Arbor DDoS vs Fortinet FortiDDoS comparison

NETSCOUT and Fortinet are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. NETSCOUT is ranked #3 with an average rating of 9.3, while Fortinet is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.0. NETSCOUT holds a 8.7% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Fortinet’s 2.3% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of NETSCOUT users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Arbor DDoS and Fortinet FortiDDoS compete in the realm of DDoS protection. Arbor DDoS holds the advantage due to its superior reporting, traffic visualization, and flexible deployment options.

Features: Arbor DDoS provides advanced reporting, real-time packet capture, and a hybrid protection approach, making it suitable for ISPs and large enterprises. Its precise traffic filtering significantly enhances security. Fortinet FortiDDoS offers specific protection resources and support, beneficial for targeted network defense, despite not offering the high-level insights that Arbor provides.

Room for Improvement: Arbor DDoS could improve its auto-mitigation to reduce the impact on legitimate traffic and enhance scalability with better integration with non-Arbor technologies. Fortinet FortiDDoS requires upgrades to manage higher bandwidths efficiently and could benefit from improved application traffic management beyond network layer protection.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Arbor provides multiple deployment options, including hybrid cloud and on-premises, whereas Fortinet offers only on-premises deployment. Both receive positive remarks for customer service and technical support, although Arbor's support team is highly rated for its expertise and resolution efficiency.

Pricing and ROI: Arbor DDoS is priced higher but is seen to provide positive ROI, especially for larger enterprises, justified by comprehensive features. Fortinet FortiDDoS is cost-effective yet still expensive for SMBs, with limitations in scalability. Both solutions help maintain uptime and reduce potential financial losses from DDoS attacks, though Arbor's ROI stands out in larger deployments.

To learn more, read our detailed Arbor DDoS vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Arbor DDoS vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS

March 2026

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 16.2%, down from 18.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Arbor DDoS is 8.7%, down from 13.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiDDoS is 2.3%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare	16.2%
Arbor DDoS	8.7%
Fortinet FortiDDoS	2.3%
Other	72.8%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal

General Manager at bKash Limited

Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility

From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.

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Sanjin Zuhric

Team Lead Network Engineer at Artco Group d.o.o Sarajevo

Reliable protection ensures robust network defense and simplifies DDoS management

I am not sure if we plan to use additional features because we have many vendors and platforms that we support. We use the main function and that is it. The prices for Arbor DDoS are expensive. The licensing is subscription-based. From our sales department, they discuss that prices are very high. A potential improvement could be establishing a contract with Cisco to sell via their channel. This could be beneficial because we work extensively with Cisco. If you are a Cisco partner, you can sell Arbor DDoS. That would be good for customers that are Cisco-based because many customers in Bosnia are Cisco-based customers. BH Telecom, our main customer, sells Arbor DDoS to other customers for protection. They buy Arbor and sell the product services to others via Internet links. They sell add-on DDoS protection via Arbor DDoS. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Arbor DDoS is not present in many customers. Some customers try to sell it, but they sell other vendors such as F5. Arbor DDoS is mainly seen in telecom operators but not much in other customers.

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Rangga Rangga

Pre-Sales Manager at Vinlano

Monitoring capabilities improve threat detection and customer satisfaction

I am looking for a UTM for my customers as I am from a system integrator company Packet inspection has been effective for mitigating DDoS attacks. Real-time attack monitoring is integrated under FortiManager, so we do not always monitor the dashboard. Customers have not experienced issues and…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."

"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."

"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."

"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."

"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."

"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."

More Cloudflare pros

"Arbor DDoS's best feature is that we can put the certificates in, and it will look at layer seven and the encrypted traffic and do the required signaling."

"It has an easy-to-understand GUI...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"The artificial intelligence feature is most appreciated. This solution can lower the throughput and clear the traffic, which is something really important for us. It also provides good protection. It is user-friendly, and its integration has also been really fast. We have many critical applications, and it was easy to integrate Arbor DDoS with our website, mobile application, and web banking."

"There are a number of valuable features in this product, like Cloud Signaling and Threat Intelligence feeds."

"We use it not only for DDoS detection and protection, but we also use it for traffic analysis and capacity planning as well. We've also been able to extend the use of it to other security measures within our company, the front-line defense, not only for DDoS, but for any kind of scanning malware that may be picked up. It's also used for outbound attacks, which has helped us mitigate those and lower our bandwidth costs..."

"The Arbor Networks SP device provided great visualization of the network traffic."

"It provides packet capture and we can block or whitelist whichever IPs we need to. Whatever traffic we want to block - and we get IPs from internal teams and from national teams - we block at the Arbor level only, because if it gets to the firewall then firewall bandwidth will be taken."

"It's just one dashboard with mitigation. You decide which mitigation you want and at what threshold to do this or that. Its operation is pretty simple. It's easy."

More Arbor DDoS pros

"This solution can protect Layer 3, Layer 4 and Layer 7 attacks of applications for us."

"The equipment works very well, and I have not encountered any issues with it. It is a good solution for my company."

"I find this product the best on-premises (in-line) DDoS mitigation solution that suits my current and future requirements."

"We have researched them all, and it's a good solution all around."

"Among its key features: Detects and mitigates DDoS attacks at L3 to L7; negligible to zero false-positives; Generates and sends reports without the need for an expensive third-party solution."

"The equipment works very well, and I have not encountered any issues with it."

"The most valuable feature is the cloud DDoS scrubbing capability."

"The product allows the users to adjust the thresholds."

More Fortinet FortiDDoS pros

Cons

"The pricing could be improved."

"Several features that I think is essential is not available in the free and business package."

"The installation was complex until I learned what I had to learn."

"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."

"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."

"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."

"I would like to not need a separate server for non-www redirection under the CNAME setup option."

"Support response time could be improved."

More Cloudflare cons

"Arbor Pravail APS devices do not sync features or config the backup enough. This needs to be improved."

"Arbor DDoS could improve out-of-the-box reporting, it could be better."

"I think Arbor DDoS needs improvement in areas where competitors like S5, Redver, or NETSCOUT offer web application firewall functionality or dedicated web application firewall devices. Arbor lacks these features, which is a significant disadvantage. Yes, I would like to see these features introduced in Arbor as well. Regarding real-time detection capabilities, Arbor DDoS works very well. We and our customers are very satisfied with its performance. However, it would benefit from adding Web Application Firewall (WAF) capabilities to reach a larger customer base."

"An improvement to Arbor DDoS would be to make evaluation licenses and virtual machines available."

"For troubleshooting problems, it's not so intuitive. It's not straightforward. This is the core of their kernel, so they need to improve it a little bit... In F5 I have full control of everything."

"Auto mitigation is a feature provided when DDoS is observed on any of link/customer (configured under auto mitigation). It automatically starts mitigation with default filters. In default filter mode, there could be an impact on the customer’s link,"

"With Arbor DDoS, its integration issues with other technologies or other vendors' technologies is an area of concern that could be improved."

"There is definitely room for improvement in third-party intelligence and integrations."

More Arbor DDoS cons

"All the thresholds that need to be configured should be included in the default so that user will not forget or misconfigure."

"The web interface could be much better."

"The only thing they need to do is to automate it. Today, you must create tools that do not require the use of an expert or anyone with special skills."

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."

"The solution can be a little more user-friendly and it can be more affordable."

"There aren't really any aspects of the solution we are unhappy with. It's been a positive experience overall."

"I would like to see analytics, big data."

"Alerts and reporting features must be improved."

More Fortinet FortiDDoS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"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."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"We are using the free version."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"Arbor's products are very expensive. Their competitors are cheap when compared with Arbor."

"We do not use the Arbor Cloud DDoS solution because it is too costly."

"Start with a small license. Measure your bandwidth requirements."

"The price of this solution is a little high in the African market, it should be lower."

"Because the solutions from competitors are very different, it's not easy to compare. However, the licensing from Arbor is clear and understandable and the pricing is reasonable when looking at the market, in general."

"I don't deal with the pricing, but it seems that you need to get basic support in order to upgrade the software and implement some patches."

"Arbor is striking a good balance between pricing and what they deliver."

"You need to find a way to get a good offering from Arbor by negotiating a price. That is the challenge."

More Arbor DDoS pricing and cost advice

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."

"It's quite pricey."

"The solution is reasonably priced."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

13%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	25
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	29

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Large Enterprise	6

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...

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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...

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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.

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Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other soluti...

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Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Arbor DDoS?

The prices for Arbor DDoS are expensive. The licensing is subscription-based. From our sales department, they discuss...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiDDoS?

Fortinet FortiDDoS offers lower costs compared to other solutions. The licensing costs are annually renewed.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiDDoS?

There is a need for more features that protect personal information, especially given the PDP issue in Indonesia.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiDDoS?

I am looking for a UTM for my customers as I am from a system integrator company.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 44% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

IBM NS1 Connect vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

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Radware DDoS vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 17% of the time

Corero vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 7% of the time

A10 Thunder TPS vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 5% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 5% of the time

Azure DDoS Protection vs Arbor DDoS

Compared 4% of the time

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Radware DDoS vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 12% of the time

VMware NSX vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 7% of the time

Nexusguard DDoS Protection vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 7% of the time

Check Point DDoS Protector vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 7% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

March 2026

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Arbor DDoS

March 2026

Download Arbor DDoS product report

Buyer's Guide

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

March 2026

Download Fortinet FortiDDoS product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Arbor Networks SP, Arbor Networks TMS, Arbor Cloud for ENT

Fortinet DDoS, FortiDDos

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

Arbor DDoS offers a comprehensive defense system against DDoS attacks, integrating a user-friendly GUI and advanced threat mitigation technologies for enhanced network protection.

Arbor DDoS is recognized for its ability to manage high-volume DDoS attacks efficiently, providing extensive protection through real-time traffic analysis and automated threat detection. It utilizes advanced techniques such as blackhole and BGP Flowspec for effective threat management. Arbor's cloud signaling allows users to handle and mitigate volumetric attacks while maintaining service availability. Though it provides robust security features, users note potential improvements in auto-mitigation, scalability, and AI integration. Challenges like an outdated graphical interface, hardware stability, and false positives need addressing to further enhance its usability and integration with third-party systems.

What are the key features of Arbor DDoS?

User-Friendly GUI: Provides an intuitive interface for ease of use.
Effective Mitigation: Combats high-volume DDoS attacks effectively.
Predefined Filters: Simplifies threat management with pre-configured settings.
Real-Time Traffic Analysis: Offers insights into traffic patterns and potential threats.
Automated Threat Detection: Identifies and mitigates threats without manual intervention.
Able to Handle High-Volume Attacks: Ensures extensive protection even under large-scale attacks.
Packet Capture and Integration: Facilitates comprehensive security analysis.
Cloud Signaling: Enhances attack traffic management through hybrid deployments.

What benefits should users expect from Arbor DDoS?

Enhanced Protection: Safeguards networks from diverse DDoS threats.
Improved Service Availability: Maintains business operations without disruptions.
Timely Reporting: Delivers detailed attack reports for proactive prevention.
AI Capabilities: Leverages AI for smarter threat mitigation strategies.
Comprehensive Security: Combines on-premise and cloud deployments for optimal defense.

Internet service providers and telecom companies commonly adopt Arbor DDoS to protect their networks and infrastructure from DDoS attacks. It is also implemented in financial and government sectors to ensure web application security and maintain high availability. Arbor DDoS supports a hybrid approach, utilizing both on-premise and cloud solutions to manage traffic efficiently and sustain service quality during attacks.

NETSCOUT

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are ever-evolving and use a variety of technologies. To successfully combat these attacks, you need a dynamic, multi-layered security solution. FortiDDoS protects from both known and zero day attacks with very low latency. It’s easy to deploy and manage, and includes comprehensive reporting and analysis tools.

Fortinet

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Xtel Communications

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data

Buyer's Guide

Arbor DDoS vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS

March 2026

Free Report: Arbor DDoS vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS

Find out what your peers are saying about Arbor DDoS vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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