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Cloudflare vs. F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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

    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AF5 Networks offers the F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager, a firewall software combining a number of features including DDoS, DNS security, and other protections.N/A
    Pricing
    CloudflareF5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    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 Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    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 Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    Considered Both Products
    Cloudflare
    No answer on this topic
    F5
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    98%
    Would buy again
    171 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    165 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    171 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    144 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    154 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    CloudflareF5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    DDoS Protection
    Comparison of DDoS Protection features of Cloudflare and F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    Feature
    Cloudflare
    8.4
    6 Ratings
    4% below category average
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    -
    Ratings
    Automatic Scalability9.47 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mitigation SLA8.87 Ratings00 Ratings
    Security policy management8.67 Ratings00 Ratings
    WAF capabilities8.67 Ratings00 Ratings
    Request rate limiting7.87 Ratings00 Ratings
    Traffic filtering7.67 Ratings00 Ratings
    Bot detection8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
    Global threat intelligence8.87 Ratings00 Ratings
    Real-time analytics and reporting7.87 Ratings00 Ratings
    Firewall
    Comparison of Firewall features of Cloudflare and F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    Feature
    Cloudflare
    -
    Ratings
    F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    5.6
    3 Ratings
    42% below category average
    Identification Technologies00 Ratings2.73 Ratings
    Visualization Tools00 Ratings1.83 Ratings
    Content Inspection00 Ratings5.53 Ratings
    Policy-based Controls00 Ratings6.43 Ratings
    Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Firewall Management Console00 Ratings2.73 Ratings
    Reporting and Logging00 Ratings6.43 Ratings
    VPN00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    High Availability00 Ratings3.63 Ratings
    Stateful Inspection00 Ratings2.73 Ratings
    Proxy Server00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    CloudflareF5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    SonicWall NSA Series
    Score8.4 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    Barracuda CloudGen Firewall
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) Software
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    CloudflareF5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (192 ratings)
    8.1
    (6 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.2
    (4 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    8.6
    (8 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.6
    (154 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.6
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    CloudflareF5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    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
    F5
    We were able to eliminate a firewall from our network architecture by integrating the module into our existing F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM). This allowed us to save on tech refresh costs, since the F5 was able to handle the module without much additional strain on the device. However, if a firewall had features that the AFM lacked, then using that firewall in tandem with an F5 would be preferable.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    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
    F5
    • Load balancing using pools
    • SSL offloading
    • iRules for threat handling
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    • The GUI icons are very small and Overall UI can use some refreshing
    • The training on the tool is not easily available and mostly involves a high cost
    • The support or third party implementation teams could use some improvement
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cloudflare
    lower cost
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    While parent policies help simplify the deployment, the UI definitely could be more straight forward and simplified for troubleshooting and tuning
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Cloudflare
    Their Argo for the global network is the core feature we love.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    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
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    F5
    F5 Advanced Firewall Manager has been a solid, strong solution to both keep our systems safe and being seamless for our end users. Most of the time, the end-user is not impacted and does not even know F5 Advanced Firewall Manager is running which is exactly what we are looking for.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Cloudflare
    Very well executed implementation where our team was able to handle the implementation with guidance.
    Incentivized
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    F5
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    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
    Read full review
    F5
    SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is a bit easier to initially set up than F5 Advanced Firewall Manager but not as robust in its ability to manage different devices with different profiles. Different machines need different access and F5 Advanced Firewall Manager is better at allowing flexibility in identifying different devices and managing what they can access.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Cloudflare
    They are built for scale and have the capacity to handle all the traffic we could ever expect to get.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    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
    Read full review
    F5
    • When we had to decide on whether to buy different hardware our team were all in support of renewal for F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager]
    • F5 [BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager] requires proper training on tools and clear concepts of packets, headers, and content to create WAF policies
    • Overall, we are satisfied by the ROI provided by our F5 AFM and GTMs
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots