On the lookout for the best DDoS Protection Software to counter malicious traffic on your network? This is what this post is all about.
Since my business mainly operates online, any distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) that slows down communication with my clients is very damaging. Worse, they can either hold on to my services in exchange for a ransom.
So I got my hands on DDoS mitigation software from reliable network service providers for my own peace of mind.
Unfortunately, most DDoS platforms require a subscription but luckily most of the tools on the list are ones that offer free trials as well so that users can try them out and see if it works best for their use.
Over the years, I’ve tried several of them, and here are my top picks to help you decide which one to go for.
- What Is The Best DDoS Protection Software?
- 1. SolarWinds Security Event Manager – Top Pick
- 2. Webroot DNS Protection – Fast Setup & Solutions
- 3. Haltdos DDoS Protection Service – Best For Round The Clock Protection
- 4. DDoS-Guard – Most Proactive
- 5. Indusface AppTrana – Guaranteed 99.99% Uptime
- 6. Cloudbric – Best For Small Businesses
- 7. DataDome – Easiest Deployment
- 8. Reblaze – Most Robust
- Conclusion
What Is The Best DDoS Protection Software?
If you’re in a hurry, check out my top 3 picks at a glance: SolarWinds Security Event Manager, Webroot DNS Protection, and Haltdos DDoS Protection Service.
   4.8 |   4.6 |   4.1 |
| Best overall. Multi-layered event monitoring platform with extensive security features. Free tools available. | Fastest installation. Cloud-based platform for protecting networks and connections. Free trial available. | Best for versatility. Active multi-layered protection platform for all devices. Free trial available. |
| Try SolarWinds | Try Webroot | Try Haltdos |
Want to know more about the first three tools and some other additional options? Here you go:
1. SolarWinds Security Event Manager – Top Pick
Best DDoS Protection Software For Monitoring Event Logs [Free Trial | $2,613/yr]
DDoS detection is just one aspect of SolarWind’s SEM. It uses a multi-layered approach to detecting these kinds of network security threats.
This tool is designed to detect DDoS threats by collecting, correlating, and normalizing logs across your systems.
In particular, the Botnet Detection Tool catches unusual patterns that usually signal and attack.
When a threat is detected, admins are automatically alerted to deploy responses to sever connections, block activities or shut accounts down.
Doing this does not require extensive custom scripts since configurations can be done by simply ticking checkboxes.
It also features a Threat Intelligence Feed, an automatically-updated tool to help detect DDoS attacks plus other forms of malware, spam, or viruses.
Lastly, it comes with Forensic Tools where the repository of logs is leveraged in the post-breach investigations.
This feature comes with a search function to filter for specific timeframes, specific IPs or accounts, or a combination of parameters.
It leverages Boolean logic in its drag-and-drop UI to build queries easily without the need for grep or regex.
Pros And Cons Of SolarWinds Security Event Manager
| Pros | Cons |
| Allows alert generation | Requires constant reboots |
| Easy to set up and configure | Poor reporting capabilities |
| Provides repository storage for log files | |
| Great customer service | |
| Insight into unusual events |
SolarWinds Security Event Manager Pricing Plan
SolarWinds Security Event Manager has a 30-day trial version for all its features. After that, you have to choose between an annual subscription or a perpetual subscription.
The pricing is mainly licensed by the number of nodes you need, not on the feature set. A node is any device (server, desktop, laptop) where event data is collected.
It starts with a 30-node subscription.
- $2,613: This is an annual subscription for 30 nodes.
- $5,093: This one is a perpetual subscription for 30 nodes.
The paid versions can be a bit pricey given all the functionalities it includes so it’s best to take advantage of the free trial first.
If you need a license for more nodes, you can contact sales support to get additional information.
Interested? Visit their site to learn more.
2. Webroot DNS Protection – Fast Setup & Solutions
Cloud-Based DDoS Protection Software For Minimizing Risks [Free Trial | $150/yr]
Webroot’s DNS Protection is fully cloud-based and only takes only a few minutes to set up to start protecting your connections and networks from potential cyberattacks on your network traffic.
It blocks threats at the domain level.
It comes with 80 URL categories plus a Google SafeSearch to give you granular and policy-based control over questionable and dangerous sites.
You also get detailed and on-demand reporting capabilities with this DDoS Protection Software. It allows you to drill down on threats to improve visibility over risky web usage and internet threats.
This tool also allows you to enable policies by IP, groups, or device using pre-configured custom policies.
Moreover, it comes with a DNS filtering functionality to stop up to 88% of undesirable internet traffic, further reducing the risk of DDoS.
Best of all, this feature of Webroot also leverages BrightCloud Internet Threat Intelligence to automatically block requests from dangerous and malicious domains, files, IPs, and mobile apps, even if they are encrypted DNS over HTTPS requests.
Additionally, Webroot is compatible with most VPN solutions and can work seamlessly alongside many varying types. Typically, letting VPN and DDoS Tool Protection Systems work with each other is a challenge as VPNs are constantly evolving and changing, however, Webroot tries to let these two systems cooperate as easily as possible for the end-user.
With today’s cyber threat landscape becoming more and more dynamic, cloud-based solutions like Webroot offer instantaneous updates on threat solutions.
Pros And Cons Of Webroot DNS Protection
| Pros | Cons |
| Cloud-based | Lacks custom policy for specific devices in a group |
| Protects at the domain level | Poor support channels |
| Includes pre-configured policies by IP, Groups, and device | |
| Easy to implement | |
| Doesn’t take up a lot of bandwidth |
Webroot DNS Protection Pricing Plan
Webroot DNS Protection comes with a 30-day free trial, so you can test its internet filtering capabilities in protecting your networks from threats.
Like SolarWinds SEM, the pricing is not feature set-based; rather, the licensing depends on how many seats (the device you need to protect). The subscription is on a yearly basis.
- $150: This plan enables 5 seats.
- $690: This one gives you 25 seats.
- Request a quote: If you need 50 seats and up, you have to get in touch with their sales team to receive a custom price.
Take advantage of the free trial from their website to see if it comes with your expected protection capacity.
3. Haltdos DDoS Protection Service – Best For Round The Clock Protection
Bi-Directional Anti-DDoS Protection Software [Free Trial | Custom Pricing]
Haltdos DDoS Protection Service offers round-the-clock multi-layered protection for any device connected to the internet.
It helps secure websites and web apps from DDoS software attacks at any time of the day while at the same time ensuring legitimate traffic is not compromised.
It comes with a mitigation solution to assure maximum uptime for your network infrastructure so your business won’t need to suffer from any downtime.
Speaking of downtime, this tool is served over multi-cloud infrastructure with multi-layered security over vast networks, an additional feature to further prevent interruptions.
This tool is equipped with an AI and learning machine to mitigate illegitimate traffic and keep an eye on any other kind of traffic to ensure no threat comes through.
It is capable of mitigating any DDoS attack volume through its global network with a capacity of over 25 Tbit/s.
This software can safeguard your network from:
- Slowloris
- TCP SYN Flood
- HTTP Flood
- Ping of Death
Since sophisticated DDoS attacks are smaller in size for traditional IPS-based DDoS solutions to mitigate, this tool is built on AI-backed by Haltdos Threat System for comprehensive coverage against advanced attacks.
Additionally, it’s made to be a bi-directional DDoS protection tool since cyberattacks have become a two-way street. It inspects both inbound and outbound traffic to ensure complete protection.
Lastly, this tool generates automatic signatures for newer attacks to fine-tune configured mitigations.
Pros And Cons Of Haltdos DDoS Protection Service
| Pros | Cons |
| AI-driven website protection | Still contains outdated signatures |
| Bi-directional DDoS protection | Network connectivity dependent |
| Multi-layered protection | |
| 25 Tbit/s mitigation capacity |
Haltdos DDoS Protection Service Pricing Plan
Haltdos DDoS Protection Service comes with a 30-day free trial for any of the three plans. You have to contact the sales team to get the pricing details, but the feature set is already provided.
- Essential: The Essential plan includes L7 load balancing, real-time statistics, 7-day data retention, brute force protection, bot protection, data leak protection, and more.
- Premium: The Premium plan has everything in the Essential plan plus advanced signatures, advanced ruleset, multiple security policies, periodic reporting, 30-day data retention, and more.
- Enterprise: The plan enables all the features in the Premium plan including advanced load balancing, SIEM integration, 1-year data retention, advanced DDoS protection, and more.
All these plans offer basic DDoS protection, but if you need more security, you can go for the Enterprise plan.
Visit their website to grab a free trial before investing resources into their platform.
4. DDoS-Guard – Most Proactive
Scalable DDoS Protection Solution Equipped With Bot Mitigation [Free Plan | $30/mo]
DDoS-Guard prides itself as one of the security providers having sufficient channels and computing capacities to handle high volumes of traffic.
It comes with website protection and optimization functionality to achieve high-speed performance and fault tolerance, so you won’t have to worry about DDoS attacks from hackers while at the same time protecting legitimate users from suffering slow page speeds.
With it you get the following perks:
- DNS-hosting
- No IP blocking
- Load balancing
- SSL certificates
- Traffic scrubbing centers
- AI-based protection
This tool is also equipped with bot mitigation to prevent your resources from unwanted visitors.
Eliminating unwanted bots from the equation saves loading speed from slowing down, removing one more vulnerability that your site can suffer from. It also restricts them from parsing through your web content for deceitful profiteering purposes.
It protects your network against DDoS attacks based on the SaaS model. This ensures effective traffic routing and protection of network infrastructure while reducing the cost of implementation and maintenance.
It also offers protection for:
- Network links
- Online services
- Switching equipment
No matter the protocols, this tool has advanced proprietary technologies for optimization, content protection, and delivery.
DDoS-Guard is fast, versatile, scalable, and functional.
Pros And Cons Of DDoS-Guard
| Pros | Cons |
| Fast and helpful support team | Needs more scrubbing centers |
| Great UI | Country-specific tools |
| Effective traffic routing | |
| Handles high volume traffic |
DDoS-Guard Pricing Plan
DDoS-Guard has a free plan and four price plans.
- Free: The Free version allows for 1 domain protection, unlimited legitimate bandwidth, caching, content delivery networks (CDN), traffic monitoring in the client area, free SSL certificate, and more
- Basic ($30/mo): This plan includes accelerated validation of visitors, block/allow lists, options to use geo-blocking, options to change protected IP addresses, and more.
- Normal ($180/mo): The Normal plan gives you a dedicated IP address, options to order WAF, L7 attack reports, custom SSL certificates, premium IP address, and more.
- Premium ($400/mo): This plan enables 3 domains under protection, a high priority of traffic processing, purging cache by mask, API integration, traffic anomaly notification, and more.
- Enterprise ($1000/mo): The most expensive plan allows for 10 domains under protections, unlimited geo-blocking, mobile notifications, unlimited load balancing, and more.
Take advantage of the free version from their website first until you see the need for more functionality.
5. Indusface AppTrana – Guaranteed 99.99% Uptime
DDoS Protection Software With Most Comprehensive Protection [Free Trial | $99/app/mo]
When it comes to Indusface AppTrana, you can ensure 99.99% uptime and application availability.
This tool is built for scale. It leverages scalable AWS infrastructure that’s known to block 2.3TBps attacks.
It’s also quick and easy to onboard to give you instant protection. The preconfigured protection gets everything set up in three minutes.
I’ve dubbed it as the tool with the most comprehensive protection because it protects against all types of DDoS attacks including:
- Infrastructure layer attacks (ICMP/UDP flood attacks)
- Application layer attack (HTTP flood or slow/low attacks)
- Protocol attacks (SYN flood attack or UDP reflection attack)
This software also offers unmetered DDoS attack protection. You’ll only be charged for legitimate traffic that is passed to your origin.
Lastly, this tool gets you instant access to security experts who monitor traffic and deploy complex rules to counter attacks at no additional cost.
Pros And Cons Of Indusface AppTrana
| Pros | Cons |
| Simple configuration | Limited features for custom rules in a firewall |
| Comprehensive protection | No predictive analytical data inclusion |
| Great customer support | |
| Precise dashboard updates |
Indusface AppTrana Pricing Plan
Indusface AppTrana has a 14-day trial period. After this is over, you have to choose between the two pricing options.
- Advanced ($99/app/mo): This plan includes unlimited automated scans, whole site acceleration (CDN), API protection, behavioral DDoS and BOT mitigation, and more.
- Premium ($399/app/mo): The Premium plan has all the Advanced features plus managed custom rules, false-positive checks, pen-testing, and more.
The Advanced plan is a good package to start with until you need to scale and need more security features.
Check out Indusface and their free trial version on their website to learn more info.
6. Cloudbric – Best For Small Businesses
User-Friendly DDoS Protection Software [Free Plan | Custom Pricing]
Cloudbric, as the name suggests, is a cloud-based security solution if you need web attack blocking, SSL certificates, and leakage protection.
It features a smart web application protection or better known as SWAP. It’s a comprehensive solution to threats like:
- DDoS
- SQL injections
- Cross-site scripting
SWAP is a patented logic-based technology that features pattern matching, heuristic, and semantic analysis.
Its core rule sets are easy to use and fully automated. This means there’s no need for repeated signature updates or complicated security policies configuration.
As for DDoS attacks, it offers advanced protection, blocking laters 3,4, and 7 DDoS attacks that are scalable up to 20 Tbps.
This tool can also be deployed on-premise if you have servers and private data centers.
Pros And Cons Of Cloudbric
| Pros | Cons |
| Great web application firewall | Can conflict with website servers |
| Clear visibility of attack sources and volume | Shuts down randomly |
| Easy to monitor | |
| Allows controls access from the computer to the network and vice versa |
Cloudbric Pricing Plan
Cloudbric’s free version and paid plans aren’t laid out on the website. You have to contact sales support to get more details on plan pricing and inclusions.
As for the free version, it has most of the features needed for DDoS protection so it’s good to start with.
Visit their site to get started with the free version.
7. DataDome – Easiest Deployment
Flexible DDoS Protection Software Compatible With Multi-CDN Setups [Free Trial | $2,990/mo]
DataDome won’t puzzle you with its deployment. In just a few minutes using a simple code, you can deploy this tool on any infrastructure.
It’s compatible with multi-CDN and multi-cloud setups.
This tool manages bots automatically, stopping fraudsters from performing layer 7 DDoS attacks.
Getting this tool will get you access to a Bot Security Operation Centre that proactively monitors your traffic.
It ensures you get 24/7 protection against any attack or malicious traffic.
This software also gets you protection against vulnerable endpoints. Fraudsters always go for your weakest link, so this tool provides website, API, and mobile protection with their dedicated algorithms.
Once you roll DataDome out, you don’t have to manage anything more. It’s a fire and forget type of tool so you can focus on other important business concerns.
Pros And Cons Of DataDome
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy deployment | No integrations with other solutions |
| Great support | Rate limiter needs improvement |
| Excellent AI detection | |
| Flexible tools |
DataDome Pricing Plan
DataDome has a 30-day free trial. After that, you have to choose from any of the three paid plans.
- Business ($2,990/mo): The Business plan includes website protection, real-time dashboard, 7-day data retention, advanced analytics, AI-powered protection, and more.
- Corporate ($5,990/mo): The Corporate plan has everything in the Business plan but with 30-day data retention, mobile app protection, API, custom rules creation, and more.
- Enterprise (Custom Pricing): This plan includes all the features in the Corporate plan plus custom legal terms, success team professional services, and more.
If you plan to use it for the long term, choose the annual billing option to get cheaper monthly pricing.
To get started with their free trial version, visit their website.
8. Reblaze – Most Robust
Multi-Layered DDoS Protection Software For All Day Security [Free Trial | Custom Pricing]
Reblaze is made to be robust enough to keep your web apps fully responsive by providing full-scope DDoS protection.
It protects against attacks across layers 3, 4, and 7: transport, network, and application.
This tool comes with a multivariate threat detection that accurately identifies attacks and quickly blocks the traffic.
It’s equipped with a dynamic DNS allocation making it impossible for fraudsters to send DDoS traffic to your server.
Additionally, it features an elastic load balancing functionality that distributes attacks across global clusters eliminating the stress on the ISP and targeted site.
It also comes with advanced human behavior detection mechanisms that filter traffic, block DDoS, and allow just the legitimate visitors on the site.
Lastly, Reblaze is made ready for scaled-up attacks by bringing in additional resources instantly without the need for human detection and intervention.
Pros And Cons Of Reblaze
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy to deploy | UI web dashboard needs improvement |
| Effective bot management | Lacks a reporting feature |
| Great technical support | |
| Direct access to Reblaze engineers via Whatsapp or Slack |
Reblaze Pricing Plan
Reblaze designs its pricing plans to be on a request basis. A form is provided for you to fill out to schedule a call with the sales team so you can get all the feature set and pricing plan details you need.
You can first take advantage of Reblaze’s 30-day free trial. Still, you have to get in contact with their support team to get access to it.
Conclusion
Among the 7+ DDoS protection software on the list, the best I’d recommend is SolarWinds Security Event Manager because it deals with threats in a multi-layered approach.
It collects logs in all your systems and comes with a detection tool that identifies even just unusual patterns to prevent potential attacks from escalating.
Best of all, there’s no need for manual deployment when a threat is detected because it will automatically be cared for.
So, you can rest assured your business is safe even when you’re not in front of your computer to constantly check.