Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare comparison

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10,178 views|8,612 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Cloudflare Logo
10,008 views|8,504 comparisons
96% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 6, 2024

We compared Cloudflare and Azure Front Door based on our user's reviews in several parameters.

Cloudflare and Azure Front Door both offer valuable features such as robust security measures, reliable content delivery networks, and efficient caching capabilities. However, Cloudflare stands out with its user-friendly interface, real-time threat detection, and extensive analytics tools. On the other hand, Azure Front Door is praised for its seamless integration with other Azure services, powerful security measures, and scalability. Users appreciate Cloudflare for its responsive support and cost-effective pricing, while Azure Front Door receives positive feedback for its efficient customer service and positive return on investment. Areas for improvement in Cloudflare include network performance, user interface, documentation and support, customization options, pricing transparency, and integration with other services. Meanwhile, Azure Front Door could benefit from enhancements in performance and stability, user-friendly configuration processes, improved error handling and troubleshooting capabilities, more customization options, and addressing security concerns.

Features: Cloudflare's valuable features include robust security measures, reliable content delivery network, efficient caching capabilities, and user-friendly interface. Azure Front Door offers efficient traffic management, powerful security measures, seamless integration with Azure services, and robust monitoring and analytics capabilities.

Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for Cloudflare is appreciated by users for being straightforward and hassle-free. There have been no concerns or issues with the licensing process, indicating a smooth experience. Users have also mentioned their feedback on Azure Front Door, discussing their experiences with pricing, setup costs, and licensing., Cloudflare's ROI is characterized by improved website performance, increased security, reduced downtime, user-friendly interface, and value for money. In contrast, Azure Front Door's ROI includes effective traffic distribution, enhanced website performance, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and seamless integration with other Azure services.

Room for Improvement: Cloudflare product: Users have mentioned room for improvement in network performance, user interface, documentation and support, customization options, pricing transparency, and integration with other services. Azure Front Door product: Room for improvement includes enhancing performance and stability, refining configuration process, improving error handling, increasing customization options, and addressing security concerns.

Deployment and customer support: The user reviews for Cloudflare and Azure Front Door show that both products have varying durations required for establishing a new tech solution. Some users took three months for deployment and a week for setup, while others took only a week for both phases. It is important to consider the context of these timeframes and whether they refer to separate or the same periods., Cloudflare's customer service is praised for their exceptional assistance and responsive support. Users appreciate the quick and knowledgeable responses, while Azure Front Door receives positive remarks for its efficient and helpful assistance.

The summary above is based on 23 interviews we conducted recently with Cloudflare and Azure Front Door users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Front Door vs. Cloudflare Report (Updated: May 2024).
771,157 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"I am impressed with the tool's integrations.""Has a great application firewall and we like the security.""The web application firewall is a great feature.""Rules Engine is a valuable feature.""The most valuable feature is that you can implement resources globally. It does not depend on location and ability or something like that. This is to connect clients around the world.""I particularly appreciate its load-balancing capabilities as it allows us to manage multiple instances and support a global presence effectively.""You can assign as many web application firewall policies as you want to the same instance of Front Door.""The solution is good."

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"Centralized, full-featured DNS.""From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet""Cloudflare has many features.""It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls.""Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations.""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.""We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews.""I rate its stability a ten out of ten."

More Cloudflare Pros →

Cons
"There is room for improvement and they're working on it.""The product's features are limited compared to Cloudflare. The tool also doesn't work well in a hybrid environment. I would like to see a way to add personalized APIs in the system.""The product needs to improve its latency.""It lacks sufficient functionality.""There's a limitation on the amount of global rules we can add.""We should be able to use Front Door defenders with multiple cloud vendors. Currently, they can be used only with the Azure cloud. Azure Front Door should also be able to do global load balancing and provide internal front door services. Microsoft should clearly define what Traffic Manager, Application Gateway, and Azure Front Door products do. These are similar products, and people get confused between these products.""The user interface needs improvement as it is difficult to create the mapping to link the problem with your private address sources.""My suggestion for improvement would be to enhance the Data Export feature to include specific tables, particularly the Azure Diagnostics table."

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"The product needs to improve its automation.""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.""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.""The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened.""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.""I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us.""Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud.""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."

More Cloudflare Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It is on a pay-as-you-go basis."
  • "The solution is a bit expensive."
  • "The product is expensive."
  • "The pricing of the solution is good."
  • "The transition to the premium tier has led to increased costs, making it more expensive than the classic tier."
  • More Azure Front Door Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
  • "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."
  • "There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
  • "The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
  • "We don't have any issues with the price."
  • "The price is reasonable."
  • "The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
  • "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."
  • More Cloudflare Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides excellent support. Azure Front Door can quickly detect abnormalities before the… more »
    Top Answer:The transition to the premium tier has led to increased costs, making it more expensive than the classic tier. However, we acknowledge that this pricing reflects additional features and capabilities.
    Top Answer: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 by… more »
    Top Answer:Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
    Ranking
    2nd
    out of 34 in CDN
    Views
    10,178
    Comparisons
    8,612
    Reviews
    7
    Average Words per Review
    386
    Rating
    8.7
    1st
    out of 34 in CDN
    Views
    10,008
    Comparisons
    8,504
    Reviews
    17
    Average Words per Review
    520
    Rating
    8.4
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Azure Front-Door
    Learn More
    Overview

    Azure Front Door is a global, scalable entry-point that uses the Microsoft global edge network to create fast, secure, and widely scalable web applications. With Front Door, you can transform your global consumer and enterprise applications into robust, high-performing personalized modern applications with contents that reach a global audience through Azure.

    To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

    Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distribution Denial of Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can use the solution and experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

    Currently, there are millions of internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

    Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the information requests are always only seconds away.

    Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to access Cloudflare highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project Athenian, also at no additional cost.

    Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end-users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD ( bring your own device) access ensure end-users and employees always have the best resources and technology available to them at all times.



    Cloudflare Benefits

    Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

    • Faster load times
    • Robust DNS security
    • Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)
    • Free universal SSL
    • Image Enhancement
    • Automatic Browser Caching
    • Next-generation cloud load balancer
    • Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
    • Rate Limiting
    • Minification
    • Zero-trust capabilities 
    • Cost-effective
    • Reduced carbon footprint

    Reviews from Real Users

    “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. If you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a certificate.”  Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

    “What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network engineer at Ufinet

    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.” A PeerSpot user who is a Competence Center Manager at a tech services company. 

    Sample Customers
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    Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company33%
    Computer Software Company33%
    Comms Service Provider22%
    Healthcare Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Government7%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Comms Service Provider22%
    Engineering Company13%
    Energy/Utilities Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization38%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Comms Service Provider5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business46%
    Large Enterprise54%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise64%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business65%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise23%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise46%
    Large Enterprise36%
    Buyer's Guide
    Azure Front Door vs. Cloudflare
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Front Door vs. Cloudflare and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    771,157 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Azure Front Door is ranked 2nd in CDN with 10 reviews while Cloudflare is ranked 1st in CDN with 56 reviews. Azure Front Door is rated 8.8, while Cloudflare is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Azure Front Door writes " An easy -to-setup stable solution that enables implementing resources globally and has a good technical support team". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cloudflare writes "It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes". Azure Front Door is most compared with Amazon CloudFront, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, Akamai, AWS Global Accelerator and Azure Firewall, whereas Cloudflare is most compared with Akamai, Imperva DDoS, AWS Shield, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and Arbor DDoS. See our Azure Front Door vs. Cloudflare report.

    See our list of best CDN vendors.

    We monitor all CDN reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.