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Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software vs. Cloudflare

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software

    Score9 out of 10
    N/ACisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) software is the core OS for the ASA suite. It provides firewall functionality, as well as integration with context-specific Cisco security modules. It is scaled for enterprise-level traffic and connections.N/A

    Cloudflare

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/ACloudflare’s connectivity cloud is a unified platform of cloud-native services designed to help enterprises regain control over their IT environments. Powered by an intelligent, programmable global cloud network, it is built to offer security, performance, visibility, and reliability.

    $20

    per month

    Pricing
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareCloudflare
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Pro
    $20
    per month
    Business
    $200
    per month
    Free
    Free
    Enterprise
    Contact sales team
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareCloudflare
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareCloudflare
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Cloudflare
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    87%
    Would buy again
    40 Answers
    98%
    Would buy again
    171 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    95%
    Delivers good value for the price
    42 Answers
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    165 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    91%
    Happy with the feature set
    42 Answers
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    171 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    36 Answers
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    144 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    41 Answers
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    154 Answers
    Features
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareCloudflare
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cloudflare
    Feature
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    8.9
    50 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Cloudflare
    -
    Ratings
    Identification Technologies7.932 Ratings00 Ratings
    Visualization Tools7.931 Ratings00 Ratings
    Content Inspection8.433 Ratings00 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls8.446 Ratings00 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP8.448 Ratings00 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console9.049 Ratings00 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging8.949 Ratings00 Ratings
    VPN10.049 Ratings00 Ratings
    High Availability9.649 Ratings00 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection10.046 Ratings00 Ratings
    Proxy Server9.032 Ratings00 Ratings
    DDoS Protection
    Comparison of DDoS Protection features of Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software and Cloudflare
    Feature
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    -
    Ratings
    Cloudflare
    8.4
    6 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Automatic Scalability00 Ratings9.47 Ratings
    Mitigation SLA00 Ratings8.87 Ratings
    Security policy management00 Ratings8.67 Ratings
    WAF capabilities00 Ratings8.67 Ratings
    Request rate limiting00 Ratings7.87 Ratings
    Traffic filtering00 Ratings7.67 Ratings
    Bot detection00 Ratings8.07 Ratings
    Global threat intelligence00 Ratings8.87 Ratings
    Real-time analytics and reporting00 Ratings7.87 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareCloudflare
    Small Businesses
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.3 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    Score8.8 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareCloudflare
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (88 ratings)
    9.1
    (192 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.1
    (4 ratings)
    8.2
    (4 ratings)
    Usability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (8 ratings)
    Availability
    7.5
    (2 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.7
    (8 ratings)
    6.6
    (154 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    8.6
    (2 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    6.5
    (2 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) SoftwareCloudflare
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    Cisco ASA's are great for internal network connected access between a firewall and the central management server. And, for complex networks where high security requirements with overly strict compliance are necessary. For networks with limited connectivity to the core or for poor network connectivity these are not the best solution. There are other more stand-alone firewall's that do this better. These firewall's are a little more complex to set up to start with so significant knowledge of these devices is required to set them up and ensure they are best practice installed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    Cloudflare has features as a CDN/Gateway/Reverse Proxy that simply don't exist in other solutions. Having so many capabilities under a single platform, with solid support and high uptime, has been essential. I would recommend it for hobby projects all the way to enterprise scale. There's a lot of push around AI and workers. Some feel like Cloudflare is following the hype. But after reading a lot about the new features, a decent amount of them has real value.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cisco
    • ASA is our VPN concentrator. The client and server are very stable and very easy to use
    • ASA also offers Intrusion Prevention, to an extent. This is also very useful for an improved security posture for a small company
    • ASA allowed us to scale very quickly. We could onboard clients, partners, and consultants and give them a great onboarding experience as well
    • Administrative costs with ASA are low. It's very easy to administer.
    Incentivized
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    Cloudflare
    • 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
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • The ASDM software is at times a nightmare to install because of different java versions[.]
    • [The firewall] could do with a power button, just to be able to do a hard reboot when needed[.]
    • It would be nice to manage the firewall via the web on port 443[.]
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    To be honest there has been now great products out in the market compared to Cisco ASA. I beleieve Cisco has to do a lot of improvement in this area. The other defeiniete factors is the cost when it comes to renewals which is always a premium on Cisco products
    Incentivized
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    Cloudflare
    lower cost
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cloudflare
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    I generally have not noticed the outages, however since it's a machine it can malfunction, we need to implement the firewall infrastructure in such a way that it is highly available with device failure, region failure etc. Else any solution will be having the issues if they are not build with resiliency.
    Incentivized
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    Cloudflare
    In 6+ years of relying on Cloudflare, I think we experienced one or two brief outages that were Cloudflare's fault.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cloudflare
    Their Argo for the global network is the core feature we love.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Cisco
    The support is usually very good and gets back to you very quickly. However I had some instances of when two engineers will give me wildly different answers to what I thought was a simple question. Overall however I do rate the support highly and they are generally always very good.
    Incentivized
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    Cloudflare
    While I have had good support in the past from Cloudflare's technical support team, I have had some terrible experiences with billing support. I have had multiple tickets sent to their billing support that I will never receive a reply to for over a month. When I finally do get a reply, it has been an automated email that never gives me an answer to my question.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    It was quite a good one, how ever requires an expertise to deploy hence the SMB segment would be finding it difficult to implement this product. The one good reason is that there are lot of ASA certified engineers in compared to the other certified engineers. Hence this resembles positively on the deployment as you have quite a lot of experienced engineer on your deployment
    Incentivized
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    Cloudflare
    Very well executed implementation where our team was able to handle the implementation with guidance.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    We were using [pfSense] before in our environment but we regularly facing difficulties over it due to software bugs & downtime. After implementing Cisco ASA, it resolved our availability issue & provides us a reliable solution with the best security features & easy to understand GUI.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cloudflare
    Nothing like it. Organizations can utilize these Cloudflare products to enhance their online presence by improving security, performance, reliability, and developer efficiency. Cloudflare is an American company that delivers services such as DNS, a content delivery network (CDN), and various other additional services to make websites faster and more secure. Cloudflare is used by over 26 million sites, resulting in the processing of more than 1 billion IP addresses each day.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Cloudflare
    They are built for scale and have the capacity to handle all the traffic we could ever expect to get.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • Most network engineers have worked with ASA, so there is no need for re-training when adding or turning over staff
    • Current configs from older devices plug in easily, and are operational on larger devices if an upgrade is required
    • Many support options available
    Incentivized
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    Cloudflare
    • 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
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    ScreenShots