Updated February 27, 2023
Difference Between Cloudflare vs CloudFront
Cloudflare being one of the world’s largest networks provides services that increase the security and performance issues of websites and apps. In the early days, while using the Internet and trying to access a website or web information, initially a request was to be sent from a system to server, which would reflect the desired output as needed. But sometimes there come a situation of a system crash or system becomes unresponsive when their lots of requests come at a time to a server where data are hosted. To overcome these difficulties and make their websites, apps safe and secure, Cloudflare services were used. Cloudflare provides security by protecting internet properties from malicious attacks, malicious bots, etc.
Whereas, Cloud Front is a content delivery network (CDN) that provides a globally distributed network of proxy servers which cache content this, in turn, improves speed performance for downloading the content. Cloud Front works on a model of “pay as you use”.
Head to Head Comparison between Cloudflare vs CloudFront (Infographics)
Below are the top 10 differences between Cloudflare vs CloudFront:
Key Differences between Cloudflare vs CloudFront
Following are the key differences of Cloudflare vs CloudFront:
Cloudflare
Cloudflare works on a phenomenon of reverse proxy, where we set up a site with Cloudflare; it’s giving the name servers to Cloudflare. This allows Cloudflare to have control over your site and drive all traffic to your site. Cloudflare too offers lots of other functionality beyond its CDN.
When anyone visits your website, Cloudflare will take the static contents and store the data on various Cloudflare networks around the world, so as it can be accessed from their desired locations.
The setting of Cloudflare involves the steps as following:
- Signup the Cloudflare account.
- Start the Add Site Wizard.
- Change your domain name servers (Due to reverse proxy approach
- Once done we can access and manage the Cloudflare settings from the dashboard.
Cloudflare provides other services as:
- Free SSL certificate (But its shared version)
- DDoS Protection
- Web Application Firewall
- Image Optimization
- Mobile Optimization
CloudFront
CloudFront is a CDN that delivers the data through a network known as edge location which in turn results in fast access to data, low latency, low network traffic when a user requests for data in advance.
Here we need not change the name servers like Cloudflare. Cloud Front has a push-pull approach. CloudFront automatically pulls your data from the origin position and puts on various networks of servers around the globe. The Key Difference between Cloudflare and CloudFront is as noted below:
As like Cloudflare controls the name servers, CloudFront does not do so, as it can’t automatically serve any site to serve content from any edge locations. This is where separate URL comes into play as cdn.yoursite.com (Nearest CloudFront Edge Server), where yoursite.com is termed by Cloudflare.
Preference of CloudFront and Cloudflare on WordPress:
- The setup procedure is quite simple for Cloudflare than CloudFront.
- Cloudflare has slightly larger edge networks than CloudFront.
- WordPress Rocket provides a dedicated Cloudflare Integration.
CloudFront provides some features which are less needed by WordPress as like:
- It provides control over HTTP Headers and cache invalidation.
- CloudFront works with Live streaming.
Cloudflare vs CloudFront Comparison Table
Let us discuss the top comparison between Cloudflare vs CloudFront:
|
Cloudflare |
CloudFront |
| Cloudflare provides a global CDN with fast performance and security features. | CloudFront is an Amazon CDN and the world’s largest cloud service provider. |
| The setup of Cloudflare is quite easy. | CloudFront setup involves two ways: Push & Pull |
| Cloudflare does not support Live streaming Videos | CloudFront provides Live streaming videos |
| Cloudflare is used for image optimization | CloudFront does not support image optimization. |
| Cloudflare has wide edge networks than CloudFront. | CloudFront has a bit less than Cloudflare. |
| Cloudflare services are free of cost with free SSL | CloudFront works on a pay as you go, model, |
| Tools integrated with Cloudflare are Buddy, Cloudcraft, Mixmax. | Tools integrated with CloudFront are: Google Analytics, Terraform |
| It is best for managing server loads and site speeds. | CloudFront is used when there is need of speed in static and dynamics web contents |
| SPDY protocol is fully supported | SPDY Protocol is not supported |
| Origin Push is not supported
No of Pops (Point of presence): 71 |
Origin Push is partially supported
No of Pops: 41 |
Apart from all these comparisons above, Cloudflare has a far better interface than CloudFront. Cloudflare provides 24/7 phone and email support whereas CloudFront provides the same but with the extra cost included. Cloudflare is not an actual CDN but a reverse proxy that takes overall traffic and CloudFront is an advanced CDN suitable for both static and dynamic content. Cloudflare is used by mainly FounderLY, Stack Overflow, and Code Guard. CloudFront does not publish about network capacity as it’s sizable and Cloudflare has a network capacity of 15Tbps.
Conclusion
Cloudflare and CloudFront offer CDN services that speed up the performance of your website page web load and reduces the load on the server. Cloudflare having the simple setup process is used by most WordPress users whereas CloudFront doesn’t. Comparing with both, Cloudflare provides a better choice in providing services and security than CloudFront.
CloudFront known as a faster content delivery service enables the reliability and availability of content for end users whereas Cloudflare has been at the peak of its launching providing secure versions of insecure internet protocols and making them available for free with secure HTTPS service (Universal SSL). Thus Cloudflare makes a reliable and faster and secure internet for all end users. Thus CloudFront and Cloudflare are both suited to users and are applicable as per their needs and requirements. So Cloudflare is much more flexible and reliable than CloudFront.
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