Amazon Route 53 vs. Cloudflare

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Route 53
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Route 53 is a Cloud Domain Name System (DNS) offered by Amazon AWS as a reliable way to route visitors to web applications and other site traffic to locations within a company's infrastructure, which can be configured to monitor the health and performance of traffic and endpoints in the network.
$0.40
Per Zone Per Month
Cloudflare
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Cloudflare, from the company of the same name in San Francisco, provides DDoS and bot mitigation security for business domains, as well as a content delivery network (CDN) and web application firewall (WAF).
$20
per month
Pricing
Amazon Route 53Cloudflare
Editions & Modules
Standard
$0.40
Per Zone Per Month
Queries
$0.60
Per Million Queries
Pro
$20
per month
Business
$200
per month
Free
Free
Enterprise
Contact sales team
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Route 53Cloudflare
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
Amazon Route 53Cloudflare
Considered Both Products
Amazon Route 53
Chose Amazon Route 53
CloudFlare has been good for anything external facing, but Route53 has met our needs perfectly for anything internal.
Chose Amazon Route 53
Cloudflare is also similar in the features to Route 53. However, since we are completely hosted on the AWS cloud, we can't use Cloudflare for configuring our internal networks, and integrating with the other services. The API based integration of AWS via Terraform is another …
Chose Amazon Route 53
We purchased our domain names through Networksolutions.com and do rely on their DNS services for basic functionality (SPF hard reject records, etc.), since it was included at no cost; however, for our main domains, we utilize Route 53 because of AWS's high availability, …
Chose Amazon Route 53
Since we are heavy users of AWS, it was only natural for us to go with Route53. It's well integrated with other AWS services, and domain creation and modifications can get automated with the infrastructure itself, with tools like terraform.
We also use Cloudfront and ALBs …
Cloudflare
Chose Cloudflare
  • Simple and consistent UX across the product suite.
  • DNS + CDN layer complete with SSL is amazing
  • Security layer built in
Chose Cloudflare
Cloudflare is the best option for my business for my use cases aligns exactly with what Cloudflare provides. Fastly only offers 1 month of free trial while AWS Route 53 is heavily integrated with AWS cloud. I want the flexibility to launch my own VPS and have a CDN, DDoS …
Chose Cloudflare
We're working with CloudFlare for the balance of simplicity of configuration, cost and robustness. Our experiences of other software have been far too fiddly with pages of buried controls, far too simplistic, or full of scaling costs that make them prohibitive.
Chose Cloudflare
I really like their support and the chance to trial it for free.
Chose Cloudflare
The other solutions had aspects of what we were looking for, but either they didn't match all of the requirements we were trying to meet, or they just approached the problem in a way we didn't like. We really wanted a serverless cloud-first solution that could connect from …
Chose Cloudflare
Cloudflare is a full DNS and load balancing system. AWS CloudFront handles load balancing and DDoS prevention, but on its own requires other services to handle DNS and various other features that are baked directly into Cloudflare. If you're hosting on AWS already, using the …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Amazon Route 53Cloudflare
Small Businesses
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.9 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.9 out of 10
BIG-IP
BIG-IP
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Google Cloud DNS
Google Cloud DNS
Score 8.9 out of 10
BIG-IP
BIG-IP
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Route 53Cloudflare
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(25 ratings)
9.0
(156 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.8
(4 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(5 ratings)
8.5
(8 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(6 ratings)
8.8
(125 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(2 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Route 53Cloudflare
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
- Routing users to the closest or best-performing resources: Route 53 allows you to use geolocation and latency-based routing to route users to the resources that will give them the best performance. - Load balancing: Route 53 can be used to distribute incoming traffic across multiple resources, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances or Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) tasks, to improve the availability and scalability of your application. - Managing domain names: Route 53 can be used to register domain names and manage DNS records, making it a one-stop solution for managing your domain name and routing traffic to your resources. Scenarios where Route 53 is less appropriate include:Applications with very high query rates: Route 53 is designed to handle millions of queries per second, but if your application generates an extremely high query rate, you may need to use a specialized DNS service.Applications that require very low latency: Route 53 is designed to provide low-latency DNS service, but if your application requires ultra-low latency, you may need to use a specialized DNS service or a self-hosted DNS solution.Applications that require advanced security features: Route 53 provides basic security features such as DNSSEC, but if your application requires advanced security features such as DDoS protection, you may need to use a specialized DNS service.
Read full review
Cloudflare
It is easy to set up, and within 10 minutes it is up and running. You can add many domains in one dashboard. So no need for a separate Cloudflare account. I can access all my domain DNS, and customize/add it further. For example by adding the Google Webmaster DNS key or my email provider.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Uptime - Route53 is highly performant and available. We have had only 3-4 instances in the last 12 years when we had any downtime or outages due to Route53.
  • Extensive API layer on Route53 that allows integration with external tools and SDK's (Boto, Terraform, etc)
  • Closely integrated with the other AWS services. Makes it easy to operate the infra.
Read full review
Cloudflare
  • Registrar and DNS services are impeccable, with registrations done at cost and without ADs. DNS services setting standards for speed of resolution.
  • DDOS protection. With their content distribution network to back them they have the bandwidth and tools to be both proactive and reactive to bad actors.
  • WAF - Their Web Application Firewall helps mitigate common site vulnerabilities and has active zero-day protection running for breaking exploits
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • During initial setup when you are using Route 53 or DNS systems for very first time, there are little number of documentation from AWS which is kinda of little tough. But, once you get hold of it, its a cake walk for everyone.
  • Health checks are kinda of little costly when Compared to other big players, but that doesn't affect much when you compare its uses.
  • The logging is well structured though its costly
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.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Cloudflare
lower cost
Read full review
Usability
Amazon AWS
You need to know what DNS is; this is a tool built for developers who already know the technology and are just looking for a DNS management tool. The tool is very usable given that. If you're not familiar with DNS, Route53 isn't really for you and you won't find it to be very usable-- you'll need to go read the documentation, and that will start with learning what DNS is
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Cloudflare
In 6+ years of relying on Cloudflare, I think we experienced one or two brief outages that were Cloudflare's fault.
Read full review
Performance
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Cloudflare
Their Argo for the global network is the core feature we love.
Read full review
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
Until today, I have never needed support to Route53 because the documentation is great. But, I have needed it for other services. And they're near perfect always. Except that they don't have Portuguese support yet and they're sometimes slow to answer (48 hours in non-critical ones, in two tickets). But usually, they're amazing!
Read full review
Cloudflare
We really like to talk to a person on the phone or using chat. But the system is very slow and sending to much email to get the issue solve. Something we don't like to spend time writing on the community forum our issue because we don't want to share detail information of our POC.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Cloudflare
Very well executed implementation where our team was able to handle the implementation with guidance.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
We purchased our domain names through Networksolutions.com and do rely on their DNS services for basic functionality (SPF hard reject records, etc.), since it was included at no cost; however, for our main domains, we utilize Route 53 because of AWS's high availability, reasonable cost, and capabilities to integrate with EC2 and other security certificate services to make hosting on AWS simple. We also front-end some of our sites with Cloudflare and while it's not as streamlined as using AWS natively, it does a good job.
Read full review
Cloudflare
Firebase can be a good starter for basic projects but as I scaled up, I found it lacking the maturity Cloudflare has. Naturaly, I opted for Cloudflare for bigger projects. I still use Firebase, but for small scale hobby projects only.
Read full review
Scalability
Amazon AWS
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.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • All of our brand domain names (about 80 brands) are managed in there
  • Many non marketing or brand domains are also in there
  • There isn't any defined ROI because it's such a trivial and necessary service with impacts all business operations
Read full review
Cloudflare
  • A lot of requests are cached and so egress costs from downstream providers are mitigated.
  • DDoS protection has also managed to keep our site up and our cloud computing bill down.
  • Setting up a proxy with a worker made putting various Google Cloud Functions running behind a single URL very easy and performant. Plus they offer API Shield on top of this.
Read full review
ScreenShots