• Home
  • Cloudflare vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Cloudflare vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Cloudflare Logo
Cloudflare
Read 57 Cloudflare reviews
655 views|567 comparisons
96% willing to recommend
Palo Alto Networks Logo
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks
Read 82 Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks reviews
19,848 views|11,177 comparisons
97% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Download the complete report
Buyer's Guide
Cloudflare vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks
May 2024
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 13, 2024

Cloudflare is praised for its excellent customer service and security features like DDoS protection and WAF, while users have mixed opinions on pricing and areas for improvement like customer support response times and customization options. In contrast, Prisma Cloud offers competitive pricing, comprehensive security capabilities, and positive feedback on customer service.

  • Features: Cloudflare stands out for its strong DDoS protection and WAF, enhancing website security, while Prisma Cloud excels in providing visibility and control in multi-cloud environments. Prisma Cloud offers advanced threat detection, automated compliance assessment, and a user-friendly interface for efficient security management.
  • ROI: Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and Cloudflare are both effective tools for businesses seeking a return on investment. While Prisma Cloud offers improved risk management, compliance, and productivity, Cloudflare specializes in preventing website downtime and server overload.
  • Pricing and ROI: Cloudflare's setup cost is generally low and offers flexible licensing options, with mixed overall feedback on pricing. In contrast, Prisma Cloud is praised for its competitive pricing, reasonable setup cost, and easy deployment, providing good value and scalable licensing options.
  • Room for Improvement: Cloudflare may need better customer support response times, more customization options for security features, seamless integrations with other platforms, and enhanced reporting and analytics capabilities. In comparison, Prisma Cloud could improve its UI, integrations, documentation, training resources, alerting, and reporting functionality.
  • Deployment and customer support: Cloudflare users reported varying deployment times, with some needing up to 3 months, Prisma Cloud users had mixed feedback as well. Some faced lengthy deployments followed by quick setups, while others had shorter deployment and setup durations overall. Cloudflare excels in customer service with responsive and knowledgeable support. Prisma Cloud also offers top-notch assistance, praised for expertise and effectiveness

The summary above is based on 145 interviews we conducted recently with Cloudflare and Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloudflare vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Report (Updated: May 2024).
Download the complete report
772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Anonymous User
Good agility and security with a great load balancer
Cloudflare's solution brought us more agility, security, and confidence in managing the environment. We have seen that there are very few failures... Read more →
Abdelmeguid Hamdy
Comprehensive with good security and helpful automation
The cloud solution as one platform can provide us with a lot of features and cover most of what customers care about. I have some clients that are... Read more →
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS.""The technical support is good.""DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately.""The UI is good.""Centralized, full-featured DNS.""Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations.""It's very user-friendly.""Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."

More Cloudflare Pros →

"Its ease of integration is valuable because we need to get the solution out of the door quickly, so speed and ease matter.""The policies that come prepackaged in the tool have been very valuable to us. They're accurate and they provide good guidance as to why the policy was created, as well as how to remediate anything that violates the policy.""Technical support is quite helpful.""We were pleased with Prisma's custom and built-in reports. We could go into the dashboard and see all these notifications telling us which subscriptions didn't have TLS 1.2 enabled. The security controls were the most valuable features.""You can also integrate with Amazon Managed Services. You can also get a snapshot in time, whether that's over a 24-hour period, seven days, or a month, to determine what the estate might look like at a certain point in time and generate reports from that for vulnerability management forums.""The CVEs are valuable because we used to have a tool to scan CVEs, at the language level, for the dependencies that our developers had. What is good about Prisma Cloud is that the CVEs are not only from the software layer, but from all layers: the language, the base image, and you also have CVEs from the host. It covers the full base of security.""I found the network queue sets useful. I also liked the Workload Protection Module, the vulnerability findings, and how the rule sets handle the vulnerabilities based on severity.""The most valuable features of Prisma Cloud are its cloud security posture management and cloud workload protection capabilities."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Pros →

Cons
"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country.""The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage.""For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components.""In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM.""Latencies are always a problem.""Technical support is lacking.""I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us.""The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."

More Cloudflare Cons →

"They could improve more features for the enterprise version of the solution.""The regional cost of Prisma Cloud in South Africa is high and could be improved.""More documentation with real-world use cases would be helpful.""Sometimes we do get false alerts. That should be improved.""The UI could be improved.""While Prisma provides a lot of visibility, it also creates a ton of work. Most customers that implement Prisma Cloud have thousands of alerts that are urgent.""The UI is the worst.""Palo Alto should work on ease-of-use and the user-friendliness to be more competitive with some competing products."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
  • "I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
  • "There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
  • "The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
  • "We don't have any issues with the price."
  • "The price is reasonable."
  • "The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
  • "It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."

    • More Cloudflare Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The purchasing process was easy and quick. It is a very economical solution."
  • "Our licensing fees are $18,000 USD per year."
  • "One thing we're very pleased about is how the licensing model for Prisma is based on work resources. You buy a certain amount of work resources and then, as they enable new capabilities within Prisma, it just takes those work resource units and applies them to new features. This enables us to test and use the new features without having to go back and ask for and procure a whole new product, which could require going through weeks, and maybe months, of a procurement process."
  • "The pricing and the licensing are both very fair... The biggest advice I would give in terms of costs would be to try to understand what the growth is going to look like. That's really been our biggest struggle, that we don't have an idea of what our future growth is going to be on the platform. We go from X number of licenses to Y number of licenses without a plan on how we're going to get from A to B, and a lot of that comes as a bit of a surprise. It can make budgeting a real challenge for it."
  • "From my exposure so far, they have been really flexible on whatever your current state is, with a view to what the future state might be. There's no hard sell. They "get" the journey that you're on, and they're trying to help you embrace cloud security, governance, and compliance as you go."
  • "If a competitor came along and said, "We'll give you half the price," that doesn't necessarily mean that's the right answer, at all. We wouldn't necessarily entertain it that way. Does it do what we need it to do? Does it work with the things that we want it to work with? That is the important part for us. Pricing wasn't the big consideration it might be in some organizations. We spend millions on public cloud. In that context, it would not make sense to worry about the small price differences that you get between the products."
  • "The pricing and licensing are expensive compared to the other offerings that we considered."
  • "I don't know a better way to do it, but their licensing is a little confusing. That's due to the breadth of different types of technologies they are trying to cover. The way you license depends on where you're securing. When they were Twistlock it was a simple licensing scheme and you could tell what you were doing. Now that they've changed that scheme with Palo Alto, it is quite confusing. It's very difficult to predict what your costs are going to be as you try to expand coverage."

    • More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    See Which Vendors Are Best For You
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions are best for your needs.
    See Recommendations
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
    CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions: Incapsula and Cloudflare. This test was designed to bypass security controls in place, in any possible way, circumventing whatever filters they have. Given the rise in application-level attacks, the goal of the test was to provide IT managers of online businesses with a comparison of these WAFs against real-world threats in simulated real-world conditions. Zero Science Lab is a Macedonian Information Security Research and Development Laboratory that specializes in information security hardening, consulting, network security, vulnerability research, software and hardware security assessment, penetration testing, malware analysis, forensics and much more - https://www.zeroscience.mk Background In February 2013, we conducted the first comparative pentest analysis of the CloudFlare, Incapsula and ModSecurity Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions. The goal of a WAF is to block hacker attacks / unwanted malicious traffic to your web application with as few false positives as possible. Since then, all three vendors had replied to the findings, applying patches to the discovered bypasses and improving their products to protect their… Read more →
    Questions from the Community
    Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring a...
    Top Answer:Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds by… more »
    Read all 8 answers   →
    What do you like most about Cloudflare?
    Top Answer:Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
    Read all 22 answers   →
    What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare?
    Top Answer:The product's pricing is cheap.
    Read all 21 answers   →
    What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks ?
    Top Answer:Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.
    Read all 7 answers   →
    What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?
    Top Answer:We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We are able to easily see where our container vulnerabilities lie and and where cloud… more »
    What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?
    Top Answer:Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valuable feature and their speed of integration is very good. The initial setup was… more »
    Ranking
    13th
    out of 53 in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
    Views
    655
    Comparisons
    567
    Reviews
    18
    Average Words per Review
    508
    Rating
    8.3
    1st
    out of 53 in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
    Views
    19,848
    Comparisons
    11,177
    Reviews
    53
    Average Words per Review
    1,120
    Rating
    8.4
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Palo Alto Networks Prisma Cloud, Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto
    Learn More
    Cloudflare
    Palo Alto Networks
    Overview

    Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distribution Denial of Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global 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 use the solution and 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 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.” A PeerSpot user who is a Competence Center Manager at a tech services company. 

    Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a cloud security solution used for cloud security posture management, cloud workload protection, container security, and code security. It provides visibility, monitoring, and alerting for security issues in multi-cloud environments. 

    The solution is user-friendly, easy to set up, and integrates with SIEM for generating alerts and reports. Its most valuable features include security features, monitoring capabilities, reporting, compliance monitoring, vulnerability dashboard, data security features, and multi-cloud capabilities. Prisma Cloud has helped organizations by providing comprehensive protection, automating workflows, simplifying troubleshooting, and improving collaboration between SecOps and DevOps.

    Prisma Cloud Features

    Prisma Cloud offers comprehensive security coverage in all areas of the cloud development lifecycle:

    • Code security: Protect configurations, scan code before it enters production, and integrate with other tools.

    • Security posture management: Monitor posture, identify and remove threats, and provide compliance across public clouds.

    • Workload protection: Secure hosts and containers across the application lifecycle.

    • Network security: Gain network visibility and enforce micro segmentation.

    • Identity security: Enforce permissions and secure identities across clouds.

    Benefits of Prisma Cloud

    • Unified management: All users use the same dashboards built via shared onboarding, allowing cloud security to be addressed from a single agent framework.

    • High-speed onboarding: Multiple cloud accounts and users are onboarded within seconds, rapidly activating integrated security capabilities.

    • Multiple integration options: Prisma Cloud can integrate with widely used IDE, SCM, and CI/CD workflows early in development, enabling users to identify and fix vulnerabilities and compliance issues before they enter production. Prisma Cloud supports all major workflows, automation frameworks, and third-party tools.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Prisma Cloud stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its integration capabilities, as well as its visibility, which makes it very easy for users to get a full picture of the cloud environment.

    Alex J., an information security manager at Cobalt.io, writes, “Prisma Cloud has enabled us to take a very strong preventive approach to cloud security. One of the hardest things with cloud is getting visibility into workloads. With Prisma Cloud, you can go in and get that visibility, then set up policies to alert on risky behavior, e.g., if there are security groups or firewall ports open up. So, it is very helpful in preventing configuration errors in the cloud by having visibility. If there are issues, then you can find them and fix them.”

    Luke L., a cloud security specialist for a financial services firm, writes, “You can also integrate with Amazon Managed Services. You can also get a snapshot in time, whether that's over a 24-hour period, seven days, or a month, to determine what the estate might look like at a certain point in time and generate reports from that for vulnerability management forums.”

    Sample Customers
    Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
    Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Comms Service Provider22%
    Engineering Company13%
    Marketing Services Firm9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization38%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Comms Service Provider4%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company33%
    Manufacturing Company18%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Healthcare Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization14%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business65%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise23%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise46%
    Large Enterprise36%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business28%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise52%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise61%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cloudflare vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks
    May 2024
    Free Report: Cloudflare vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    DOWNLOAD NOW
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cloudflare is ranked 13th in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) with 57 reviews while Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 1st in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) with 82 reviews. Cloudflare is rated 8.4, while Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cloudflare writes "It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks writes "The dashboard is very user-friendly and can be used to generate custom RQL based on user requirements". Cloudflare is most compared with Akamai, Azure Front Door, Imperva DDoS, AWS Shield and Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, whereas Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Wiz, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Aqua Cloud Security Platform, AWS Security Hub and CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security. See our Cloudflare vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report.

    See our list of best Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) vendors.

    We monitor all Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.