The main difference between Control D and Cloudflare is that Control D offers more functionality and superior customer support for its DNS and web filtering service at a significantly lower price point than Cloudflare.
Cloudflare also offers other products, such as CDN services and performance optimization tools, that Control D isn't focused on.
This article compares Control D vs Cloudflare and analyzes both against the following criteria:
- Plans
- Pricing
- General Features
- Clients, Applications, and Integrations
- Analytics & Reporting
- Support
- Performance
Plans
Cloudflare’s DNS offering is called Cloudflare Gateway. It is packaged within Cloudflare’s broader Zero Trust product, but it’s unclear whether Gateway is still offered as a standalone service or not, suggesting you may have to register for the entire Zero Trust package to access Gateway.
Since you are redirected to the Zero Trust page when trying to access the Gateway product, this article's Plans and Pricing sections will be based on the information provided on that page.
Cloudflare Zero Trust offers three plans – Free, Pay-as-you-go, and Contract – with differing functionality.
Control D takes a simpler approach, opting to remove plans entirely. Instead, it distinguishes between three types of organizations: Businesses, MSPs, and Schools and non-profits.
This makes onboarding easier and future-proofs your business since Control D does not gatekeep features; all current and future features and upgrades will be made available to you – regardless of your organization type – at no additional cost.
Pricing
While Cloudflare’s Free plan covers up to 50 users, its limited query log retention (24 hours) and lack of guaranteed uptime reduce its practicality.
The next step up is the Pay-as-you-go plan at $7/user/month, which bundles the entire Zero Trust service. This potentially includes features you may not need, meaning you may be forced to pay this premium price for unused functionality.
To make matters worse, more advanced features such as SIEM log streaming and per-user reporting are restricted to the Contract plan, which is priced on a case-by-case basis. Since it’s offered as an upgrade to the Pay-as-you-go plan and has further functionality, it’s safe to say that the Contract plan will incur even higher per-month costs.
In contrast, Control D has a simple, transparent pricing model:
- Enterprises – $2/endpoint/month
- MSP – $1/endpoint/month
- School/Non-Profit – qualify for a further discounted rate
This means that Control D costs a fraction of what Cloudflare charges, and as mentioned in the previous section, every feature is available to all customers, regardless of organization type.
Since there are no hidden costs and paywalls, and all future updates and features are included at no extra charge, Control D is a far more budget-friendly solution than Cloudflare.
General Features
Blockable Services
Both platforms offer content category blocking, but the largest difference is in blocking specific applications, platforms, tools, vendors, websites, and groups of websites.
These are called Services, and Control D offers 1,000+ for granular control over what is and isn’t resolved on your network and Endpoints. With Control D, these Services can either be blocked or redirected to a proxy location – more on that later.
On the flip side, Cloudflare only offers 200+.
Block Ads & Trackers
Control D blocks ads and trackers from resolving on your network and end-user devices. This increases security and privacy and can improve your internet browsing experience since resource-heavy ads and trackers are blocked from loading on your webpage, thus freeing up bandwidth.
Cloudflare does not offer this feature at all.
Advanced Geo-Custom Rules
Control D provides advanced geo-based rules thanks to its Geo-Custom Rules feature. This allows you to block, redirect, and bypass DNS queries that are made from (or resolve to) IP addresses (not) in a particular ASN or country.
Typical use cases for Geo-Custom Rules are:
- Blocking queries resolving to IPs in a specific country/ASN
- Blocking queries made from IPs not in a specific country/ASN
- Redirecting queries that do not resolve to IPs in a specific country/ASN
- Bypassing queries made from IPs not in a specific country/ASN
- A combination of all of the above
Cloudflare only allows you to enforce geo-based IP block rules, and it does not include ASNs.
Traffic Redirection
A feature unique to Control D is Traffic Redirection, which allows you to mask your source IP address without using a VPN. You can redirect DNS traffic through a proxy server in one of over 100 exit locations in 60+ countries.
This feature is not available with Cloudflare.
Remote Browser Isolation
Cloudflare offers Remote Browser Isolation as a purchasable add-on. It creates a remote browser on your Endpoint that acts like a middleman between you and the website or service you wish to access, protecting you from malicious code, ransomware, and phishing attempts.
This feature is not yet available with Control D.
Malware Filter Effectiveness
An independent test carried out in September 2024 examined the malware filters of nine different public DNS resolvers.
Cloudflare was tested with their Cloudflare for Families product – Cloudflare for Families is built on the same technology that powers its Gateway product. It was found to block 3.93% of malicious domains, placing fourth from the bottom.
On the other hand, Control D achieved a 99.97% block rate, ranking first among all competitors. As such, Control D has a far superior malware filter to keep you, your business, and your family safe on the internet.
Clients, Applications, and Integrations
There are no differences between Control D and Cloudflare in this department as they both offer full cross-platform support, API access, Active Directory support, and Single Sign-On capabilities.
Analytics & Reporting
Data Availability
Control D’s analytics features are baked into the platform, meaning all your data is viewable and actionable within the Dashboard.
This streamlines the DNS management process since you can search through your Activity Log, filter your view based on Endpoints, Services, and locations, and create rules directly from the analytics Dashboard. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Cloudflare.
While Cloudflare offers basic analytics features within the platform itself, for more detailed logs and reports, you must utilize Cloudflare’s Logpush service. However, this requires upgrading to the Contract plan.
Data Export & Query Log Retention
Control D stores 3 day’s worth of query log data for all users, which can be exported as a .csv file. Cloudflare offers up to 6 months of log data, depending on your plan.
Report Retention
With Control D, you can view reports from the last 30 days with hourly time-series granularity or from the last year with daily time-series granularity.
Cloudflare allows you to view reports from the previous 6 months, but again, the exact time frame depends on your plan.
SIEM Log Streaming
Control D allows you to stream query log data to an SIEM tool at no additional cost. Although this is possible with Cloudflare, it requires the use of Logpush, which, as mentioned earlier, is only reserved for users on the Contract plan.
Per-user Reporting
Control D offers this feature out of the gate, but Cloudflare requires you to upgrade to the Contract Plan.
Data Storage Regions
Control D offers three data storage regions: North America (New York, US), Europe (Amsterdam, NL), and Australia (Sydney, AU). For an additional cost, you can select a custom storage region.
While Cloudflare provides two locations – North America and Europe – they do not offer a custom storage region.
Scheduled Reporting
With Control D, you can schedule daily, weekly, or monthly email reports. They include information on:
- Queries – Total number of queries served, blocked, and redirected
- Top blocked – Most frequently blocked Filters, Services, and domains
- Top resolved – Most frequently resolved domains
- Traffic Flow – Source and destination countries, plus destination networks
Cloudflare does not offer this feature at all.
Support
Quality of Support Received
Having multiple support channels is all well and good, but the quality of support received is equally important.
Control D stands out in this department, with users often praising the team’s prompt replies and their in-depth guidance. In fact, most of the support responses are conducted by the engineers themselves.
Beyond just fixing the issue at hand, they offer comprehensive explanations and proactive recommendations to help prevent similar problems in the future.
On the other hand, Cloudflare is notorious for its poor customer support. They frequently take weeks and sometimes months to respond to queries. This is largely because Cloudflare prioritizes support queries from high-paying customers first, which means if you’re on a lower-priced plan, you could be waiting a long time to resolve your issue – in some cases, you may not get a response at all.
Chat Support
Both services offer chat support, but they function slightly differently. Cloudflare’s chat support involves talking to a live agent, but it’s only available to users on the Contract plan.
Conversely, Control D offers chat support to all users, but it is in the form of Barry, an advanced chatbot.
Barry is powered by machine-learning technology that combines all the information in Control D’s extensive documentation and the collective knowledge of all employees.
So whether you’re troubleshooting issues, creating ctrld Toml files, or simply enquiring about the company, Barry can answer almost all queries within a matter of seconds.
Of course, should your query be outside Barry’s capabilities, your issue can easily be escalated to a support team member.
👉 Learn more about Barry and his capabilities
Phone Support
Cloudflare offers phone support for users on the Contract Plan. They can access an emergency phone line for urgent issues such as DDoS attacks or site outages.
Control D offers support via video conferencing tools and engineers are always happy to troubleshoot issues as they arise.
Prioritized Support
As mentioned earlier, the level of support received from Cloudflare depends on your plan. For Free and Pay-as-you-go users, no SLAs are offered. Instead, they suggest using their community forums to receive a timely answer.
Users on the Contract plan are offered prioritized support with the following SLA:
- Priority 1 Query – initial response in 1 hour
- Priority 2 Query – initial response in 2 hours
- Priority 3 Query – initial response in 24 hours
- Priority 4 Query – initial response in 24 hours
While Control D does not have a prioritized support feature, it has an SLA to answer all queries within 24 hours. More often than not, users receive an answer within a few hours, ensuring queries are resolved promptly. Additionally, users have access to an account manager who is always available.
Performance
All data used in this section has been sourced from DNSPerf.
Latency
Across all public DNS resolvers, Cloudflare ranks first for Performance with a query speed of 14.47 ms, whereas Control D ranks fifth with a query speed of 17.54 ms.
Uptime
Control D has superior Uptime compared to Cloudflare with a score of 99.95% compared to 99.9%.
Quality
Control D outshines Cloudflare in the Quality metric with a score of 99.95% compared to 99.86%.
Final Thoughts
Cloudflare is known for its impressive speed and offers a solid range of features for managing DNS traffic. However, it falls short compared to Control D, which offers considerably more functionality and does not gatekeep features behind tiered plans.
Cloudflare’s Gateway is aimed at large enterprises – which may explain its hefty price tag – and the service is designed to be used as part of the broader Zero Trust suite for maximum benefit. In contrast, Control D focuses solely on advanced DNS management, making it easy to integrate into your existing security framework for a tailored, flexible setup.
For those seeking a DNS service with robust features, continuous product development, granular customization, and responsive support – all at a competitive price – Control D is the clear choice.