Cloudflare One vs Fortinet FortiDDoS comparison

Cloudflare and Fortinet are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Cloudflare is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.8, while Fortinet is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.0. Cloudflare holds a 4.1% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Fortinet’s 2.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cloudflare 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 Mar 16, 2025

Fortinet FortiDDoS and Cloudflare One compete in the cybersecurity domain, focusing on network protection. Fortinet FortiDDoS has the upper hand with its hardware-based, powerful DDoS mitigation while Cloudflare One offers an edge in scalability and broad network performance capabilities.

Features: Fortinet FortiDDoS delivers robust DDoS protection with behavior-based threat detection, purpose-built ASICs for high-performance mitigation, and zero-day attack protection. Cloudflare One provides comprehensive network security, integrating zero trust security, secure web gateways, and WAN optimization.

Room for Improvement: Fortinet FortiDDoS could enhance its cloud integration, ease of use for non-experts, and reduce hardware dependency. Cloudflare One could improve offline capabilities for on-premise scenarios, enhance support for complex configurations, and offer better insights without additional tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fortinet FortiDDoS requires complex hardware setup but offers strong customer support. Cloudflare One’s cloud-based nature ensures easier deployment and scalability, with straightforward setup facilitated by its architecture.

Pricing and ROI: Fortinet FortiDDoS involves high upfront costs due to hardware but offers a solid ROI with dedicated DDoS protection. Cloudflare One's subscription-based model provides cost-effectiveness, avoiding initial hardware investments and leveraging scalable security benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloudflare One vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare One vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS

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

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.6%, up from 19.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare One is 4.1%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiDDoS is 2.9%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

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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Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch

Engineer at SITMEXICO

The solution enables seamless security management and fosters a learning environment

Feedback could be enhanced. While I work efficiently with Clover as a partner in Mexico City, sometimes the information and requests are easier to manage with more concrete solutions. For the solution stopping us for e-learning, I appreciate the concept yet need more resources or courses in Mexico, preferably in Spanish. Certifications are easy, however, I require more real-world environments and instructors.

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Yazan Omar

Systems Engineer at aic²

An easy-to-use tool with great GUI

The product's initial setup phase was really easy. There is a lot of time involved in the testing phase and other processes related to the area of deployment, so it may take up to two weeks to deploy the solution. The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. One person is enough to take care of the deployment phase of the product. The person involved in the deployment phase needs to better understand topologies when dealing with Fortinet.

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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

"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."

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"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 most valuable feature is its usability."

"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."

"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."

"The most valuable feature is its usability."

More Cloudflare pros

"It will take the blow rather than our applications should an attack occur."

"Clover is the best product globally."

"The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good."

"This solution is easy to understand and easy to configure."

"It's the endpoint exposition. We don't need to expose our VPN server to the internet and need a zero-test solution. I can apply some conditional access to the endpoint that's connecting to our network to check their security policies or the security condition of their workstation. Once the workstation is trying to connect to my internal network, then I would like to check the discrete condition of these endpoints that are trying to access my internal network. We created some conditional access. We have CrowdStrike, to check if the CrowdStrike is installed, to check if it's updated, and to check for Windows updates. We created some conditional policies to check it."

"I'm very satisfied with the environment and the dashboard."

"The best feature is rate limiting. If I'm expecting 500 visits per hour, Cloudflare will limit the requests if I suddenly get 50,000."

"The solution has different options that can be used to differentiate DDoS attacks."

More Cloudflare One pros

"The product's initial setup phase was really easy."

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

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

"It allows me to see all the traffic on my network."

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

"It is a user-friendly product in terms of monitoring and updating policies."

"The solution is very user-friendly and very easy to use."

"The protection resources and the support are valuable features of the solution."

More Fortinet FortiDDoS pros

Cons

"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."

"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."

"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."

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."

"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."

"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."

"DNS Management."

"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."

More Cloudflare cons

"Operating and tuning the product is difficult."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform needs to improve its documentation. It took time to do the implementation."

"The onboarding process can be improved a little bit."

"The initial onboarding was causing us some confusion."

"The response time for support must be reduced."

"There are premium tier live service and lower tier live service, so we opted for the lower tier. But there is no medium tier where we pay a little extra and get a bit more service. So if that can be improved."

"Feedback could be enhanced. While I work efficiently with Clover as a partner in Mexico City, sometimes the information and requests are easier to manage with more concrete solutions."

"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."

More Cloudflare One cons

"I find that there have been issues in the past year with the solution hanging. It freezes often."

"The web interface could be much better."

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

"The challenge lies within the customer environment, particularly in Brazil, where companies have stringent security requirements for implementing solutions."

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

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

"Alerts and reporting features must be improved."

"The main improvement would be to change the firewall model, however, currently, everything is fixed and working well."

More Fortinet FortiDDoS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"We don't have any issues with the price."

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

"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."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The prices are slightly expensive."

"The solution is not that expensive."

"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."

"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."

"The pricing of the solution is cheap. The licensing cost is also very low. I rate the cost and pricing a three out of ten."

"My company has to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no hidden charges apart from the licensing costs of the solution."

"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."

"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."

"The solution is reasonably priced."

"It's quite pricey."

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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

16%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

University

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...

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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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What do you like most about Cloudflare Access?

The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Access?

The price of Cloudflare Access is the same as compared to Akamai, but I get better performance from Cloudflare. My co...

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What needs improvement with Cloudflare Access?

Cloudflare Access has strong integration with Microsoft, among other platforms. However, when it comes to Kaspersky, ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiDDoS?

The product's initial setup phase was really easy.

See all answers

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

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

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Twingate vs Cloudflare One

Compared 9% of the time

Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs Cloudflare One

Compared 7% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Cloudflare One

Compared 7% of the time

AWS Shield vs Cloudflare One

Compared 7% of the time

Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform vs Cloudflare One

Compared 5% of the time

More Cloudflare One Competitors

Arbor DDoS vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 25% of the time

Radware DDoS vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 10% of the time

AWS Shield vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 6% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Fortinet FortiDDoS

Compared 6% of the time

More Fortinet FortiDDoS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare One

May 2025

Download Cloudflare One product report

Buyer's Guide

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

May 2025

Download Fortinet FortiDDoS product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform

Fortinet DDoS, FortiDDos

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

Cloudflare One is a single-vendor Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform that enables Zero Trust security and any-to-any connectivity across enterprise applications, users, devices, and networks. Cloudflare One helps organizations simplify, modernize, and consolidate their IT architecture by converging security and networking services on our single global network and control plane.

Many organizations start by adopting our Security Service Edge (SSE) services — like ZTNA, SWG, CASB, and DLP — to reduce their attack surface, stop threats like phishing and ransomware, protect data, and apply identity-based Zero Trust verification across web, SaaS, and private app environments. Others prioritize simplifying network connectivity across offices, data centers, and cloud environments with our WANaaS.

Every service is available for customers to run in every location across Cloudflare’s global network, which today spans 330+ cities in 120+ countries, so you can scale connectivity with fast, consistent protections everywhere.

Cloudflare

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.

23andMe

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

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare One vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS

April 2025

Free Report: Cloudflare One vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare One vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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