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Amazon CloudFront vs Azure Front Door comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Amazon CloudFront
Ranking in CDN
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Azure Front Door
Ranking in CDN
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (8th), Microsoft Security Suite (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 22.7%, up from 21.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon CloudFront is 8.3%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Front Door is 19.5%, up from 19.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
Parth Buch - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamlessly manages security and dynamic content hosting in diverse applications
Hosting static content or with engineering dynamic content is beneficial. CloudFront provides a common access point, manages routing to different methods, and serves as an access point plus API routing. With AWS, maintenance is not required as it's a service offered by AWS which maintains itself. Security concerns are manageable through AWS's security mechanisms, with additional security enhancement possible through options like WAF and NACL.
Thomas Zebar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides great security with a good application firewall
The initial setup is straightforward. If you want to use the portal, CLI, or PowerShare, or you want to use automation data for one month, it's straightforward. Even when it comes to operational maintenance, it's pretty easy and straightforward. Microsoft has done a great job on that front. Maintenance generally requires someone who is a cloud administrator or similar to maintain services in general, with Front Door a small piece of a larger maintenance requirement. There's not a lot to manage, the configuration is simple. I encourage people to document the configuration and infrastructure as well as disaster recovery in case anything happens.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."
"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"The distribution aspect of CloudFront and its ability to reduce latency are most beneficial."
"The solution has good security features."
"It is stable."
"The AWS environment was very helpful in terms of integration."
"The UI and the functionality in AWS for CloudFront is much better as compared to Azure and GCP."
"The best feature of Amazon CloudFront is its simplified process and easy integration."
"One of the most valuable features of CloudFront is the reduced latency due to its edge locations, which results in a very fast delivery of data."
"The product provides reduced latency and quicker site refreshes."
"Azure Front Door provides DDoS protection and features related to WAF."
"Has a great application firewall and we like the security."
"Azure Front Door provides DDoS protection and features related to WAF."
"It inspects the traffic at the network level before it comes into Azure. We can do SSL offloading, and it can detect abnormalities before the traffic comes into the application. It can be used globally and is easy to set up. It is also quite stable and scalable."
"You can assign as many web application firewall policies as you want to the same instance of Front Door."
"I particularly appreciate its load-balancing capabilities as it allows us to manage multiple instances and support a global presence effectively."
"I am impressed with the tool's integrations."
"The web application firewall is a great feature."
 

Cons

"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"Technical support is lacking."
"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"The pricing could be improved."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."
"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."
"Amazon CloudFront is harder to understand compared to Azure."
"They could be expanding the number of locations available. It will help users easily access content."
"I have utilized certain characteristics and invested effort in reading the documentation, which proved to be challenging."
"Amazon CloudFront's setup is a bit difficult, and we would love it if they made it easier."
"The support must be improved."
"During the setup phase, there were some hiccups in terms of security, the user role, and the permissions."
"The product should be more intuitive."
"Support needs to be enhanced."
"There could be improvements regarding its pricing for large-scale projects."
"The tool should improve its cost."
"There is room for improvement and they're working on it."
"This is a relatively expensive solution."
"It lacks sufficient functionality."
"We should be able to use Front Door defenders with multiple cloud vendors. Currently, they can be used only with the Azure cloud. Azure Front Door should also be able to do global load balancing and provide internal front door services. Microsoft should clearly define what Traffic Manager, Application Gateway, and Azure Front Door products do. These are similar products, and people get confused between these products."
"My suggestion for improvement would be to enhance the Data Export feature to include specific tables, particularly the Azure Diagnostics table."
"There's a limitation on the amount of global rules we can add."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"I rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten. The licensing follows a pay-as-you-go model."
"The product has a mid-range pricing."
"Compared to competitors like Azure and Google, we find AWS pricing to be advantageous."
"Amazon CloudFront is an expensive solution."
"The solution’s price is reasonable."
"For CloudFront, I'm quite satisfied with the pricing. Initially, it doesn't require many resources for this specific solution."
"Amazon's pricing varies depending on the data transfer."
"I used to work with AWS and Azure, and we provided cost comparisons for customers to help them choose the right services. Azure tends to be more user-friendly and easier to understand, while AWS may take more time."
"Considering the standard licensing of the tool, even though we have not checked the billing as of now, it might not be very costly."
"The pricing of the solution is good."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"The transition to the premium tier has led to increased costs, making it more expensive than the classic tier."
"It is on a pay-as-you-go basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
23%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
How do I choose between AWS Global Accelerator and Amazon CloudFront?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Global Accelerator or Amazon CloudFro...
What do you like most about Amazon CloudFront?
The solution has good security features.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon CloudFront?
I find Amazon's pricing good, rating it eight out of ten and considering it affordable and rightly placed, not expens...
What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Front Door?
Azure Front Door is cheaper for small projects, companies, or applications compared to using separate tools.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Azure Front-Door
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Unilever, Spotify, Pinterest, MLB Advanced Media, Foursquare, PBS, Airbnb, Netflix, WIX, Comcast, Automobili Lamborghini, Rovio, Discovery Communications
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Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon CloudFront vs. Azure Front Door and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
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