Overview

CloudFlare

Stacks77.6K

Followers23.1K

Votes1.8K

Incapsula

Stacks1.3K

Followers72

Votes5

CloudFlare vs Incapsula: What are the differences?

Introduction

CloudFlare and Incapsula are both popular content delivery network (CDN) services that offer a range of security and performance features for websites. While they have similarities in terms of what they provide, there are key differences that distinguish them from each other. In this article, we will explore six major differences between CloudFlare and Incapsula.

Pricing Model: CloudFlare offers a free plan with limited features and additional paid plans with more advanced features and higher performance. It uses a flexible pricing model based on usage and the services required. On the other hand, Incapsula has a tiered pricing structure, with different packages that offer varying levels of performance, security, and support.
Robust Security Features: Both CloudFlare and Incapsula provide security features such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection, Web Application Firewall (WAF), and SSL/TLS encryption. However, Incapsula is renowned for its comprehensive security capabilities, with advanced bot detection and mitigation, client reputation scoring, and IP whitelisting/blacklisting features. CloudFlare's security features are also robust, but Incapsula offers additional layers of protection.
Network Size and Performance: CloudFlare has a vast network of data centers spread across the globe, ensuring that websites using their services benefit from low-latency connections and fast content delivery to end-users. Incapsula, while also having a global network, has a slightly smaller network size compared to CloudFlare. However, it compensates for this with its advanced caching mechanisms and traffic routing algorithms, resulting in excellent performance.
Ease of Use: CloudFlare's user interface is highly intuitive and user-friendly, making it easier for novices to get started with their services. It offers a simple setup process and provides in-depth analytics and reporting tools. Incapsula, while still relatively easy to use, has a more complex user interface that requires a bit more technical knowledge to navigate effectively.
Scalability and Flexibility: Both CloudFlare and Incapsula can handle high volumes of traffic and scale seamlessly. However, CloudFlare is known for its ability to scale effortlessly, even for massive websites or popular online services. It has the infrastructure and resources to handle immense traffic spikes without disruptions. Incapsula, while still highly scalable, may not be as optimized for extreme scalability as CloudFlare.
Additional Services and Integration: CloudFlare offers a wide range of additional services and integrations, such as domain registration, DNS management, and load balancing. It also has a thriving community where users can exchange knowledge and share custom scripts. Incapsula, on the other hand, provides additional features like content delivery and image optimization, ideal for websites that prioritize performance.

In summary, CloudFlare and Incapsula have some similarities in terms of providing security and performance enhancements for websites. However, they differ in their pricing models, robustness of security features, network size and performance, ease of use, scalability and flexibility, and the variety of additional services and integrations they offer.

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Advice on CloudFlare, Incapsula

Francesco

CTO at ORDR.menu

Dec 1, 2021

Decided

I don't think I have registered a domain in the last 10 years that hasn't been linked to CloudFlare within the first 2 hours from registration.

The benefits you get from even the free version of CloudFlare are amazing. From day 0:

30/80% of bandwidth savings thanks to their CDN
Origin IP address protection
Managed SSL

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

CloudFlare	Incapsula
Cloudflare speeds up and protects millions of websites, APIs, SaaS services, and other properties connected to the Internet.	Through an application-aware, global content delivery network (CDN), Incapsula provides any website and web application with best-of-breed security, DDoS protection, load balancing and failover solutions.
CDN;WAF (Web Application Firewall);DDOS Protection;	Website Security and WAF; Unmatched web application security experience, enhanced by real-time big data analytics, enables Incapsula to provide best-of-breed security to the world's businesses. DDoS Protection; Combining a robust network backbone and industry-acclaimed traffic inspection solutions, Incapsula provides protection against all application, network, and protocol-based DDoS attacks. CDN; Incapsula’s CDN is a global network of data centers that deliver Full Site Acceleration through intelligent caching and content optimization tools. Load Balancing; Incapsula's Layer 7 Load Balancing & Failover service provides an enterprise-grade cloud-based solution for a healthy network.
Statistics
Stacks 77.6K	Stacks 1.3K
Followers 23.1K	Followers 72
Votes 1.8K	Votes 5
Pros & Cons
Pros 426 Easy setup, great cdn 278 Free ssl 200 Easy setup 191 Security 181 Ssl Cons 2 Expensive when you exceed their fair usage limits 2 No support for SSHFP records	Pros 5 Best of them
Integrations
CodeGuard Google Analytics GoSquared Clicky UserVoice SnapEngage Blitz Pingdom	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to CloudFlare, Incapsula?

Amazon CloudFront

Amazon CloudFront can be used to deliver your entire website, including dynamic, static, streaming, and interactive content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your content are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance.

KeyCDN

KeyCDN offers super fast and secure content delivery for minimal loading time. In addition to the CDN, it also offers advanced image processing and many other features such as live logs and Let's Encrypt SSL.

Fastly

Fastly's real-time content delivery network gives you total control over your content, unprecedented access to performance analytics, and the ability to instantly update content in 150 milliseconds.

MaxCDN

The MaxCDN Content Delivery Network efficiently delivers your site’s static file through hundreds of servers instead of slogging through a single host. This "smart route" technology distributes your content to your visitors via the city closest to them.

jsDelivr

jsDelivr is a free CDN for open source developers, with advanced features for javascript projects with access to NPM and Github It uses multiple CDN providers, resulting in the best possible uptime and performance.

Moovweb XDN

All-in-one platform to develop, deploy, preview, experiment on, monitor, and run your frontend.

Limelight CDN

Whether it’s your website, mobile applications, videos, music, software, games, or APIs, your content needs to reach customers quickly, reliably, and securely. It provides the capacity, coverage, and performance to cost-effectively deliver a better experience for you and your customers.

cdnjs

Everyone loves the Google CDN? Even Microsoft runs their own CDN. The problem is, they only host the most popular libraries. We host it all - JavaScript, CSS, SWF, images, etc! Powered by CloudFlare.

Statically

A free, fast, & modern CDN for open source projects, WordPress, images, and any static assets.

Cloudflare CDN

A CDN is a distributed network of servers that provides several advantages for a web site: Cached content: By caching web site content, It helps improve page load speeds, reduce bandwidth usage, and reduce CPU usage on the server.