Azure Web Application Firewall vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service comparison

Microsoft and Barracuda Networks are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Microsoft is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.4, while Barracuda Networks is ranked #33 with an average rating of 6.0. Additionally, 92% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of Barracuda Networks users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service and Azure Web Application Firewall compete in web application protection. Azure Web Application Firewall holds the upper hand due to its extensive features and integration capabilities.

Features: Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service includes automated threat updates, comprehensive reporting tools, and DDoS protection. Azure Web Application Firewall offers seamless integration with Azure services, advanced threat intelligence, and filtering capabilities to block false positives with custom rules.

Room for Improvement: Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service could enhance its scalability, improve integration with third-party services, and offer more customizable threat rules. Azure Web Application Firewall might simplify its often complex setup process, improve ease of use for non-Azure environments, and possibly reduce its cost to offer better competitive pricing.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service is known for quick deployment and responsive customer service. Azure Web Application Firewall, despite a more complex integration process, benefits from being part of the Azure ecosystem, offering streamlined processes for those environments.

Pricing and ROI: Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service typically offers a lower setup cost with effective support that ensures a quick ROI. Azure Web Application Firewall, though with higher initial costs, provides extensive scalability and features, appealing to organizations invested in Azure's ecosystem for long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

April 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

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.

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Mano Senaratne

Management Consultant at a consultancy with 201-500 employees

Comprehensive suite simplifies configuration while frequent updates require management

Mainly, it comes with the complete suite of Microsoft services. I can use it in conjunction with the best options and other features that come with it. Configuration is much easier than using different platforms. For example, if I have hosted the application in AWS and am using the Application Firewall from Azure, there are certain additional steps to follow when configuring them. With Microsoft, everything is within a single suite, making it easier to configure and plan. Azure continually upgrades platforms and sends us messages to upgrade to the next version, simplifying the process. Later, it's much easier if I want to upgrade the software platform, scale it, or move it to a different application host as the whole suite comes together. The return on investment is good. If I am doing applications for clients, I can invoice them for better costs. Most applications that I run and use have a better return on investment.

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Hadar Eshel

Co-Founder and CEO at Cloudway

Easy to install platform with valuable policy management features

We use the product for securing email systems, protecting websites, and safeguarding web-based applications and portals One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strategy. Additionally, it could operate in a local data center.…

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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

"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

"What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool."

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

"The tool is user-friendly."

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."

More Cloudflare pros

"The solution has good dashboards."

"I can only strongly recommend using the Azure Web Application Firewall."

"The integration it has with GitHub is great."

"It's great for protecting against DDoS attacks."

"The most valuable feature of Azure Web Application Firewall is its ability to filter requests and block false positives by using custom rules and the OWASP rule set."

"It's quite a stable product and works well with Microsoft products."

"The most valuable feature is that it allows us to publish our applications behind the firewall."

"It's a good option if you want a solution that's ready to go and easy for your team to learn. It's cloud-based, so you don't need to buy or maintain any hardware infrastructure."

More Azure Web Application Firewall pros

"The most valuable features of the solution are it is plug and play, has automated policies, a simple configuration, and is easy to create rules."

"I like its ability to identify known attacks, including DDOS attacks. It's valuable because software must be able to stop known attacks. Application attacks are evolving all the time. When it comes to software-as-a-service, we need to have software that knows about all the latest attacks. It should also protect against major unknown attacks."

"The product's bot protection feature is valuable for our company."

"The solution can be used for threat prevention or as a cloud-to-cloud backup system"

"It provides an ease of policy management."

Cons

"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."

"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."

"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."

"Technical support is not well developed. While there are good engineers, Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."

More Cloudflare cons

"The documentation needs to be improved."

"The knowledge base could be improved."

"From a reporting perspective, they could do more there."

"There is a need to be able to configure the solution more."

"I would say that Azure's customer service is not that good...I am not very happy with the support offered."

"We would like to see additional site services using AI to provide information about blocking requests and offer analytics on the origin of calls."

"Upgrading the platform regularly is necessary for security, however, frequent updates every six months or year from Azure can be a maintenance overhead."

"Azure WAF should not be deployed in the middle of the traffic."

More Azure Web Application Firewall cons

"One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strategy."

"We found it a bit slow when accessing it through the web browser. The URL also exposed the user name and the hashed password. When I log into my Barracuda WAF user portal, I could see the username and the hashed password on the URL itself. So, it is not very secure, and it is important to take that off."

"The solution can improve by bundling Security Operation Center (SOC) with the WAF-as-a-Service, it would provide a lot more value to customers."

"It's a very specific solution that is only requested for a customer's web code or their global IT policy."

"The stability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

"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."

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

"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."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"We are using the free version."

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

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The price is reasonable. It is approximately $2,000 US per month."

"Azure WAF has price advantages over other WAF solutions. The pricing model is flexible because you pay on a scale based on the level of protection you need."

"The price of the solution depends on your architecture and how you manage it. You can control the cost in Azure quite well. The costs do not directly correlate to expenses in the features we are using."

"The price is for this solution is fair and there is a license needed."

"We have an enterprise agreement with Microsoft and the pricing is good."

"I give the pricing a nine out of ten."

"It's very difficult for me to give an estimate of the cost. All I know is that we sell the box itself as a service."

"I rate the product's price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high. There are no additional costs to be paid apart from the standard licensing fees attached to the solution."

"The product is expensive but it offers flexible pricing. It could be affordable."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Government

14%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Azure Web Application Firewall?

The integration it has with GitHub is great.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Web Application Firewall?

The pricing is okay at the moment. Sometimes, when opting for a higher SKU, it's not the WAF itself that's costly but...

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What needs improvement with Azure Web Application Firewall?

While using it, I identified certain areas where it would have been good to have additional features. Right now, I ca...

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What do you like most about Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

It provides an ease of policy management.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strateg...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

We use the product for securing email systems, protecting websites, and safeguarding web-based applications and portals.

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

AWS WAF vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 36% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

More Azure Web Application Firewall Competitors

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 79% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 13% of the time

More Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Azure Web Application Firewall

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

May 2025

Download Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Barracuda WAF as a Service

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) provides centralized protection of your web applications from common exploits and vulnerabilities. Web applications are increasingly targeted by malicious attacks that exploit commonly known vulnerabilities. SQL injection and cross-site scripting are among the most common attacks.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service is a comprehensive solution designed to provide application security, DDoS protection, SSL authentication, protocol support, and application delivery. It is a plug-and-play solution with automated policies, simple configuration, and easy rule creation.

The solution can be used for threat prevention or as a cloud-to-cloud backup system based on email protection with cloud security. It is also a web application firewall and covers major protection and threat management functions. With Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service, customers can ensure the security of their web code and comply with global IT policies.

Barracuda Networks

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

Salvation Army

Buyer's Guide

Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

April 2025

Free Report: Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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