Apache HTTP Server vs. Azure CDN vs. Cloudflare

As I mentioned earlier, the Apache HTTP Server has a small disadvantage compared to the competition (NGINX) in terms of performance. If you run websites that really have a lot of visitors, NGINX might be the better alternative.

On the other hand, the Apache HTTP Server is open source and free. Further functionalities can be activated via modules. The documentation is really excellent.

Incentivized

Azure CDN has at hand an infinity of applications and tools to implement in your system and have better control of your data in a clean and secure platform on the web, we recommend this program since the percentage of solutions provided by this program is very high and find a way to make each user's job easier.

Incentivized

Cloudflare works well as security measure that gives peace of mind without needing to work too hard to get it functioning well. It provides great tools to customize the security experience as well. This is all the same for the caching tools as well. They have a lot of built in tools that make using the caching easy right out of the box, but they provide the customization options to get things just right for your site.

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• Street Cred: Apache Web Server is the Founder for all of Apache Foundation's other projects. Without the Web Server, Apache Foundation would look very different. That being said, they have done a good job of maintaining the code base, and keeping a lot of what makes Apache so special
• Stability: Apache is rock-solid. While no software is perfect, Apache can parse your web sources quickly and cleanly.
• Flexibility: Need to startup your own Webpage? Done. Wordpress? Yup. REST Endpoint? Check. Honeypot? Absolutely.

Incentivized

• I found the CDN very easy to setup and configure within the Azure Portal.
• Being Azure, there are plenty of free tools that allow you to manage the CDN from a UI that is not the portal. This was especially handy when I trained end users how to manage content within their specific realm.

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• The best part is the content delivery network. Cloudflare has a large network of data centres around the world that helps cache and delivers content quickly to our customers.
• Cloudflare offers us with a fast and reliable DNS service and with the world class features such as Cloudflare workers, SSL verification, certificate management and web application firewall. When all of these are combined together, it provides very strict security for our organization.
• One of the most important feature that we use is the analytics and threat detection. It provides us with the real time insights of all the threats originating from multiple locations and landing on our websites.

Incentivized

• The default configurations which comes with Apache server needs to get optimized for performance and security with every new installation as these defaults are not recommended to push on the production environment directly.
• Security options and advanced configurations are not easy to set up and require an additional level of expertise.
• Admin frontend GUI could be improved to a great extent to match with other enterprise tools available to serve similar requirements.

Incentivized

• Tough learning curve--you have to be comfortable with the Azure Cloud logic and UI to use it easily
• Special or uncommon use cases' pricing can be hard to forecast/follow
• Can be expensive for simple use cases

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• In some cases, using Cloudflare can actually lead to slower website speeds if the network is congested or if the website's traffic is particularly heavy.
• Some website owners may find that the level of customization offered by Cloudflare is limited, especially in comparison to other solutions.
• While Cloudflare is easy to set up and manage, it may be too complex for users who are not familiar with web technologies.

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lower cost

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I give it 9/10 rating because it solved my problem by Caching my website content on global servers to load faster.

Everything is extremely concise and all settings apply immediately and take effect globally. There is no reason to explicitly plan/think in terms of individual regions as one would have to traditional cloud offerings (AWS, OCI, Azure). All Cloudflare products integrate seamless as part of a single pipeline that executes from request to response.

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In 6+ years of relying on Cloudflare, I think we experienced one or two brief outages that were Cloudflare's fault.

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Their Argo for the global network is the core feature we love.

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I give this rating because there is so much Apache documentation and information on the web that you can literally do anything. This has to do with the fact that there is a huge Open Source community that is beyond mature and perhaps one of the most helpful to be found. The only thing that should hold anyone back from anything is that they can not read. RTFM, my friend. And I must say that the manual is excellent.

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Great support from the team whenever we're stuck. Very proactive in resolving issues and also making changes as per the requirements of the organization.

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Excellent product, Cloudflare is a true pioneer of the modern Internet, providing tools, services, and expertise that vastly improve the performance and security of web services. Any issues are resolved quickly with detailed RCA and follow-ups published publicly. I'm thankful to Cloudflare and use their services both at work and at home.

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Very well executed implementation where our team was able to handle the implementation with guidance.

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I has a lot more features, except that IIS is more integrated in a Windows environment. But now with .net core also possible from Apache it would work anywhere really. Only in a full Windows environment where full integration is needed I would chose to go for IIS. Otherwise Apache it is.

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More user friendly and it’s so easy to learn, the prices may be close to each other, but the service is excellent.

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They have the most generous free offering, and after the free offering limit is reached - you're still getting plenty of value for the buck.

They have very good reputation.

They have an ever expanding list of tools that can support multiple scenarios under one roof.

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They are built for scale and have the capacity to handle all the traffic we could ever expect to get.

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• Works as intended, so it's less to worry about.
• Works great on elastic environments (like EC2).
• As an Open Source project, you can get support for almost any problem you can have.
• Configuration files, while powerful, can be tricky to dominate for some.

Incentivized

• Azure CDN reduced origin instance load by removing the need to constantly serve large numbers of static files, meaning applications can be deployed with smaller/fewer instances.
• Azure CDN reduces apparent load times to customers by serving cached files out of POPs in the local region of those clients, instead of requiring those clients to make multiple, lengthy requests through to the origin servers.

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• Immediate ROI on Registrar and DNS hosting while giving a single plane of glass to managing both with domain registrations at cost, and no cost DNS hosting
• WAF helped us move at risk servers/applications into a protected state allowing us to perform remediations at a measured pace and get them done right instead of band aide solutions.
• CDN proxying increase the speed of our website while simultaneously reducing server load.
• DMARC management and report interpretation allow use to identify weak points in our email systems, remediate and move to stricter policies without significantly increasing staff time spent managing it.

Incentivized