Cloudflare vs Fortinet FortiWeb comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th)
 

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection category, the market share of Cloudflare is 15.5% and it decreased by 19.8% compared to the previous year. The market share of Fortinet FortiWeb is 1.0% and it decreased by 46.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection
Unique Categories:
CDN
23.5%
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
2.7%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
9.8%
 

Featured Reviews

BC
May 26, 2023
Good agility and security with a great load balancer
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…
KA
Jan 19, 2023
People can run a pen test on our system whenever they like and we'll pass with flying colors
When it comes to blocking unknown threats and attacks, I would give it the highest score possible. We first started using AWS and its Web Application Firewalls. That was okay, but it was quite a manual process to keep it up to date, whereas Fortinet is always up to date, and the default rules or the modules that you can turn on are very easy to use. Overall, the solution is extremely easy to use. It's all very step-by-step. We just tell it what DNS records to approve and it sets up an SSL certificate. And then, all traffic just starts flowing through Fortinet and then straight over to us. Our network is quite secure, so we have allowed individual IPs that are listed by Fortinet so that we're not just blanket-accepting everything. It's enabling our web servers to be more secure by only allowing Fortinet, instead of the whole world, like we used to. Also, if you want to diagnose something, rather than outright blocking it, you can just log it so you can see what's happening. You can go through the audit trail as well. There might be a situation where it will prompt you to block everyone's traffic from a specific IP. In terms of FortiWeb's advanced modules, we have two main, different Fortinet applications. One is for our web-based stuff and the other is for our Windows agents, which is all API traffic. We use different sets of the modules, or the advanced features, but across both, we use pretty much everything.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"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 is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"The UI is good."
"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"The solution is stable."
"It helps us prevent attacks on servers."
"The most valuable feature in this solution is the ability to disseminate between the user entering some wrong value to the field, and a suspicious actor trying to exploit some known vulnerability."
"The most important feature of this solution is protection from attack."
"Auto Learn feature: Makes policy additions or deletions for my customers very simple​"
"Technical support is very good."
"It offers some feedback and suggestions that guide our system development while helping our vendors to update their applications and fix any issues or bugs."
"The most valuable feature is that this product represents a whole solution, including a WAF, and even anti-defacements."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."
"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."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"DNS Management."
"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"It is not entirely user-friendly."
"We want to see more detailed logging, such as audit logging, as this would significantly enhance the solution's reporting. We currently get some information from logs, but more would be better."
"Fortinet FortiWeb needs to improve the way it's configured. Common services like publishing exchange should be done in one click only."
"They could improve their support a little bit for faster response time."
"The initial setup is complex."
"For advanced users, it would be really useful to have access and the ability to manipulate packets. If we can access and manipulate the contents of packets, even encrypted packets... that would be powerful. Since we're looking at packets arriving at our network, we would have the private key to access those packets and their information."
"I would like to see more improvements with respect to threat intelligence."
"Fortinet FortiWeb could improve data integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"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."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"So far, I have been pretty pleased with the way it's priced and licensed. The way it's done makes it easy, especially for an organization like us, so I've been pleased with the way it's priced and licensed right now."
"FortiWeb is more expensive than some competing products."
"When I use any other firewall, I have to take a license. It could be a perpetual license or subscription-based. In both cases, we have to pay some amount in advance, whereas in the case of FortiWeb, when using it as a service, I am paying half a dollar only for the domain name, and then I am paying based on the traffic or the number of requests."
"It's an expensive solution, although there are no additional costs."
"The maintenance fee for this product could be improved."
"It is fine now. We had to earlier negotiate the price."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb is expensive in our Ethiopian currency."
"The pricing is in the middle. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten. It feels like a justified cost for the features."
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
38%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Educational Organization
38%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 ...
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare?
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 do you like most about Fortinet FortiWeb?
The WAF profiles has been effective at mitigating web-based threats.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb?
The pricing is in the middle. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten. It feels like a justified cost for the features, but it might get more expensive in the future. Also, keep in mind that Che...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?
I'd like more customization. I'm not sure if everyone would agree, as it might add complexity. But for advanced users, it would be really useful to have access and the ability to manipulate packets...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. Fortinet FortiWeb and other solutions. Updated: February 2023.
787,383 professionals have used our research since 2012.