Cloudflare vs Fortinet FortiADC comparison

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Cloudflare Logo
9,048 views|7,709 comparisons
96% willing to recommend
Fortinet Logo
4,717 views|3,759 comparisons
83% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cloudflare and Fortinet FortiADC based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, NETSCOUT, Akamai and others in Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection.
To learn more, read our detailed Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection Report (Updated: April 2024).
767,667 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
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews.""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. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host.""There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS.""I rate its stability a ten out of ten.""The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks.""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 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 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."

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"Content caching and content compression are good features.""It's a good product because it supports all the features that ADC solutions in the market can support, like F5 solutions, for example, such as the LTM of F5.""I like the solution's load balance with DNS intelligence.""Because ADC is the intermediary between the servers and the end-user application, it gives thorough information about the traffic, what the problem is.""The GSLB, the DR side, is the best part. Because we had our main side in one city, we created another, and we had a complete MPLS over the internet. We used the GSLB and data loss for our business applications.""The main feature that we use is GSLB (Global Server Load Balancing). GSLB makes the customer's network more reliable by scaling applications across multiple datacenters. GSLB as a disaster recovery solution can direct traffic based on site availability.""The most valuable feature is its simplicity.""The most valuable feature is the SSL offloading capacity."

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Cons
"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.""If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag.""Support response time could be improved.""Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly.""There are some issues with the CDN services.""The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage.""DNS Management.""It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."

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"Because it is so generic, the documentation requires special attention. A person who has not worked on Fortinet FortiADC or a similar product will struggle to understand what the document is trying to say. The documentation could be more specific, and more detailed.""The L7 Persistent load-balancing algorithm has not worked for me after having tested it many times with my customer's in-house application. I'd like to suggest that the company make sure that all load-balancing algorithms work properly with most applications, even those that are in-house apps.""The solution should improve finding false positives and false negatives. There are a lot of false positives.""The product's stability for VMs could be better.""It would be good if they built in a fully functional web application firewall.""The user interface could be more friendly and CLI could be more like that of Fortigate.""There is a mismatch between the number of features they are offering and the device capacity on how much it can handle.""The initial setup could be simplified."

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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 →

  • "The price is competitive"
  • "Compared to F5, FortiADC pricing is better."
  • "The solution could be more cost-effective."
  • "They offer a perpetual license."
  • "The solution is less expensive than F5 or Imperva and is the most reasonably priced option available."
  • "I believe the price is good. It's fair. There are no extra costs."
  • "The product has affordable pricing."
  • "The solution's pricing is an issue and should be improved."
  • More Fortinet FortiADC Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Questions from the Community
    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.
    Top Answer:Cloudflare's biggest plan for initial businesses is $200 per month, and if you're an enterprise, you'll likely exceed that on either AWS or Cloudflare itself. For comparison, Akamai's minimum billing… more »
    Top Answer:For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc. 
    Top Answer:I recommend Fortinet FortiADC. My experience with Fortinet has been very positive. Our company has been using it for around five years. We mainly use FortiADC for the load balancing of application… more »
    Top Answer:The user interface is very easy and integrates with Sandbox easily.
    Ranking
    Views
    9,048
    Comparisons
    7,709
    Reviews
    16
    Average Words per Review
    515
    Rating
    8.3
    Views
    4,717
    Comparisons
    3,759
    Reviews
    10
    Average Words per Review
    507
    Rating
    7.9
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    FortiADC Application Delivery Controller, FortiADC
    Learn More
    Overview

    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. 

    Fortinet FortiADC is a robust application delivery controller (ADC) that delivers application optimization, application security, and application availability. FortiADC is a valued offering from Fortinet, which is widely recognized as a trusted supplier of dynamic security solutions worldwide. FortiADC offers dynamic security functions (AV, DDoS, and WAF) in addition to advanced application connectors for a simplified deployment and complete transparency to an organization's networks and applications. FortiADC offers three primary deployment options: physical machine, virtual machine, (VM) and cloud solution options.

    Fortinet FortiADC Benefits

    • FortiADC security protocol: FortiADC integrates with FortiSandbox to improve the overall antivirus security protections where every file is scanned for known and unknown malicious risks. If a file is identified as malicious or problematic, it will be blocked in the future.

    • SSL protocol: FortiADC securely uses the most up-to-date cryptography to provide exceptional encryption and decryption using a hardware-based SSL ASIC. FortiADC offers complete transparency to inspect all traffic for threats, improves server response time, and reduces backend server load, SSL inspection and SSL offloading. FortiADC integrates seamlessly with Gemalto’s SafeNet Hardware Security Module (HSM).

    • FortiADC connectors: FortiADC Fabric Connectors offer open API-based integration and coordination with numerous software-defined networks (SDNs), third-party partners, and cloud management providers. Fortinet Fabric Connectors provide deep open and turnkey integration with recognized third-party vendors such as AWS, K8s, OCI, and SAP, in multi-vendor solutions, improving scalability, simplified management, and automation.

    • Business stability: FortiADC load balancing for on-premise global server load balancing (GSBL) and in the cloud (FortiGSBL Cloud) will ensure users can maintain a reliable and available network by improving the ability of scaling applications throughout numerous data centers to reduce application response times and enhance disaster recovery. Users are able to define protocols based on network latency concerns, overall data performance, and site availability.

    Fortinet FortiADC Features

    • Application availability

      • 4-7 application load balancing: DNS, HTTPS, RTMP, RADIUS, MySQL and more

      • External fabric connectors: Splunk Integration, AWS/OCI Connector, Kubernetes Service.

      • Security fabric connectors: FortiSIEM, Fortigate BanIP Integration, FortiAnalyzer, and more.

      • Deployment modes: High availability (AA/AP Failover), Router mode, transparent mode (switch), one-arm mode (proxy with X-forwarded for support.

    • Web application firewall (WAF)

      • Security services: Captcha support, cookie support, HTTP header security, XML/SOAP/JSON validation, CSRF protection, API gateway, and more.

      • Application security: Web attack signature, bot detection, web vulnerability scanner, OWASP Top-10 Wizard, API protection and more.
    • Application enhancement

      • HTTP and TCP improvement: TCP buffering, HTTP compressions/decompression, HTTP caching (dynamic and static objects), Bandwidth monitoring using quality of service (QoS), TCP buffering, and more.

      • Authentication offloading: Two-factor authentication (Fortitoken/Fortitoken Cloud and Google Authentication), NTLM, AUTH2.0, SAML 2.0 (SP and Idp) RADIUS, LDAP, Kerbos, and local.

      • Networking: Integration with Ansible, Cisco ACI, OpenStack and Nutanix, NVGRE and VXLAN support, VLAN and port trunking support, IPv6 Support (SLB, firewall, routing and interfaces), Dynamic NAT, Hide NAT, Static NAT for added scalability and flexibility.

      • Management: Syslog support, SNMP using private MIBs with threshold-based traps. REST APIs, VDOMS, data analytics, real-time monitoring graphs, role-based monitoring, intuitive reporting, FortiView integration, and more.

    Sample Customers
    Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
    Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm23%
    Comms Service Provider23%
    Marketing Services Firm9%
    Engineering Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization38%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Comms Service Provider5%
    REVIEWERS
    Non Tech Company14%
    Government14%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    Educational Organization14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Government9%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business64%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise23%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise46%
    Large Enterprise36%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business47%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise29%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise54%
    Buyer's Guide
    Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection
    April 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, NETSCOUT, Akamai and others in Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection. Updated: April 2024.
    767,667 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cloudflare is ranked 1st in Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection with 56 reviews while Fortinet FortiADC is ranked 8th in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 19 reviews. Cloudflare is rated 8.4, while Fortinet FortiADC is rated 7.8. 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". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiADC writes "High-level load balancing and routing protocols but scalability is limited to 200 gigabits". Cloudflare is most compared with Akamai, Azure Front Door, Imperva DDoS, AWS Shield and Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, whereas Fortinet FortiADC is most compared with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), Fortinet FortiWeb, Citrix NetScaler, Kemp LoadMaster and Imperva Web Application Firewall.

    We monitor all Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection 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.