CloudFront vs. CloudFlare
As businesses increasingly move to the cloud, one of the key considerations is how to deliver web content to users quickly and securely. Two popular content delivery platforms are CloudFront and CloudFlare, but what are the differences between them? In this article, we’ll compare CloudFront vs. CloudFlare in terms of their features, performance, security, and pricing.
Features
CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that allows website owners to distribute content globally. Its features include DDoS protection, HTTPS support, and seamless integration with other AWS services.
On the other hand, CloudFlare is a CDN and web security platform that provides several features, including DDoS protection, SSL/TLS encryption, web application firewall (WAF), content optimization, and network performance improvement. Additionally, CloudFlare offers a global network of 200 data centers in over 100 countries, making it one of the largest and fastest CDN providers in the world.
Performance
When it comes to performance, both CloudFront and CloudFlare offer fast content delivery to users. CloudFront uses Amazon’s infrastructure to provide low-latency delivery of static, dynamic, and streaming content. Meanwhile, CloudFlare's globally distributed network ensure content is delivered at high speeds.
According to Cedexis, an internet performance monitoring company, in terms of global performance rankings, CloudFront ranks third, while CloudFlare ranks 7th.
Security
One of the key concerns in using any CDN is ensuring the security of web content. Both CloudFront and CloudFlare claim to offer robust security features.
CloudFront offers several security features such as DDoS protection, AWS web application firewall, logging, and SSL/TLS encryption. CloudFront's DDoS mitigation leverages automatically managed rulesets, designed to automatically block known DDoS attack vectors, with the flexibility to customize rulesets to meet specific application requirements.
CloudFlare also offers DDoS protection, WAF, bot management, SSL/TLS encryption, and more. CloudFlare's DDoS protection is offered in layers, utilizing rate-based and behaviour-based algorithms to spot and mitigate DDoS attacks while allowing legitimate traffic to pass through.
Pricing
When it comes to pricing, both CloudFront and CloudFlare offer flexible pricing options. AWS customers pay for what they use with CloudFront, based on the number of requests, data transfer out, and data transfer in. The pricing for Amazon CloudFront ranges from $0.085/GB to $0.010/GB based on monthly usage.
Meanwhile, CloudFlare’s pricing is primarily based on the type of features the customer selects. There are different plans, including a free plan for basic features like DDoS protection, SSL/TLS encryption, and unmetered mitigation of DDoS attacks. Paid plans start at $20/month, with additional features such as access to WAF, domain name system (DNS) hosting and content acceleration.
In summary, both CloudFront and CloudFlare offer great features, performance, and security. CloudFront is a good option for users who are already using AWS for their cloud infrastructure, while CloudFlare offers an extensive layer of security features and a large global network across many data centers worldwide.