Cloudflare vs. Google Analytics

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cloudflare
Score 8.8 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
Google Analytics
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Google Analytics is perhaps the best-known web analytics product and, as a free product, it has massive adoption. Although it lacks some enterprise-level features compared to its competitors in the space, the launch of the paid Google Analytics Premium edition seems likely to close the gap.
$0
per month
Pricing
CloudflareGoogle Analytics
Editions & Modules
Pro
$20
per month
Business
$200
per month
Free
Free
Enterprise
Contact sales team
Google Analytics 360
150,000
per year
Google Analytics
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CloudflareGoogle Analytics
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CloudflareGoogle Analytics
Considered Both Products
Cloudflare
Chose Cloudflare
I tried self-managing it using cPanel and .htaccess but this was both time-consuming and limited in functionality.
Chose Cloudflare
Haven't used any alternative CDN, we did use Plesk to manage our server now, though, what replaced Cloudflare (new server), we also use the Free Let´s Encrypt SSL for the certificate (that was the reason we first tried Cloudflare), also the Nginx reverse proxy managed by Plesk. …
Chose Cloudflare
1. It's very cost effective if compared with other cloud CDN.
2.It's Easier to manage multiple domains from a single CloudFlare account.
3.SSL is very cheap.
Google Analytics

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
CloudflareGoogle Analytics
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

StatCounter
StatCounter
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
BIG-IP
BIG-IP
Score 9.0 out of 10
Siteimprove
Siteimprove
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
BIG-IP
BIG-IP
Score 9.0 out of 10
Contentsquare
Contentsquare
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CloudflareGoogle Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(159 ratings)
9.0
(183 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.7
(4 ratings)
9.0
(51 ratings)
Usability
8.5
(8 ratings)
9.9
(8 ratings)
Availability
9.5
(2 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Performance
9.5
(2 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.4
(128 ratings)
7.0
(42 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.7
(2 ratings)
9.0
(7 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(1 ratings)
6.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
8.2
(2 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.5
(2 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
CloudflareGoogle Analytics
Likelihood to Recommend
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
Google
Google Analytics is particularly well suited for tracking and analyzing customer behavior on a grocery e-commerce platform. It provides a wealth of information about customer behavior, including what products are most popular, what pages are visited the most, and where customers are coming from. This information can help the platform optimize its website for better customer engagement and conversion rates. However, Google Analytics may not be the best tool for more advanced, granular analysis of customer behavior, such as tracking individual customer journeys or understanding customer motivations. In these cases, it may be more appropriate to use additional tools or solutions that provide deeper insights into customer behavior.
Read full review
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
Google
  • Multiple reports to see website use and behavior
  • Allows you to customize reports with days, weeks, months, and years
  • You can build out a dashboard to easily view stats from multiple websites in one place
  • You can share analytics reports via the dashboard, automatically emailed PDFs or in other formats
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
Google
  • Data sampling is somewhat inaccurate on the free tier - this is addressed in premium but is expensive.
  • Some of the UI is very similar in naming when presenting different data, some in-situ information might be useful.
  • Gotchas around filtering and data validation.
  • Implementation can be tricky, it can take a lot of time and expertise to get a full, accurate picture of your metrics.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cloudflare
lower cost
Read full review
Google
We will continue to use Google Analytics for several reasons. It is free, which is a huge selling point. It houses all of our ecommerce stores' data, and though it can't account for refunds or fraud orders, gives us and our clients directional, real time information on individual and group store performance.
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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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Google
Google Analytics provides a wealth of data, down to minute levels. That is it's greatest detriment: find the right information when you need it can be a cumbersome task. You are able to create shortcuts, however, so it can mitigate some of this problem. Google is continually refining Analytics, so I do not doubt there will be improvements
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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.
Read full review
Google
We all know Google is at top when it comes to availability. We have never faced any such instances where I can suggest otherwise. All you need is a Google account, a device and internet connection to use this super powerful tool for reporting and visualising your site data, traffic, events, etc. that too in real time.
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Performance
Cloudflare
Their Argo for the global network is the core feature we love.
Read full review
Google
This has been a catalyst for improving our site's traffic handling capabilities. We were able to identify exit% from our sites through it and we used recommendations to handle and implement the same in our sites. We have been increasing the usage of Google Analytics in our sites and never had any performance related issues if we used Analytics
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Support Rating
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.
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Google
The Google reps respond very quickly. However, sometimes they can overly call you to set up an apportionment. I'm very proficient and sometimes when I talk to reps, they give beginner tutorials and insights that are a waste of time. I wish Google would understand my level of expertise and assign me to a rep (long-term) that doesn't have to walk me through the basics.
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Online Training
Cloudflare
No answers on this topic
Google
love the product and training they provide for businesses of all sizes. The following list of links will help you get started with Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented by Google Analytics.
  1. How to Use Google Analytics for Beginners – Mahalo’s how-to guide for beginners.
  2. A beginner’s guide to Google Analytics – A free eBook walking you through Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented.
  3. Getting to Know Your Google Analytics Dashboard – The title says it all! This is a brief post with one goal: to introduce you to the Google Analytics dashboard.
  4. Google Analytics for Beginners: How to Make the Most of Your Traffic Reports– This guide doesn’t cover setup, but it does a great job of helping you to better understand the data being presented.
  5. Google Analytics Video Tutorial 1: Setup – A video presentation that walks you through Google Analytics setup.
  6. Google Analytics Video Tutorial 2: Essential Stats – A video presentation that introduces you to some of the most important data being presented in Google Analytics.
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Implementation Rating
Cloudflare
Very well executed implementation where our team was able to handle the implementation with guidance.
Read full review
Google
I think my biggest take away from the Google Analytics implementation was that there needs to be a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it before you start. Originally the analytics were added to track visitors, but as we became more savvy with the product, we began adding more and more functionality, and defining guidelines as we went along. While not detrimental to our success, this lack of an overarching goal resulted in some minor setbacks in implementation and the collection of some messy data that is unusable.
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Alternatives Considered
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
Google
I have not used Adobe Analytics as much, but I know they offer something called customer journey analytics, which we are evaluating now. I have used Semrush, and I find them much better than Google Analytics. I feel a fairly nontechnical person could learn Semrush in about a month. They also offer features like competitive analysis (on content, keywords, traffic, etc.), which is very useful. If you have to choose one among Semrush and Google Analytics, I would say go for Semrush.
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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.
Read full review
Google
Google Analytics is currently handling the reporting and tracking of near about 80 sites in our project. And I am not talking about the sites from different projects. They may have way more accounts than that. Never ever felt a performance issue from Google's end while generating or customising reports or tracking custom events or creating custom dimensions
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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
Google
  • It has helped us gain understanding of what is going on on our website.
  • It has helped us determine areas that need fixing (i.e. pages with extremely high bounce rates may need to be redone).
  • It has helped us understand our biggest avenues for bringing traffic to the website and business in general.
  • It has helped guide our website redesign.
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ScreenShots