What users are saying about
Cloudflare vs NGINX
Cloudflare
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Top Rated
161 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 9.1 out of 100
Based on 161 reviews and ratings
93 Ratings
<a href='https://www.trustradius.com/static/about-trustradius-scoring' target='_blank' rel='nofollow noopener'>trScore algorithm: Learn more.</a>Score 9.2 out of 100
Based on 93 reviews and ratings
Feature Set Ratings
Application Servers

Cloudflare
Feature Set Not Supported
N/A

7.9
NGINX
79%
NGINX ranks higher in 6/6 features
NGINX ranks higher in 6/6 features
IDE support

N/A
0 Ratings

8.0
80%
1 Rating
Security management

N/A
0 Ratings

8.0
80%
3 Ratings
Administration and management

N/A
0 Ratings

6.3
63%
3 Ratings
Application server performance

N/A
0 Ratings

9.0
90%
3 Ratings
Installation

N/A
0 Ratings

7.3
73%
3 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance

N/A
0 Ratings

8.5
85%
2 Ratings
Attribute Ratings
- Cloudflare is rated higher in 1 area: Support Rating
- NGINX is rated higher in 1 area: Likelihood to Recommend
- Cloudflare and NGINX are tied in 1 area: Usability
Likelihood to Recommend

9.1
Cloudflare
91%
75 Ratings

9.2
NGINX
92%
27 Ratings
Likelihood to Renew

10.0
Cloudflare
100%
1 Rating

NGINX
N/A
0 Ratings
Usability

9.0
Cloudflare
90%
1 Rating

9.0
NGINX
90%
1 Rating
Support Rating

8.5
Cloudflare
85%
53 Ratings

8.1
NGINX
81%
8 Ratings
Likelihood to Recommend
Cloudflare
I can't think of a single scenario where Cloudflare isn't useful. Our company uses Cloudflare for ALL sites. In fact, as a Web Development Agency, we don't work with clients unless they allow us to use Cloudflare. It's really that good ;-) and necessary for modern websites and apps.
Web Design & SEO Consultant
Bright AdviceManagement Consulting, 1-10 employees
NGINX
[NGINX] is very well suited for high performance. I have seen it used on servers with 1k current connections with no issues. Despite seeing it used in many environments I've never seen software developers use it over apache, express, IIS in local dev environments so it may be more difficult to setup. I've also seen it used to load balance again without issues.
Sr. Software Engineer
Tempus Labs, Inc.Computer Software, 1001-5000 employees
Pros
Cloudflare
- When you need a FREE and EASY TO SETUP SSL certificate on your page (if you don't have the locked locker icon when opening your page, you need it)
- When you want to obfuscate your webpage's IP (any connection will give the Cloudflare's IP)
- You need to speed up the connection for static content (it will not help database connections or dynamic content)
- IF your DNS isn't good (Cloudflare's DNS is amazing, quick, easy, and works pretty well)
Marketing Specialist
Bezares SAAutomotive, 201-500 employees
NGINX
- Very low memory usage. Can handle many more connections than alternatives (like Apache HTTPD) due to low overhead. (event-based architecture).
- Great at serving static content.
- Scales very well. Easy to host multiple Nginx servers to promote high availability.
- Open-Source (no cost)!
Senior Software Engineer
RocketripComputer Software, 11-50 employees
Cons
Cloudflare
- There is a huge jump in price between the mid-tier and enterprise solutions which is hard to justify for smaller businesses, or companies owning many small businesses.
- It is difficult to convert from a CNAME installation back to a DNS based one
- Setting up page-level caching with web workers is counterintuitive for simple websites
Owner
Full Service Full Stack, LLCInformation Technology & Services, 1-10 employees
NGINX
- Customer support can be strangely condescending, perhaps it's a language issue?
- I find it a little weird how the release versions used for Nginx+ aren't the same as for open source version. It can be very confusing to determine the cross-compatibility of modules, etc., because of this.
- It seems like some (most?) modules on their own site are ancient and no longer supported, so their documentation in this area needs work.
- It's difficult to navigate between nginx.com commercial site and customer support. They need to be integrated together.
- I'd love to see more work done on nginx+ monitoring without requiring logging every request. I understand that many statistics can only be derived from logs, but plenty should work without that. Logging is not an option in many environments.
Senior DevOps Engineer
Conversant Inc. (formerly Dotomi)Marketing and Advertising, 5001-10,000 employees
Pricing Details
Cloudflare
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
No
Starting Price
$0
Cloudflare Editions & Modules
Edition
Free | Free |
---|---|
Pro | $202 |
Business | $2002 |
Enterprise | Contact sales team |
- none
- per month
- none
Additional Pricing Details
—NGINX
General
Free Trial
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
Entry-level set up fee?
Optional
Starting Price
—NGINX Editions & Modules
—
Additional Pricing Details
—Usability
Cloudflare
Cloudflare 9.0
Based on 1 answer
While there are some parts of the service that can be tricky to implement if you have a very custom site, like holepunching for cache, for the most part, the service works very well out of the box and is easy to use
Online Marketing Director | Business Develoment
National Air WarehouseConsumer Goods, 1-10 employees
NGINX
NGINX 9.0
Based on 1 answer
Front end proxy and reverse proxy of Nginx is always useful. I always prefer to Nginx in overall usability when you have application server and database or multiple application servers and single database i.e. clustered application. Nginx provides really good features and flexibility which helps the system administrator in case of troubleshooting and also from the administration perspective. Also, Nginx doesn't delay any request because of internal performance issues.

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employeesSupport Rating
Cloudflare
Cloudflare 8.5
Based on 53 answers
I (fortunately) have not encountered an issue I deemed severe enough to require me to submit a ticket to support. Most of the time, the problems I have encountered were fixable by simply waiting (as is usual with DNS services); or Googling and perusing their perfectly serviceable documentation and browsing support forums.

Verified User
General Manager in Engineering
Computer Software Company, 1-10 employeesNGINX
NGINX 8.1
Based on 8 answers
Community support is great, and they've also had a presence at conferences. Overall, there is no shortage of documentation and community support. We're currently using it to serve up some WordPress sites, and configuring NGINX for this purpose is well documented. 


Principal, Lead developer, Lead designer
PelagoInternet, 1-10 employees
Alternatives Considered
Cloudflare
CloudFlare is always innovating fast and adding new interesting solutions to the CDN, DNS, and DDoS problems that keep appearing as the internet grows and matures. Due to network effects, using CloudFlare is easier, faster, and more reliable than the competitors, and their support is super fast. I have used other solutions in previous companies like Akamai but their APIs were not very easy to use and their interfaces were not that friendly, also their CDNs were not as fast to clear the cache.
Product Design/Development Engineer
TransferwiseFinancial Services, 1001-5000 employees
NGINX
We have used Traffic, Apache, Google Cloud Load Balancing and other managed cloud-based load balancers. When it comes to scale and customization nothing beats Nginx. We selected Nginx over the others because
- we have a large number of services and we can manage a single Nginx instance for all of them
- we have high impact services and Nginx never breaks a sweat under load
- individual services have special considerations and Nginx lets us configure each one uniquely
Senior Software Architect
Beneath The InkComputer Software, 1-10 employees
Return on Investment
Cloudflare
- Uptime: With Cloudflare's website protection, we have avoided panic-inducing outages and downtime.
- Reduced hosting load: Cloudflare's CDN allows us to use smaller servers and greatly diminish bandwidth usage.
- Reduced domain renewal cost: Most of our domains could be transferred to Cloudflare, where domain renewals are as cheap as possible.
- Increased total website cost: All of Cloudflare's features aren't free, and they increase our monthly overall website cost. The protection and other features are helpful, just not free.

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Restaurants Company, 501-1000 employeesNGINX
- Nginx has decreased the burden of web server administration and maintenance, and we are spending less time on server issues than when we were using Apache.
- Nginx has allowed more people in our company to get involved with configuring things on the web server, so there's no longer a single point of failure ("the Apache guy").
- Nginx has given us the ability to handle a larger number of requests without scaling up in hardware quite so quickly.
Head of Development Technologies
Top Floor TechnologiesInternet, 11-50 employees