Fastly vs Windows Azure CDN comparison

Fastly and Microsoft are both solutions in the CDN category. Fastly is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.0, while Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.0. Fastly holds a 5.3% mindshare in CDN, compared to Microsoft’s 3.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Fastly users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Windows Azure CDN and Fastly are competing products in the content delivery network space. Based on data comparisons, Fastly often holds the upper hand due to its advanced features and performance despite Azure CDN's competitive pricing and reliable support.

Features: Windows Azure CDN's valuable features include scalability, global reach, and integration with Microsoft services. Fastly offers real-time analytics, instant configuration updates, and edge computing capabilities, appealing to tech buyers seeking high performance and dynamic capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Windows Azure CDN could improve its flexibility for users needing more tailored options, enhance its real-time analytics capabilities, and refine its interaction features to compete with advanced competitors. Fastly could enhance its user documentation for better onboarding, improve integration with non-technical environments, and potentially offer more competitive pricing models for wider accessibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Windows Azure CDN benefits from smooth integration with Microsoft environments, providing a straightforward deployment experience. It offers reliable support channels but may lack flexibility for some users. Fastly's developer-friendly approach enables rapid deployment with robust API support and personalized technical assistance, noted for its adaptability and responsive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Windows Azure CDN is known for its competitive pricing structure and predictable costs, providing a strong ROI for organizations heavily invested in Microsoft ecosystems. Fastly, while potentially more expensive, offers compelling ROI for businesses demanding high-speed performance and customization due to its billing model based on performance and features.

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

Buyer's Guide

Fastly 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

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 Fastly is 5.3%, up from 3.5% 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%
Fastly	5.3%
Other	72.2%

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.

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Patel Parth

Technical support engineer at Adobe

Optimized ecommerce performance and improved access control through image handling and IP filtering

I believe that Fastly should provide guidelines for their WAF blocking rules. It should be public what the rules are that are blocking their contents. I believe Fastly should provide regional IP addresses instead of POP IPs. Fastly should provide features similar to Cloudflare regarding a block list. Additionally, a POP address should be there with a wide range of IP addresses provided, public static IP addresses, so customers can integrate egress IPs. Fastly should provide WebP image processing on the backend instead of on the fly. It would be a very useful feature to avoid unnecessary time for browser to browser and local cookies. I believe that Fastly service has a few gaps. We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers. There should be transparency.

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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 of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."

"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."

"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."

"Cloudflare makes it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple users and multiple clients, and basically go in and access their account, make the changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."

"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."

"It's a great product because it's scalable, has great coverage, and is mature with good defenses against DDoS attacks."

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"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."

More Cloudflare pros

"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."

"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."

"Its initial setup process is straightforward."

"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."

"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."

"Support is good; the product works as advertised. We have a Slack connection with them. So we can basically ask for help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly."

"Fastly combines both the CDN side and the Signal Sciences next-generation WAF, which is closely integrated with the CDN, allowing us to use both products seamlessly."

"Fastly provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."

More Fastly pros

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

"I enjoy engaging in discussions with colleagues possessing unique expertise. I leverage the three platforms—Azure, Google, and AWS extensively. This allows me to offer diverse solutions to customers, commonly referred to as a multi-cloud approach."

"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."

"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."

"It is a stable solution."

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

"The most valuable feature of Windows Azure CDN is its effectiveness."

More Windows Azure CDN pros

Cons

"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."

"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 be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."

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

"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."

"DNS Management."

"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."

"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."

More Cloudflare cons

"Stronger analytics would be helpful, like showing configurations that haven't served a certain amount of traffic in a while. With many properties, things can get lost track of - duplicates or unused configurations not properly decommissioned."

"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."

"We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers."

"It is missing a "staging" platform to deploy a test configuration with all of the real settings, which would allow us to properly test before putting it into production."

"Support is not that great."

"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."

"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."

"The solution's pricing could be better."

"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."

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

"Windows Azure CDN should lower its prices."

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

"I aim to enhance the reporting."

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

"We have experienced issues with switch connectivity."

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

More Windows Azure CDN cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."

"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."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"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."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."

"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."

"It is an expensive solution."

"The pricing has been very competitive."

"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."

"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."

"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."

"It comes at a relatively affordable cost."

"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."

"The tool's pricing is cheap."

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

"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 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."

"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."

More Windows Azure CDN pricing and cost advice

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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

12%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

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	5
Large Enterprise	5

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 GR...

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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...

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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.

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What do you like most about Fastly?

Support is good; the product works as advertised. We have a Slack connection with them. So we can basically ask for h...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fastly?

You need to pay a premium price for the tool.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Fastly?

I believe that Fastly should provide guidelines for their WAF blocking rules. It should be public what the rules are ...

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 w...

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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 co...

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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 re...

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

AWS Shield vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Akamai vs Fastly

Compared 22% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Fastly

Compared 6% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Fastly

Compared 5% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Fastly

Compared 5% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Fastly

Compared 4% of the time

More Fastly Competitors

Akamai vs Windows Azure CDN

Compared 24% of the time

Amazon CloudFront vs Windows Azure CDN

Compared 16% of the time

Uplynk vs Windows Azure CDN

Compared 10% of the time

Hive Streaming vs Windows Azure CDN

Compared 6% of the time

More Windows Azure CDN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2026

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Fastly

January 2026

Download Fastly product report

Buyer's Guide

Windows Azure CDN

December 2025

Download Windows Azure CDN product report

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

Fastly helps the world’s most popular digital businesses keep pace with their customer expectations by delivering fast, secure, and scalable online experiences. Businesses trust Fastly’s edge cloud platform to accelerate the pace of technical innovation, mitigate evolving threats, and scale on demand.

Fastly

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.

Twitter, Airbnb, Alaska Airlines, Pinterest, Vimeo, The Guardian, The New York Times, Ticketmaster, The Drupal Association, Opera, about.com, imgur, Etsy, Foursquare, GitHub, New Relic, shopify, Shazam, Firebase

NORAD, Agreeya Mobility

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. Windows Azure CDN

December 2025

Free Report: Fastly vs. Windows Azure CDN

Find out what your peers are saying about Fastly vs. Windows Azure CDN and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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