Incapsula and CloudFlare, the leading security-based CDNs are growing rapidly, adding POP’s, fighting large DDoS attacks, expanding their feature sets, and acquiring many new customers along the way. Each one caters to a particular demographic in the CDN ecosystem. CloudFlare is more like Amazon CloudFront, however, much better in that they are a pure-play CDN, where they live and breathe CDN. Incapsula is like a mini-Akamai, making great decisions all the way around, and getting ready to become a major player in the next 12 months.
Compared to CloudFlare, Incapsula goes much deeper into the security feature set, as outlined below. However, their business models are different. Incapsula competes more with the traditional CDNs, like Akamai and Limelight. CloudFlare competes more with Amazon CloudFront, and now Godaddy, being that they just got into the CDN business, supposedly. Below are snapshot comparisons of Incapsula and CloudFlare.
Incapsula vs CloudFlare 2014
Pricing Comparison
Incapsula/CloudFlare |
Incapsula |
CloudFlare |
Free |
Free |
Free |
Personal / Pro |
 $19 |
$20 |
Business / Business |
$59 |
 $200 |
Business + |
 $299 |
 N/A |
Enterprise |
 N/A |
 $5000 |
Feature Set Comparison
Incapsula |
CloudFlare |
Level -1 PCI Compliant web application firewall, extensive bot protection, backdoor protect, login protect, DNS load balancing, DDoS protection at Layer 3, 4 and 7, front-end optimization and dynamic site acceleration |
Web application firewall, service, browser integrity check, IP Reputation, DDoS Protection at Layer 3, 4 and 7, basic front-end optimization and malware scanning service |
Points of Presence
- CloudFlare: 24 Data centers with plans to add significantly more
- Incapsula: 16 Data centers with plans to add a few more
Biggest DDoS Attack Endured
- Incapsula: Extremely sophisticated multi-layered DDoS attack clocked at 100Gbps
- CloudFlare: Basic network DDoS attacked clocked at 400Gbps