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Cloudflare One vs StrongDM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 5, 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 Access Management
11th
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), Bot Management (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (9th), ZTNA (4th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
StrongDM
Ranking in Access Management
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Privileged Access Management (PAM) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Access Management category, the mindshare of Cloudflare One is 3.7%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StrongDM is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Access Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare One3.7%
StrongDM0.8%
Other95.5%
Access Management
 

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.
MX
Dev Ops Engineer And Solution Architect at Scania
Centralized access has improved privileged control and now provides strong audit visibility
I believe StrongDM can improve its initial setup and onboarding experience for larger enterprise environments like Scania, where we have a lot of processes. Integrating different teams, access policies, and existing identity workflows requires substantial planning. Additionally, I think the dashboard customization and reporting could be more flexible for operational teams, though new teams find it manageable. Once the platform is fully integrated, it provides significant value. Apart from the onboarding experience, I would also mention that the templates for enterprise onboarding and policy setup could benefit from innovative thinking tailored to organizations managing large AWS and Kubernetes workloads. Enhanced customization in dashboards and reporting would further ease operations and provide better insights.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare One has assisted in securing my remote workforce through a SASE solution with Cloudflare One and the Workers part, although I am not currently using the Workers component."
"I'm very satisfied with the environment and the dashboard."
"It's a perfect solution from my perspective; it's easy to understand and easy to configure."
"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 tool also offers good scalability, and the dashboard, along with real-time analytics, is very good."
"Cloudflare is simple to use."
"Cloudflare Access is a stable solution."
"The simplicity of the solution is its valuable features as almost no effort was needed to learn the configurations. It is also one of the cheapest firewalls available in this category."
"By adopting StrongDM, we have achieved benefits such as eliminating our weekend outages, streamlining ongoing on-call workflows, enabling seamless migration with POC transitions directly into production with minimal effort, allowing our engineers to use their preferred SQL clients like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Workbench, and facilitating compliance through detailed session logs and query capture for SOC 2 and ISO audits."
"The best features in StrongDM are the password rotation capabilities, which I think are pretty cool, and also how you can literally log in to any of the privileged servers through a single platform."
"The best features in StrongDM are that it is the easiest product in the market for this situation with easy access."
"All of the logging is handled for us, including for auditing purposes. Looking through the audit logs is not a painful experience."
"We primarily used StrongDM for access to resources on private networks like EC2 machines, Kubernetes clusters, and various databases."
"StrongDM positively impacts our organization in many ways, mainly in cost savings from the time saved, and it has significantly improved both security and operational efficiency for us."
"StrongDM positively impacts my organization by helping with compliance and audit functions."
"StrongDM replaced the puzzle of different solutions with one single product, which made managing resources more efficient."
 

Cons

"The tool should provide on-premise versions. Currently, all versions are cloud-based."
"The free plan has limitations. For example, I can only set up three rules, and the application firewall is unavailable."
"For the topic of improvement, providing some training material is one of my suggestions."
"The response time for support must be reduced."
"Our customers no longer use Cloudflare because its service is subpar."
"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."
"Cloudflare One is not very powerful, but for what we require, it is basic and sufficient."
"They don't have a person to provide support for customers using the solution under their free plan."
"We've had a few issues with the stability of this product in the past."
"My thoughts on the pricing of StrongDM is that it is expensive."
"Additionally, StrongDM has limited MFA and passwordless options, relying heavily on time-based one-time passwords (OTP) or Duo, lacking support for true passwordless setups like biometrics or hardware YubiKeys, and it does not support per-session MFA."
"Integration, however, is something which admins configure with StrongDM, and in that area, it can be improved."
"I believe StrongDM can improve its initial setup and onboarding experience for larger enterprise environments like Scania, where we have a lot of processes."
"I think the stability of StrongDM is about four to five due to the occasional crashes that I mentioned."
"I rate the stability of the product five out of ten because crashes sometimes happen when we are working on it."
"It would be beneficial to have better control and alignment between frequent updates and improved communication regarding possible negative effects on existing customer bases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing lacks transparency."
"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 solution is not that expensive."
"Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform's pricing is good."
"The prices are slightly expensive."
"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 licensing is per user per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

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 Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise5
 

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 StrongDM?
Concerning pricing, setup cost, and licensing, our experience was very smooth as we chose not to go through the AWS Marketplace but arranged meetings directly with StrongDM. Their team was prompt, ...
What needs improvement with StrongDM?
I believe StrongDM can improve its initial setup and onboarding experience for larger enterprise environments like Scania, where we have a lot of processes. Integrating different teams, access poli...
What is your primary use case for StrongDM?
My main use case for StrongDM is privileged access management and infrastructure access that we cater to, as we were looking for alternatives and solutions to securely control and monitor our acces...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare Area 1 Email Security, Cloudflare Bot Management, Cloudflare Gateway, Cloudflare Zero Trust Platform, Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare SASE & SSE Platform
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

23andMe
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare One vs. StrongDM and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.