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Airlock vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)
Airlock
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
9.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (22nd)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Airlock0.6%
F5 Advanced WAF9.0%
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway7.5%
Other82.9%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)16.1%
NetScaler14.3%
HAProxy11.1%
Other58.5%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Tiodor Jovovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides endless features and can be adapted to every single application that exists in the world
WAF is the most beneficial feature for security posture. Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product. The level of detail of the configuration is the most significant aspect. We can adapt it to every single application that exists in the world. The product helps with the compliance processes.
Bonieber  Orofeo - PeerSpot reviewer
Identifying compromised traffic and securing data has been a significant advantage
One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication. Additionally, the security aspect of it provides a significant advantage as it helps us secure our data, which is a major investment and benefit for us. Before using this system, we had difficulties in storing our data and managing the traffic that comes in and out.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."
"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."
"Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product."
"It has helped a lot to protect our organization from external attacks, especially XSS or XSRF types of attacks."
"The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP LTM is brand image and recognition and the application delivery controller."
"Users can see a remarkable performance difference from a qualitative sense."
"It also has an AVR feature: application, visibility, and recording. It's good for customers looking for what is actually happening in their network and where the latency is."
"Its user interface is very easy to use on a day-to-day basis. It is very user-friendly."
"It is a stable product from a stable company. Recently, they have been more focused on security as well."
"We like the capability to combine the content switching with the intrusion prevention and adding the security roles, so we can expose certain sub-pieces outside without exposing everything."
"The solution could improve the ease of use, the management could be simplified. Other solutions are easier to use."
 

Cons

"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"Latencies are always a problem."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."
"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."
"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"The tool must be simplified."
"The logging features are too limited and do not give us a solid understanding of what's happening."
"They could improve the product's ease of use. There is some confusion how to operate it."
"Based on my experience using F5 and by only taking into consideration the last seven years, I have found that the reporting mechanism is bad."
"The synchronization does works fairly well. However, if I were to make changes, I would make it easier to start the sync process."
"If we decide to migrate to the cloud, I don't think that BIG-IP is a good solution and we probably won't use it."
"Logging is a bit of a problem. Logging and monitoring are only in plain text. You have to search and you have to know what you are searching for to find anything. So of course, monitoring and getting alerts for abnormal situations is hard. There are no tools for monitoring and alerts"
"The license terms for "non-commercial" will are challenging for us."
"It would possibly help to get more training, even better in local languages."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The tool is cheap."
"The price is little bit on higher side compared to the cost of NGINX."
"It's fair, it's not too expensive. Maybe just a little high."
"It is a bit expensive product. Kemp Loadmaster is much cheaper than F5. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It can be for one year or three years."
"The tool is a bit expensive."
"F5 is more expensive than other solutions, so you have to be sure F5 is the best solution to fit the requirements."
"F5 isn’t cheap but is worth the price."
"We have found the pricing and licensing on AWS to be competitive."
"BIG-IP LTM is considered a premium product, so it's quite expensive and isn't affordable for all customers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise84
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What do you like most about Airlock?
Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Airlock?
The tool is cheap. We are protecting very sensitive portals. We didn't have a single incident for the last 15 years.
What needs improvement with Airlock?
The tool must be simplified. However, if it is simplified, it will lose its competitive edge. The solution requires a...
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?
The GUI of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) could be improved. It's not something regarding how it processes or ...
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is a perfect product for load balancing and WAF, and I would recommend it far m...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Airlock Suite
F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Raiffeisen, SGKB, Generali, Visana
Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.