Cloudflare vs. F5 BIG-IP

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cloudflare
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Cloudflare’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
F5 BIG-IP
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
F5 BIG-IP software from Seattle-based F5 Networks is a load balancing and application protection solution suite available on cloud or via virtual editions, on a subscription or perpetual licensing basis.N/A
Pricing
CloudflareF5 BIG-IP
Editions & Modules
Pro
$20
per month
Business
$200
per month
Free
Free
Enterprise
Contact sales team
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CloudflareF5 BIG-IP
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
CloudflareF5 BIG-IP
Considered Both Products
Cloudflare
Chose Cloudflare
Cloudflare was better, because we do not have to host or purchase any additional hardware. This means reduced costs for us to have to buy the hardware. Then, hire people to run the hardwar, and support the hardware. And, it also means you need SME's for the tool that have used …
Chose Cloudflare
Just Cloudflare having an easier visualization already shoots ahead of its competitors
Chose Cloudflare
I like Cloudflare due to its extensive set of features and powerful tools. Its current distributed architecture can handle the magnitude of today's threats and can fully prevent DDoS attacks of all types and sizes. I love to use this tool because it also enables me to simply …
F5 BIG-IP
Chose F5 BIG-IP
I used NGINX and Cloudflare CDN and now that F5 owns NGINX it’s been an easy switch. Cloudflare has a very intuitive platform that makes it easy to get up and running. Most of my experience is with F5 and I’m happy to say it’s made my experience streamlined enough that I …
Best Alternatives
CloudflareF5 BIG-IP
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloud Internet Services
IBM Cloud Internet Services
Score 8.8 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Akamai App & API Protector
Akamai App & API Protector
Score 8.1 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CloudflareF5 BIG-IP
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(175 ratings)
9.1
(205 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.3
(4 ratings)
9.6
(7 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(8 ratings)
8.6
(78 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(2 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(2 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
7.9
(142 ratings)
8.1
(8 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.6
(2 ratings)
8.5
(2 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(1 ratings)
5.5
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
5.5
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(2 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.0
(1 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
CloudflareF5 BIG-IP
Likelihood to Recommend
Cloudflare
Based on my experience, Cloudflare is well-suited for high-traffic websites and probably e-commerce platforms. Cloudflare can mitigate the risk of attacks on these websites using WAF and DNS protection mechanisms and provide cached content to the end-users quickly. The websites where it is not suitable are those that need high security and compliance requirements as Cloudflare might not meet all those criteria.
Read full review
F5
Definitely in larger environments, more mature organizations that obviously have the budget to spend and want best in class. Where it struggles is those organizations that don't have the funding and money to spend on it and need more basic functionality. So I'd say that's smaller customers we've worked with and kind of mid-market. They tend to get scared when they get the quotes. Also we've had some struggles with account team consistency. So for the sales team, just a lot of turnover and a lot of missteps on customer calls.
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Pros
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
F5
  • I mean from a basic level, it actually satisfies all the use cases we have, which is basically to have multiple web servers for the front end and then you want that to be equally split across. The traffic comes in from all over the world. We use DRA protection and everything, but then we also internally want to make sure all the servers are being utilized and we provide much more availability across all servers. We just make sure BIG-IP sits in between and handles the traffic accordingly. And it's pretty basic and it comes to drawing traffic. It's pretty easy to configure and set it up and then forget.
Read full review
Cons
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
F5
  • Recently we have been deploying F5 web application firewall and we have started the deployment. We have already moved applications out there, but we are not yet to the point wherein I could comment any positive feedback or any negative feedback because we are still going through it, right. But as far as I'm concerned, I don't see any drawbacks or any shortcomings on the F5 product lineup.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cloudflare
lower cost
Read full review
F5
So far experience with F5 BIG-IP has been good, but we are only 6 months into the deployment and will depend on how things run over time.
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Usability
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.
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F5
It's not difficult to understand the parts of application configurations and features. Setting up new virtual servers with multiple profiles, certificates, and nodes is easy for new users through the web interface, which also translates to programability in scripts, DevOps, or other configuration management use-cases. Users from different backgrounds such as networking and infrastructure can use F5 BIG-IP, while users who are familiar with API calls can easily configure objects without needing to understand the platform at all.
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Reliability and Availability
Cloudflare
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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F5
No answers on this topic
Performance
Cloudflare
Their Argo for the global network is the core feature we love.
Read full review
F5
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Cloudflare
I have only used their support a few times, and most times, they are responsive and able to resolve my issue with a minimal amount of time and effort. However, there was one instance where I simply asked about how to purchase some more resources (redirect rules), and I received some type of automated/AI response that was very unhelpful and gave me no opportunity to escalate to a person.
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F5
On the occasions when we've had to engage f5 support, they have been great. They have always resolved our issues quickly and been easy to work with and professional. The reason I give them a 10 out of 10, however, is because when we've had issues that have crossed over between the f5 BIG-IP, our Cisco switches, and our Microsoft IIS server the f5 support representatives have been extremely knowledgeable about every product and device involved and have been able to troubleshoot end-to-end without having to engage other vendors.
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Implementation Rating
Cloudflare
Very well executed implementation where our team was able to handle the implementation with guidance.
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F5
implementation is fine
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Alternatives Considered
Cloudflare
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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F5
That's the one thing that really stood out. It was a lot easier to use from an administrator standpoint, so I think that's the one thing that really made our team decide to go with this product versus another competitor. Just ease of use.
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Scalability
Cloudflare
They are built for scale and have the capacity to handle all the traffic we could ever expect to get.
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F5
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
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
F5
  • F5 BIG-IP has a highly positive impact on the customers. The main impact is on the security of the web applications.
  • F5 BIG-IP provides an easy and safe way to connect employees to assets and applications that reside in an on-premises environment.
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ScreenShots