Exploring shared access solutions with cloud accounts would be a beneficial choice."

"It is not a weakness of Windows Azure CDN; rather, it is the fact that it is outside Saudi Arabia, leading to some regulation issues."

"I believe Windows Azure CDN can improve monitoring and measuring overall end-user performance. Providing monitoring tools or agents that can be integrated into our pages would be highly beneficial. Setting up a custom domain with Windows Azure CDN involves proving domain ownership, which can take some time. The process is relatively straightforward if your DNS or domain registrar is already integrated with Microsoft. However, the verification process may be more time-consuming if you use a different service provider."

"We have experienced issues with switch connectivity."

"Azure is continuously improving its CDN but the documentation should be up-to-date."

"The high price of Windows Azure CDN is an area of concern where improvements can be made."

"The response time of the support team must be improved."

More Windows Azure CDN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"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."

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is extremely high, almost 9 out of 10."

"The solution's price is above the medium range."

"The pricing of the solution depends on usage and varies based on the company's needs. If you want additional features like advanced logging, it will be pricier. However, it could be cheaper if you don't need those features. It all depends on the resources and requirements."

"The tool's pricing is cheap."

"I rate the price of Windows Azure CDN a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is high."

"The tool's pricing is cheap."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."

"The solution's price depends on how much traffic you have. So, it was okay for us. Payments are to be made on a monthly basis since one has to pay for what they used."

More Windows Azure CDN pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user68487

Security Expert with 51-200 employees

Nov 6, 2013

CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Educational Organization

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	7
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	6

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 do you like most about Windows Azure CDN?

One of the tool's best features is its ability to handle edge cases. For instance, we encountered a situation where we needed to remove certain files from public access. The solution offered a purg...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Windows Azure CDN?

In terms of pricing for Windows Azure CDN and the whole Microsoft products, you cannot compare networking alone or compute alone; you need a full solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Windows Azure CDN?

It is not a weakness of Windows Azure CDN; rather, it is the fact that it is outside Saudi Arabia, leading to some regulation issues. For computing, they could make a flex engine similar to other p...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 51% 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

Akamai vs Windows Azure CDN

Compared 24% of the time

Amazon CloudFront vs Windows Azure CDN

Compared 15% of the time

Uplynk vs Windows Azure CDN

Compared 10% of the time

Hive Streaming vs Windows Azure CDN

Compared 5% of the time

Fastly vs Windows Azure CDN

Compared 5% of the time

More Windows Azure CDN Competitors

Product Reports

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Cloudflare

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Windows Azure CDN

December 2025

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

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

Windows Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) caches static web content at strategically placed locations to provide maximum throughput for delivering content to users. The CDN offers developers a global solution for delivering high-bandwidth content by caching the content at physical nodes across the world.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

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

NORAD, Agreeya Mobility

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare vs. Windows Azure CDN

December 2025

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