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
FortiClient
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Fortinet offers FortiClient, their endpoint security system emphasizing automated advanced threat protection, security fabric integration, secure remote access, endpoint quarantine, and a comprehensive reporting dashboard.
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.
FortiClient is really well suited for providing remote employees super quick access to a local network without needing much technical know-how. The virus scanning and web-blocking is also really great at making sure to keep the spam, ads, and other malicious web connections at bay. I have not run into any specific scenario that FortiClient has not been well suited - All of the scenarios in which I have used FortiClient have all functions really well for me.
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
[FortiClient] splits the traffic very well. For example, when users connect a VPN to the office they are connecting to the internal system which uses VPN traffic. If users access the public internet they use the internet traffic, but [Fortinet] does not route this traffic back to the office.
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.
font way too small on login, unable to select an option, for example, to see each letter of password as typed promotes errors at login
login errors and failure rate extremely high as [reported] by all our physicians and other providers: not infrequently one will have to return to office after hours in order to complete charts or access charts to answer patient after hours questions
frequent disconnects in spite of excellent internet signal
Because the software is very simple and easy to use, very efficient, and has a stable connection that allows the user to perform tasks without problems. Also, this software does not need to be configured by IT technicians, since it comes with a very developed and understandable set up guide.
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.
Usability is pretty solid. It is not as easy to manage and adjust if you are not a trained IT professional, which requires smaller companies without IT staff to reply on outsourced IT partners. The user interface is a bit clunky, but you can generally figure out what you need to do, it just takes a little bit of time and effort.
Because of the lack of no live chat for non-paid customers. Sometimes I need urgent help on the Cloudflare engineering team. That is to solve an issue on their Cloudflare platform. The FAQ and the Cloudflare community forum take to much time to find the answer, and setup it manually up.
FortiClient is a security suite with which we can keep our equipment well-protected. And it is that in a system like Windows, which is always the target of all kinds of attacks, it is not enough to have a simple antivirus.
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.
Meraki MX has a much more basic set of features compared to FortClient and the Fortinet ecosystem of devices and software. Setting up a FortiGate with FortiClient can take a little more time, but the feature set is much richer. We use Meraki MX is a few offices, but are now converting many of them over to the FortiClient and Fortinet suite of security devices and software.
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.
