Animesh.Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Solutions Architect at a engineering company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 5
Optimizes google page scripts with image compression but require better SEO schema

What is our primary use case?

We launched the application on the WLP engine. Our website hosts various images, media files, and other external files. We use Cloudflare to ensure faster website delivery.

What is most valuable?

Google page scripts contribute to the size of web pages. Cloudflare optimizes these scripts and other page elements to improve performance. Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.

What needs improvement?

It can improve the central time, performance, and SEO schema. 

Cloudflare performs well with static content. However, there are some performance considerations when it comes to dynamic content that involves fetching data from databases or using APIs.

We are not currently using Cloudflare for an e-commerce website. Still, if we were to add an e-commerce site on a platform with region-specific pricing and content, Cloudflare's service might need improvements in handling these dynamic requirements.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Cloudflare for two years.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is easy.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The tool's pricing is moderate.

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

What other advice do I have?

I recommend the solution.

Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Bilal Mujahid - PeerSpot reviewer
Managed Services Manager at Adapture Technology Group
MSP
Works both as a Content Delivery Network and a security system
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

What is our primary use case?

Cloudflare serves as both a Content Delivery Network and a security system. When integrated into the software, it optimizes content loading speeds, ensuring users access content swiftly. Additionally, Cloudflare safeguards websites from various cyber threats, providing security. 

What is most valuable?

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.

In Cloudflare, numerous features cater to web security needs. Conducting thorough research on your company's operations is crucial for configuring VAS. This involves determining which requests to whitelist, challenge, or block. Additionally, Cloudflare offers rate-limiting capabilities for endpoints. You can set limits to the number of requests, preventing overload situations. Another valuable feature is the ability to implement geoblocking using IDS rules.

When a user accesses the website, Cloudflare's CDN system checks for static content such as JavaScript files, CSS, and HTML. It then caches this static content on its CDN servers across approximately 140 data centers worldwide. When subsequent users request the same content, Cloudflare serves it from the nearest data center, improving performance.

Cloudflare's impact on SEO rankings and website visibility is notable. Collaborating with the business team to optimize website loading speed can benefit SEO.

What needs improvement?

We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the product for five years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate the product's scalability an eight out of ten. 

How are customer service and support?

The tool's support takes at least one hour to respond. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

I rate the tool's ease of deployment a ten out of ten. It's very quick. Deployment time largely depends on how we configure it, whether done through coding or the UI. For a single-user setup, it's straightforward. However, for more complex configurations with multiple use cases, it can vary. However, setting up a single zone for production load typically takes less than an hour.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The product's pricing is cheap. 

What other advice do I have?

Our clients include larger companies such as one that sells automobile parts globally, another that deals with banks and financial institutions, etc. It is mostly recommended for enterprises. 

I highly recommend Cloudflare as a superior solution compared to others in the market. It offers coverage for various use cases, including SaaS products, web application security, and Content Delivery Network systems. Additionally, Cloudflare provides features like the Magic Transit system, which helps control internal traffic.

I rate it a ten out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
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Manager- Secure Web Defense- Perimeter Security at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5
A security SaaS provider that protects from application layer attacks, but its console should be made more user-friendly
Pros and Cons
  • "Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
  • "Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

What is our primary use case?

We use Cloudflare for security and delivery.

What is most valuable?

Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack. Feature-wise, Cloudflare is fairly good.

What needs improvement?

Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Cloudflare for about two to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Cloudflare's stability is fair enough, and I haven't encountered any problems with the platform's stability.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Akamai is more user-friendly and easy to configure on the UI for a new person. Imperva is also a good solution that provides most of the features Akamai provides.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations.

What other advice do I have?

I have experience with the cloud version of Cloudflare.

I would advise users to explore Cloudflare and Imperva parallelly because they both stand on the same ground regarding security. In Imperva, there is no version control on their console, which was concerning for me.

Overall, I rate Cloudflare a seven out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Analista de Infraestrutura SêniorAnalista at Unifique Telecomunicações
User
Good agility and security with a great load balancer
Pros and Cons
  • "The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."
  • "Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."

What is our primary use case?

The first use case was to administer the main domain of the organization where I worked.

We have the entire registration process for the main domain and its subdomains, and we create web application firewall (WAF) and load balancer rules.

We did a major MX migration from Google to Microsoft, and doing that with Cloudflare has given us immense security.

This domain also started to visualize improper accesses from other countries and monitor where the main accesses came from.

We made some blocks of administrator sites that only be accessed by a specific IP.

How has it helped my organization?

Cloudflare's solution brought us more agility, security, and confidence in managing the environment.

We have seen that there are very few failures or almost none that occur on the Cloudflare servers, and if they occur, the accesses are distributed to another region.

We like that we have a view of where the main accesses came from, such as the main countries, and also what was being blocked by the web application firewall (WAF)

Creating a rule to limit some admin access also improved the security and integrity of our environment.

What is most valuable?

The features we used the most were the web application firewall and the load balancer. These two services were essential for our structure.

The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs.

As for the load balancer, it did its job perfectly. Our scenario consisted of two web servers in different allocations to control access demands, and the load balancer did the job as expected, bringing security and stability to access points.

What needs improvement?

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

For example, it could be possible to create dashboards and reports of the main accesses allowed or blocked by the web application firewall. It would also be nice to bring information on the client's screen about the status of the services according to the hosted region.

Of the services that I use, this is the part that I miss. Other services are in agreement and serving me perfectly as they should be.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Cloudflare for about three or four years.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Network engineer at Ufinet
Real User
Top 5
Traces and manages applications and monitors traffic; easy to set up and scale, and has knowledgeable technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

We monitor traffic on Cloudflare, and we have some applications that we download on Cloudflare. We have ten to twenty gigs per country.

Our customers are residential ISP customers with high traffic because of Google apps, Amazon network peering, and Direct TV, so we use Cloudflare for the customers. For example, we announce all traffic or customer traffic to the BDP station, and Cloudflare works by caching the content, and the servers send the content to our clients.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

In the next release of Cloudflare, it would be good if it could give more information about applications, particularly which ones still need improvement.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Cloudflare is a stable solution. At first, my company had a graphics-related problem during the POC stage, but after that, my company didn't experience any issues with Cloudflare. The Cloudflare connection is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Cloudflare is a scalable solution. The process to scale it is clear, and the Cloudflare team will contact you to check if you want to scale up.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support for Cloudflare is good because the team is knowledgeable about the connection, standard, special configurations, etc. My team had no problems double-checking configurations with the Cloudflare technical support team.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We didn't use a different solution apart from Cloudflare.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup for Cloudflare is easy because you only have to connect it to your private cloud based on your requirements. I didn't experience any issues connecting the tool.

In my company, deploying Cloudflare required a lot of equipment, so it took four to five days to complete the deployment, but there was no problem with the process.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

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.

What other advice do I have?

My company has different computing tools in Colombia, Miami, South America, Brazil, and Chile, such as Akamai, Cloudflare, CDN, and Google Playbook.

I have hands-on experience with Akamai, Twitch, and Cloudflare.

My company is a Cloudflare customer.

Three engineers handle the deployment and maintenance of Cloudflare within my company. The NOC team monitors the cluster, and if there's any issue, my team checks the port, and the engineers review the patch to see if it's okay. If the problem remains, my team escalates to the Operations team responsible for looking into the issue more closely. Within two hours, the Operations team contacts my team about the resolution.

I'd recommend Cloudflare to other companies because it helps monitor traffic.

My rating for Cloudflare is a ten out of ten because it's a helpful tool, and I didn't find anything wrong with it.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
President and CEO at Mekas Cloud Services
Real User
Easy to scale and configure, with reasonable pricing
Pros and Cons
  • "There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
  • "Latencies are always a problem."

What is our primary use case?

We are an IT consulting company, we provide solutions to our customers. We implement the solutions for our customers. Some of our customers use CloudFlare, some of them are using  Imperva and Palo Alto.

Our customers use this solution for any web traffic, mostly GCP or to AWS cloud as a backend.

What is most valuable?

I like caching and DDoS. There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS.

What needs improvement?

Latencies are always a problem.

Also, one thing I would say is you have to maintain DNS through their services. I don't know if that's a requirement or not.

Latencies are the key issue. If you are not caching and just using DDoS then definitely, there are some latencies added to the traffic.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Cloudflare for more than six years.

We work with many different versions. For new customers, we use the latest version.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I haven't had any issues with stability. We haven't heard anything from our clients.

It's a stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is easy to scale. We haven't had any problems with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have not used technical support.

How was the initial setup?

Cloudflare is very straightforward. It is easy to set up.

There is no installation, you just go through the configuration process.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price is reasonable.

What other advice do I have?

It all depends on what the customer is looking for. These are two different areas. Basically, CloudFare is completely Cloud-based, whereas Imperva I can have a physical appliance or a virtual appliance, or a cloud-based. 

My solution is based on what customers are looking for, but Cloudflare is pretty good and getting really popular in terms of DDoS, the paid version of it.

We looked at the service. What are acceptable latencies? Is it okay to route through a different vendor, and before it reaches the backup? They have to go through multiple vendors. You also have to consider what the latencies cost and is that acceptable for the service. These are key things you need to consider when selecting a cloud-based vendor for DDoS.

I would rate Cloudflare a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Network Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
An intuitive solution that's great for a small business
Pros and Cons
  • "From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
  • "Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

What is most valuable?

Cloudflare is easy to use. It's very intuitive. Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva. I think Imperva is far richer in features from what I can see, but I think that can bring its own pains to be honest. For this reason, I think Cloudflare is a simpler version. 

With Imperva, you can drill down to packet-level very easily. It's very, very good at drilling down deeper and deeper into the packet. I think that is available with Cloudflare, but it's not as good. It doesn't seem to provide us with the same kind of search capability as Imperva. Having said that, I think that's one of the advantages of Cloudflare because you just have to click a button and drill down via clicking. I actually like Cloudflare to be honest. Imperva is almost too difficult for normal businesses — it's too complex. There's almost too much information there. Whereas with Cloudflare, it's easier to drill down and it's more intuitive.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've only been using Cloudflare for a week.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I wasn't involved in the implementation, so I have no idea how much it costs. 

What other advice do I have?

I think this solution is quite intuitive. For businesses that don't have a dedicated security team, I think it's a better product; it's more intuitive for people like us. I'm a network security engineer, but I'm not a dedicated security official. I've too many other things going on to have the time to do the rule sets that you need if you're working with Imperva — I think a lot of that is down to you as the customer. With Cloudflare, I think a lot of that happens in the background. 

I've been working with it for a week and a half so I'm not the best person to say if it's better or worse than Imperva. My only reaction is that maybe it's not as feature-rich for the end-user. Whether that's an advantage, well, that's questionable. Maybe we don't need all of those features sometimes — it depends on the business. The business I'm working in now is a very different business with a different kind of security model. The business I was working with when I used Imperva probably needed that feature-rich capability.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Cloudflare a rating of eight. It's quite intuitive. I like it. From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Top 5
A stable and scalable DNS management tool to secure websites and servers
Pros and Cons
  • "I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
  • "Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."

What is our primary use case?

I use Cloudflare to secure my own websites and servers since I use the proxy functionality to hide my website/server IP. Also, I like to use Cloudflare DNS manager. I think it's simple and easy to use.

How has it helped my organization?

I did use Cloudflare as a freelancer or for my personal projects. So I made some websites, and I recommended my freelance customers to use Cloudflare for their DNS management. Also, I did use it in one organization. It was a startup, and it was me and my friend working there, so I did recommend the startup owner to use Cloudflare because of caching functionalities that could speed up your websites and so on.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of the solution is the proxy, so I can hide my servers. So no one can scan them, especially for port scanning, since we were hacked once. I did buy a VPS server, and I was just getting started. So I started MongoDB and left the port open. Someone scanned the website and saw the open port, and since I was just starting, I didn't set a password. He managed to get in, and he locked the database and locked all the data (ransomware). When using Cloudflare, I was sure that no one knew my real server IP address.

What needs improvement?

I couldn't think of buying it since I am from Tunisia. We have really strict limitations to buying internationally. So our bank cards are available only in Tunisia. When you own a company, the bank allows you to buy things from outside of Tunisia. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country. The aforementioned details can be considered for improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Cloudflare for two or three years. Also, I am using the free plan version.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I rate its stability a ten out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I rate its scalability a ten out of ten because I had no issues with it. Also, it was fast when updating my DNS records. So, that's why I always recommend it to my friends and organizations I deal with.

I have plans to increase the usage of the solution.

How are customer service and support?

I have never contacted Cloudflare's support team.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was really simple and user friendly.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I did not evaluate other options. I found Cloudflare on a YouTube tutorial. So I tried it and liked it, and I never even thought about looking for something else.

What other advice do I have?

I was using the free plan, and mainly, I was using it for DNS management as it was simple. When I buy a new domain, I don't use the main DNS management system. Also, I use it for IP protection. I didn't have the time to really use much of the solution. As far as I know, it's all good. I did see a new feature, but I didn't really manage to get it. I didn't use it.

I would definitely recommend it to those planning to use it.

I rate the overall solution a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
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Download our free Cloudflare Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: June 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Cloudflare Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.