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F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs Kentik comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.2
Cloudflare's services enhanced security and efficiency, resulting in significant ROI, cost savings, and improved WordPress performance for businesses.
Sentiment score
6.4
F5 BIG-IP AFM offers cost-effective returns with F5 bundles, though standalone returns are moderate, providing practical daily value.
Sentiment score
5.2
Kentik enhanced network efficiency, reduced costs, improved security, enabled better traffic management, and justified investment through perceived value.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
In terms of return on investment with Cloudflare, it costs my time to set them up, but basically once they're set up, it's done.
Owner at Hga consulting
The return on investment for me is significant as time is the critical aspect.
Senior Network and Security Expert at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
If we had, for example, a contracted capacity from Vivo of 50 GB and we were using 40, with Kentik we reduced this usage from 40 to 20.
Network Engineer at a media company with 51-200 employees
In production environments, especially for service providers on IP networks and data centers, Kentik helps in reducing the time to identify and resolve issues.
BDM at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
I believe the return on investment has been mainly time savings in performing troubleshooting.
Network Analyst at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Cloudflare's support is responsive and knowledgeable, with varying experiences depending on the plan and need for faster escalation.
Sentiment score
6.8
F5 BIG-IP AFM support is responsive and praised, though expertise varies; customer service is excellent, communication needs improvement.
Sentiment score
6.6
Kentik's customer service is praised for being proactive, responsive, and knowledgeable, effectively handling unique issues with timely solutions.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
Senior Consultant CDN at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.
Owner at Hga consulting
We use other solutions where support is available through Slack channels and is more interactive, with someone responding within a couple of minutes or seconds.
General Manager at bKash Limited
The responses are generally fast and effective.
System Advisor at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
The customer service is excellent, and I rate it ten out of ten.
Network Security Engineer at IIPL
I rate the technical support by F5 a ten from one to ten.
Information Security Engineer at BigFish Enterprise Ltd.
I have mostly used forums for any support needed because the setup is straightforward and the documentation is quite good.
BDM at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
They have monthly calls and discuss the product roadmap with us to determine what is needed.
Network Engineer III at Fortanix
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Cloudflare excels in scalability, supporting seamless transitions and performance during high-traffic periods, highly rated by users.
Sentiment score
7.0
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is scalable and flexible, supporting diverse environments and thousands of users daily.
Sentiment score
6.6
Kentik is praised for scalability, handling vast data volumes across global centers, with user-friendly dashboards and seamless expansion.
It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
Cloudflare's scalability is quite good; it is very easy to scale whenever we want to include multiple domains.
Senior Network and Security Expert at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
The solution is highly scalable, allowing me to add or remove nodes and manage traffic without interruption, which is essential for meeting application demands.
System Advisor at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Kentik's integration with Kubernetes makes scaling easier.
BDM at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Kentik's scalability is effective; the platform can handle these large volumes.
Network Analyst at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
Kentik's scalability depends on how it is contracted.
Network Engineer at a media company with 51-200 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Cloudflare is reliable with high stability ratings, minimal issues, improved network connectivity, and praised fast DNS services.
Sentiment score
8.4
F5 BIG-IP AFM is highly rated for stability, reliability, and efficient logging, with no major bugs or issues reported.
Sentiment score
8.1
Kentik is stable and reliable, with quick resolution of minor issues and minimal impact from maintenance or hardware failures.
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
Cloudflare's reliability and uptime has met my expectations; it has been quite good in general.
Senior Network and Security Expert at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
In production, however, dimensioning of the underlying platforms is something to be mindful of.
BDM at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Based on stability, I would give Kentik a nine.
Network Engineer III at Fortanix
I can say it is so great for us because if we configure it with Flowspec, the orchestration that we use, which is Kentik, makes the decision and automatically forwards the traffic to another position that we have in our network, or outgoing that we use.
Telecomm Analyst at a tech company with 11-50 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Users suggest improvements in Cloudflare's features, pricing, support, analytics, documentation, and partner relations for better service experience.
F5 BIG-IP AFM needs better GUI, cloud integration, pricing, support, reporting, and zero-day prevention to enhance user experience.
Kentik should enhance AI integration, usability, interface navigation, customization, and support for improved analysis and user experience.
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.
General Manager at bKash Limited
What Cloudflare is doing internally is that it is stepping ahead in areas like detection and protection.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option.
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Having advanced technology similar to other vendors like Palo Alto for zero-day attack prevention would be valuable.
Network Security Engineer at IIPL
The appliance and features could be enhanced further, especially in terms of security.
System Advisor at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
I would assess the importance of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)'s integration with cloud services as significant.
Information Security Engineer at BigFish Enterprise Ltd.
More work is required to integrate AI for troubleshooting, simplifying root cause analysis, and providing suggested solutions for network issues.
BDM at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
It needed to be a bit easier for new users and have slightly more customized reports.
Network Analyst at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
Currently, the way I'm configuring it uses reactive alerts, which means alerts are triggered when an issue occurs. I would prefer more proactive alerts in the future.
Epicor Engineer at Sunway Group
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare provides cost-effective, feature-rich plans for varying traffic needs, offering significant value compared to competitors like Akamai.
F5 BIG-IP AFM is costly yet valued for its stability, functionality, and perceived value for money despite high pricing.
Kentik pricing is competitive but high; volume discounts available; annual contracts; enterprises should budget significantly for full implementation.
I find it to be cheap.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high.
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The standard license is reasonably priced, but additional features like the WAF can be more expensive.
System Advisor at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
If considering a one-stop solution that provides load balancing, DNS security, AAA authentication, and firewalling on the same hardware, the cost is reasonable.
Network Security Engineer at IIPL
The pricing is good and aligns with the market target.
Sales Manager at IFX NEtworks
Kentik’s pricing is competitive in the marketplace.
BDM at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Later, the prices are very high to maintain all the functionality blocks.
Network Engineer at a media company with 51-200 employees
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare offers superior caching, DNS management, and security, enhancing performance, global reach, and domain management with innovative features.
F5 BIG-IP AFM provides robust security and performance with features like DDoS protection and AI-driven traffic analysis.
Kentik offers real-time network insights, traffic analysis, and automation, enhancing performance and ease of use for monitoring and cost control.
The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Most of our DNS records that are presented to the internet are proxied whenever possible, providing another layer of defense from our perspective.
Senior Security Engineer at ManpowerGroup
Cloudflare has positively impacted our organization by giving us flexibility to manage the DNS part, being quite fast, and allowing us to manage everything from a single dashboard.
Senior Network and Security Expert at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
The solution provides behavioral analysis via AI to detect malicious traffic.
Network Security Engineer at IIPL
The most valuable features for me are stability, availability, and security, along with the ability to manage multiple features to secure my applications.
System Advisor at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
I think the DDoS features are valuable in F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM), and I recommend it usually for certain types of companies.
Information Security Engineer at BigFish Enterprise Ltd.
The best features that Kentik offers are the ability to identify traffic end-to-end and to know which transit is used, if it goes through any other transit, to see the entire flow, from the subscriber to the content provider and vice versa.
Network Engineer at a media company with 51-200 employees
This allows for better understanding of whether there is a critical ongoing case related to incoming traffic, such as a DDoS event, which is crucial for a service provider dealing with numerous customers.
Network Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Kentik has positively impacted our organization because when something happens, we use Kentik to analyze the problem and it brings us a faster solution to the problem, and the troubleshooting is clearer.
Telecomm Analyst at a tech company with 11-50 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall...
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Kentik
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
7th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 12.4%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is 1.9%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kentik is 1.3%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare12.4%
Kentik1.3%
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)1.9%
Other84.4%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

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.
Nawapol Boonlerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Engineer at BigFish Enterprise Ltd.
Comprehensive network protection has mitigated DDoS risks and supports secure on-prem operations
Currently, there are no weaknesses or disadvantages in F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) that I have identified. It is a little bit expensive, and I think about additional features they could have in the future to make it even better. For example, I have thoughts about the price. Currently, it does not integrate, and I would assess the importance of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)'s integration with cloud services as significant. Currently, I use only one site, and I cannot tell you about F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) centralized security policies. I have not used F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)'s Threat Intelligence capabilities. I have not used their dynamic traffic shaping feature. So far, the only thing that could be improved is the pricing of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM).
Gcecilio - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a media company with 51-200 employees
Traffic insights have reduced transit costs and support secure, direct connections with providers
The best features that Kentik offers are the ability to identify traffic end-to-end and to know which transit is used, if it goes through any other transit, to see the entire flow, from the subscriber to the content provider and vice versa, from the content provider to the subscriber.I can also determine whether it is symmetric or asymmetric traffic, and if it goes through any provider that has some kind of bottleneck. That is very important. Regarding the security part, which is also possible to handle through Kentik, you can configure it in a way that makes the network more secure and reduces the amount of dirty traffic or attacks received. Kentik has had a high positive impact on my organization. Besides the cost reduction, it has been possible to perform troubleshooting more effectively, and also regarding DDoS-related attacks. In addition to cost reduction, we had a more reliable connection. Since the moment we identified that it was possible to have a direct connection with content providers like CDN77, Cloudflare, and Akamai, we established a direct connection there through a PNI with these content providers, making the network less dependent on an IP transit provider.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Engineering Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Media Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise10
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare DNS?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
The standard license is reasonably priced, but additional features like the WAF can be more expensive. There are plen...
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
Currently, there are no weaknesses or disadvantages in F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) that I have identifi...
What is your primary use case for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
I am starting to learn and working with F5 team to conduct a proof of concept, and I do have experience with F5 Rules...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been limited because I was not responsible for that in my ...
What needs improvement with Kentik?
I do not currently use Kentik's anomaly detection. I had communication with Kentik's technical support through a What...
What is your primary use case for Kentik?
I'm using Kentik for my own internal use. My primary use case is to monitor our equipment and to get a more detailed ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
F5 AFM, F5 Advanced Firewall Manager
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.
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent. 
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs. Kentik and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.