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Azure Front Door vs Windows Azure CDN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (2nd), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (10th)
Azure Front Door
Ranking in CDN
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (13th), Microsoft Security Suite (18th)
Windows Azure CDN
Ranking in CDN
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 18.7%, down from 22.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Front Door is 8.9%, down from 19.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Windows Azure CDN is 3.1%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare18.7%
Azure Front Door8.9%
Windows Azure CDN3.1%
Other69.3%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2226693 - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Optimizing global application performance with robust security measures and advanced traffic management
DDoS capabilities in Azure Front Door could certainly be improved. Although Microsoft states it comes with basic DDoS protections out of the box, I find it often ineffectual in mitigating thousands of requests from a single source in a short span of time. User then have to rely on the WAF module where users must configure rate-limiting rules, as it does not automatically sense malicious spikes in traffic. I believe Front Door should have an out-of-the-box premium DDoS protection that can automatically detect and block malicious traffic. I would appreciate improvements in the turnaround time for support, especially since issues with Azure Front Door are usually critical for businesses. If there is an issue, it often results in downtime for line of business applications. I have faced this situation multiple times as one of the largest financial institutions in India is hosted there, adhering to strict SLAs that require prompt responses.
reviewer2273484 - PeerSpot reviewer
Pre Sales at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Has provided exceptional performance for handling high web traffic
In my opinion, Windows Azure CDN is one of the best CDNs. We tried to replace it and made a business case to check other options such as Cloudflare, and we are using Cloudflare and tried Akamai, wanting to explore alternatives from OCI. One of the best features of Windows Azure CDN is that it has integrated WAF; it is not only CDN alone and it is a very smart and capable WAF. Windows Azure CDN is easily integrated with Azure services such as Azure Storage and Azure Web Apps, and sometimes we are using just Azure Front Door while the back end and database will be on OCI. The impact of Windows Azure CDN's dynamic content acceleration on our application performance is very significant. For one of our clients, we could not use anything other than Azure Front Door.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"CloudFlare's caching brings the load speed down from 4.32 seconds to 2.45 seconds."
"In my opinion, CloudFlare is one of the best CDN networks I have ever used."
"The tool is user-friendly."
"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
"The most valuable feature is that I can have CDN and load-balancing capabilities in a single service instead of managing two separate tools."
"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."
"I find the technical support excellent, and I rate it a ten."
"Azure Front Door provides DDoS protection and features related to WAF."
"I particularly appreciate its load-balancing capabilities as it allows us to manage multiple instances and support a global presence effectively."
"Has a great application firewall and we like the security."
"The most valuable feature is that you can implement resources globally. It does not depend on location and ability or something like that. This is to connect clients around the world."
"The price is one of the most important aspects of the product. It's quite affordable."
"The UI is very intuitive."
"I like that CDN offers a routing feature."
"I enjoy engaging in discussions with colleagues possessing unique expertise. I leverage the three platforms—Azure, Google, and AWS extensively. This allows me to offer diverse solutions to customers, commonly referred to as a multi-cloud approach."
"The geolocation feature is very important because many colleagues travel worldwide and need to access information from anywhere. The product has improved security."
"We use the product for faster content delivery with low latency."
"One of the best features of Windows Azure CDN is that it has integrated WAF; it is not only CDN alone and it is a very smart and capable WAF."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that one can access Windows Azure CDN from anywhere."
"One of the most valuable aspects is the capability to store extensive datasets and objects in the cloud, enabling their download through shared access signatures."
 

Cons

"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."
"More insight into analytics and threats would be a good place to start improving Cloudflare."
"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."
"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."
"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."
"The pricing could be improved."
"Eventually, things go sideways and require fixes when it would have been easier to prevent the issue initially."
"I dislike the URL set parameters."
"I'm responsible for the governance and cost control of Azure. I'm not a specialist in any products and therefore I couldn't really speak effectively to features that are lacking or missing."
"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."
"There is room for improvement and they're working on it."
"In the tool, there needs to be a good amount of monitoring in the area of health probes to capture in front of what is happening."
"The product needs to improve its latency."
"The product's features are limited compared to Cloudflare. The tool also doesn't work well in a hybrid environment. I would like to see a way to add personalized APIs in the system."
"It lacks sufficient functionality."
"It is not a weakness of Windows Azure CDN; rather, it is the fact that it is outside Saudi Arabia, leading to some regulation issues."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"Azure is continuously improving its CDN but the documentation should be up-to-date."
"There were a few bugs that were very disappointing. So, that is a part of the reason why we started using Fastly."
"Windows Azure CDN should lower its prices."
"They should include configuration for cache rules."
"Exploring shared access solutions with cloud accounts would be a beneficial choice."
"I aim to enhance the reporting."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"A free version of the solution is available."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"The price is reasonable."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"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."
"The pricing of the solution is good."
"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 solution is a bit expensive."
"The transition to the premium tier has led to increased costs, making it more expensive than the classic tier."
"The product is expensive."
"It is on a pay-as-you-go basis."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
"The pricing of the solution depends on usage and varies based on the company's needs. If you want additional features like advanced logging, it will be pricier. However, it could be cheaper if you don't need those features. It all depends on the resources and requirements."
"The tool's pricing is cheap."
"I rate the price of Windows Azure CDN a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is high."
"It comes at a relatively affordable cost."
"The pricing is extremely high, almost 9 out of 10."
"The solution's price depends on how much traffic you have. So, it was okay for us. Payments are to be made on a monthly basis since one has to pay for what they used."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
 

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.
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?
I am not sure about the pricing but believe Azure Front Door might require a higher cost due to its entry point nature.
What needs improvement with Azure Front Door?
DDoS capabilities in Azure Front Door could certainly be improved. Although Microsoft states it comes with basic DDoS...
What do you like most about Windows Azure CDN?
One of the tool's best features is its ability to handle edge cases. For instance, we encountered a situation where w...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Windows Azure CDN?
In terms of pricing for Windows Azure CDN and the whole Microsoft products, you cannot compare networking alone or co...
What needs improvement with Windows Azure CDN?
It is not a weakness of Windows Azure CDN; rather, it is the fact that it is outside Saudi Arabia, leading to some re...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Azure Front-Door
No data available
 

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.
Information Not Available
NORAD, Agreeya Mobility
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Front Door vs. Windows Azure CDN and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.