Cloudflare vs BIG-IP | TrustRadius

Likelihood to Recommend

Excellent for managing server loads and site speed for our clients. Most would have to buy bigger hosting packages to handle their busy days, but CloudFlare picks up the traffic and reduces the burden on the server. Most clients can rely on smaller hosting accounts to keep their sites up.

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Darcy Knapp, MBA

CEO (Chief Executive Officer)

SEO Web MechanicsMarketing & Advertising, 1-10 employees

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The BIG-IP is definitely well suited to scale up for demanding and/or complex enterprise traffic management. Although currently, we're only scratching the surface of its capabilities it has not been too complex or difficult to implement and manage. Having said that, I don't know that it would be the best fit for smaller-scale deployments, as it would probably be overkill unless you needed several of the modules they offer. Although we are only using one module, we are making extensive use of it. Similar to products like the Check Point firewall, there are so many options and features available that the limiting factor is more likely to be administrator time or knowledge than the BIP-IP itself. The good thing is there are always more features and options to grow into if needed without having to find additional solutions.

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Paul Luchini

Network Engineer

Kentucky Administrative Office of the CourtsGovernment Administration, 1001-5000 employees

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Pros

Security: Cloudflare keeps our website safe from DDoS attacks and other malicious traffic.
CDN: Cloudflare caches our website content, increasing our website's reliability and reducing server load. This saves on bandwidth costs from web servers.
Registrar: We can migrate domains to Cloudflare, though they don't currently allow the purchase of new domain names. The benefit of this is cheaper renewal fees and fewer systems involved in managing our domains.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Restaurants Company, 501-1000 employees

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Easy connection: you can connect to your corporate network with two clicks.
IP restriction: F5 has a list of possible insecure IP numbers, if someone tries to connect using one of these numbers, F5 BIG-IP won't connect.
Always on feature: Very handy feature, if you install always on, you won't need to click connect.

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Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 501-1000 employees

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Cons

Multiple Users - It would be great to be able to have multiple users on one account.
Itemized Cache - Would love to see a list of files that have been cached by CloudFlare's CDN and when they will expire. Also nice to optionally remove one or more files from the cache.

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Joey Yax

Web Developer

Grady BrittonMarketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees

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Occasionally, it fails to connect and gives me very little feedback to help me correct the problem.
The interface is simple, but a bit dated.

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Verified User

Professional in Human Resources

Internet Company, 10,001+ employees

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Usability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

BIG-IP 9.0

Based on 1 answer

Great customization and easy to use help reference menus

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Alan Matson, CCNA:S, MCP

Senior Network Security Engineer

InsightInformation Technology and Services, 5001-10,000 employees

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Support Rating

Cloudflare 8.2

Based on 11 answers

We've been using a free plan, so we know that we aren't a priority on their list, but we had a severe issue in just one project, and they weren't able to help us with that.
We had to remove that website from Cloudflare and use another service since they couldn't help us, and they took a long time to respond to our inquiries.

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Carlos Eduardo de Souza

Co-founder & Manager

Coopers Digital ProductionInternet, 1-10 employees

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BIG-IP 8.3

Based on 7 answers

I was pleasantly surprised by F5 support, with my experience being the best of all the network vendors. I was not speaking to someone across the world, the engineer fully took ownership and followed through to solution without me having to keep calling. The support engineer also was able to resolve an unusual situation, in which most other vendors' engineers would simply give up.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Publishing Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

Cloudflare and CloudFront are both great tools. I would recommend Cloudflare for sites that are not hosted on Amazon, and CloudFront for sites using Amazon Web Services. The pricing and features are comparable. Overall, Cloudflare's free tier offers more services, which gives it a slight edge over the competition.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Think Tanks Company, 11-50 employees

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Netscaler and F5 Big-IP are very similar. I liked the Netscaler GUI a little better, but they both basically serve the same purpose quite well. Both are more advanced than the cheap/free software-based alternatives out there. Both can be clustered to avoid having a single point of failure at the load balancer level. Both can be programmed with custom rules to handle traffic routing.

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Verified User

Technician in Information Technology

Entertainment Company, 51-200 employees

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Return on Investment

Our business has online presences to reassure our customers, not to gain new ones, so the actual ROI is smaller than for most other people.
CloudFlare is super easy to use so I can make adjustments on the fly.
Safety and security is important and I don't have to worry about a lot of things due to CloudFlare.

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Chris Widner

VP of Technology & Human Resources

Quality Ironworks, Inc.Construction, 51-200 employees

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Less issues with our load balancers means better availability for our clients and less penalties from our SLAs.
Easy for newer network engineers to learn means less time spent training them.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Cloudflare

BIG-IP

Likelihood to Recommend

Cloudflare

BIG-IP

Pros

Cloudflare

BIG-IP

Cons

Cloudflare

BIG-IP

Usability

Cloudflare

BIG-IP

Support Rating

Cloudflare

BIG-IP

Alternatives Considered

Cloudflare

BIG-IP

Return on Investment

Cloudflare

BIG-IP

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

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