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Cloudflare One vs Portnox comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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 One
Ranking in ZTNA
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (20th), Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (12th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (21st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (13th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (8th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (12th), Access Management (11th), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (9th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Portnox
Ranking in ZTNA
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (5th), Passwordless Authentication (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the ZTNA category, the mindshare of Cloudflare One is 10.6%, down from 14.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Portnox is 3.5%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
ZTNA Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare One10.6%
Portnox3.5%
Other85.9%
ZTNA
 

Featured Reviews

CV
Network Architect at IP Dimension
Cloud security has improved remote access and has reduced costs for smaller client sites
I have used Cloudflare One's Identity-Aware Proxy, and it is quite straightforward from what I have seen so far. The app registration on the Azure side integrates fully into Cloudflare, and I am very satisfied with that part because it is easy to set up. The integration of Cloudflare One's Secure Web Gateway and Zero Trust Network Access works without any issues. That part is pretty automatic, and if you complete the rest of the setup, it comes together by itself with no issues from my side. What makes it nice is that we can actually start replacing on-site firewalls at this stage for the smaller clients because it does not matter if they go to a coffee shop or work from home; they are still secured by the same connection. The hops get shorter and you get better latency. We have done testing to see if it is better. One thing that we did notice with our proof of concept with our current client is that they have people connecting from the UK. When they used their previous VPN solution, uploading CAD drawings and other files to the server took a long time. They mentioned that it is much quicker on Cloudflare One's solution. I definitely believe that is part of the improved performance, and I am satisfied with that as well. What is nice about Cloudflare One is that it makes the setup easier and also easier to train technicians to maintain it. Compared to legacy systems, we do not need to get fancy firewalls in place that are costly. That is definitely also a cost-saver with Cloudflare One.
Maurice Mwaura - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at Applied Principles Limited
Unified access control has improved compliance visibility and simplified passwordless access
There is work to be done when it comes to making the solution more seamless. For example, when a user is denied access, they would need a way to maybe self-resolve themselves, perhaps a way to generate a ticket on their own, something around resolutions. When it comes to users using the product, that is where good products are differentiated from products that are a bit of a challenge. Portnox has much to do in terms of their reporting. The generated reports need improvement. Things that other tools would say are normal are usually not present. For example, there is a page called NAS devices or NAS network that is able to show the switches that have been managed. Currently, there is no way of generating an easy report or an easy way of just generating something to tell the customer what they have been able to achieve so far. This is not done yet and is still very manual. I think there is work to be done there. More integrations around the various products being used would be beneficial. So far I have not encountered any major challenge. Where there was a challenge, I think support came in and helped us resolve. In fact, most of the challenges are not with the product; they are with the customer environment. I think that is just to update their documentation where they have come across a new vendor for easier integrations in the future.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a stable solution."
"The solution has different options that can be used to differentiate DDoS attacks."
"The tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good."
"For Cloudflare Access, I am using the free plan...The most valuable feature is their protection."
"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."
"It's a perfect solution from my perspective; it's easy to understand and easy to configure."
"Cloudflare is simple to use."
"Clover is the best product globally."
"Portnox's pricing is very conservative and offers great value for money."
"Most customers feel value immediately upon deployment; they are able to see what is connected and apply the policies."
"It's a stable product."
"This product has helped us tremendously during the years in locating all kind of issues that we had on the network, very quickly, and I recommend it."
"The minute people have issues on their network, we can see what is happening right away."
"The cloud-based feature is very nice. We use Meraki for our switching, and it is simple to point all of our networks and offices to Portnox. It is pretty seamless."
"We are very satisfied with this solution; we like it because it is agentless."
"The product's initial setup phase was straightforward."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare One is not very powerful, but for what we require, it is basic and sufficient."
"The onboarding process can be improved a little bit."
"For the topic of improvement, providing some training material is one of my suggestions."
"Our customers no longer use Cloudflare because its service is subpar."
"Operating and tuning the product is difficult."
"Cloudflare DDoS has poor technical support."
"Our subscription plan for the solution has a limitation of bot signatures."
"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."
"The solution did have some stability issues, however, all I had to do was restart it."
"One of the things for the on-premise is that sometimes you click on it and it takes a while for it to respond."
"We have seen instances where the older version stops working properly, and we have to update each system individually."
"It could be a little cheaper."
"Portnox can occasionally knock out a switch port, causing network downtime and requiring manual reset."
"In terms of operational efficiency, things are more complicated now. It takes more time to get devices on the network, but we increased security quite a bit."
"I believe there is a lot of room for improvement in terms of integration."
"It can't work fully redundant."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not that expensive."
"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 prices are slightly expensive."
"The pricing is somewhere in the middle. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"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."
"The price tag is no longer $200,000, but rather $300,000 to $400,000. It's twice."
"The licensing module should be reviewed to count the number of devices instead of port numbers of total switches. There is a case for this where not all ports for a switch are used by devices. Unused ports are calculated in the license, then the customer pays for license for those unused ports."
"The cost of Portnox Clear is reasonable."
"The pricing is a bit high, possibly due to the cloud features and running instances across regions like the US, Asia, and Europe."
"It is not bad. It is a bit on the high side, but considering the cloud features and how much it costs to run the instance in the cloud, it is not unreasonable. We do have RADIUS servers for the US, Asia, and Europe."
"The solution is very expensive and I would rate it 10 out of 10."
"We pay for port licensing and support on a yearly basis, and it's not cheap."
"The users are not very happy with the new licensing option where there is only a subscription license. There is no perpetual license."
"The vendor price is fair."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Healthcare Company
7%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
In my opinion, Cloudflare One can be improved mainly through compatibility, as the integration should be much simpler because it is currently too closed and too proprietary. Regarding additional fe...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform?
Cloudflare One's primary use case for my organization is to protect servers and to provide remote access with the VPN, strong authentication, and DDoS protection. The integration of Secure Web Gate...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Portnox Clear?
My thoughts on the pricing are that they are usually very flexible. They work with the customer's budget. In terms of being cheap or expensive, that usually just depends on the customer. If a custo...
What needs improvement with Portnox Clear?
The area that has room for improvement that I had is actually the one that they fixed about two or three days ago regarding the session recording. As of now, I am yet to review and see any areas of...
What is your primary use case for Portnox Clear?
Some of the best features that I have experienced with Portnox is the integration with identity providers and the fact that they introduced ZTNA. Recently, they introduced session recording, which ...
 

Also Known As

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

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
Data Realty, Royal London, Wales Millennium Centre, McLaren Construction Group, EL AL Israeli Airlines, 
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare One vs. Portnox and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.