Akamai vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

Akamai vs. Imperva Application Security Platform

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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

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 15.8%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 12.0%, down from 16.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 7.5%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

CDN Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare	15.8%
Imperva Application Security Platform	7.5%
Akamai	12.0%
Other	64.7%

CDN

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal

General Manager at bKash Limited

Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility

From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.

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VinuThomas John

Sr. Strategic Accounts Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees

Improved security and faster operations with a seamless integration

They are one of the top solution vendors in the market. Premium though, but they're the best. We've worked closely with digital-native customers, not so much from the media segment. Fintechs, financial organizations, banking segment, manufacturing, these are the ones we have worked with. Not much on media because most of the media houses are already covered by Akamai. 95% of media houses are already covered by Akamai. It gives a seamless view of how your infrastructure is, from an attack perspective, from a threat perspective, how your assets are behaving. It gives a very comprehensive view. It depends on the customer's environment. Wherever the customer wants, but mostly it is on the private cloud or public cloud because it's a cloud-based SaaS solution that Akamai has to offer. Implementation is feasible anywhere. The solution is aimed at Enterprise customers because it is on a premium side. On a scale of 1-10, this solution rates at 9.5.

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reviewer2818155

Senior Associate at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Application protection has improved and reporting and dashboards still need refinement

I believe Imperva Application Security Platform should have a more interactive wizard. While the dashboard is good, it could be more eye-catching. Based on my perspective, I recommend modifying the dashboards, especially the main dashboard where I can see the traffic hit count, alerts, and other latest information. In terms of reporting, I find it challenging to create reports; in my earlier days, it was difficult. Over time, I have learned how to create reports, but it should be easier to do so. I have used other tools such as firewalls or SolarWinds, where creating a report is straightforward and does not take much time, unlike in Imperva, where I have to add many elements. Modifications in the integration aspects would also be beneficial.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is its usability."

"The initial setup is extremely easy but will require access to your Domain Name Servers."

"The aggressive caching and DDOS mitigation are the most valuable features offered by Cloudflare."

"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."

"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."

"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."

More Cloudflare pros

"The most valuable feature of Akamai is its ease of use and simple integration. Additionally, the solution has new aspects added to it regularly."

"Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."

"The solution is very sustainable and flexible."

"The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy."

"Akamai support is excellent because they have great debugging tools, and they are highly competent, with proactive and responsive engineers whenever we have issues, so everything is pretty smooth."

"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."

"The stability and efficiency of Akamai have enhanced our network's performance significantly."

"All the policies of the CDNs are very beneficial."

More Akamai pros

"They're quite easy to install and quite easy to set up. Clients really like that. Especially when you're dealing with the cloud, it's really easy."

"The features I have found most valuable with Imperva Web Application Firewall are account takeover protection, advanced bot protection, and API security."

"The solution is scalable."

"We can prevent attacks or issues even before they happen."

"There is no need to have an appliance in house for the services because it is on the cloud."

"We can now quickly address the problems of our clients in an effective manner."

"Compared to other web application firewalls in the market, Imperva does things in the most accurate way."

"The stability of the product is good since I haven't had any problems with the solution."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pros

Cons

"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."

"The product needs to improve its automation."

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."

"The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service."

"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 product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."

More Cloudflare cons

"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."

"The user console is quite overloaded, sometimes it's hard to find your way around."

"After three or four months from this perspective, I don’t know all the features on the platform yet, so I am still learning about it."

"The fact that it is an expensive product is its only shortcoming."

"Caching strategy is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution where improvements are required."

"When we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."

"The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist."

"It would be better if we could be notified about specific attacks."

More Akamai cons

"On the negative side, API security mainly supports cloud-based solutions, while most of my customers prefer on-prem setups, so achieving high performance with on-prem solutions would be beneficial."

"I would say that technical support is average."

"I would suggest that Imperva Application Security Platform should include new features combined with AI."

"Its user interface could be improved, as the competition looks better, but it doesn’t really need improvements in its functionality."

"The process to upgrade from one version to another can be a lot simpler than it is currently."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is very expensive."

"Although we're only using it for the accelerator part, the purging of files and the way this feature functions could use improvement."

"Incapsula services also provides load balancing services for their service IP address environment. So far, with monitoring their services, the IP address was only changed once."

More Imperva Application Security Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"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."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"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."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"We don't have any issues with the price."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."

"It is an expensive product. The licensing costs for the solution are based on the usage. If we need premium support, we need to buy it from Akamai."

"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"

"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."

"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."

"From the resource component, it's very costly, and Akamai's charges are also high. So, any organization with a high-tech budget can definitely afford it, but companies with 10-15% of their revenue as a technical budget probably won't be able to. That's where they have a lot of room for improvement if they want to onboard those early users."

"Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features."

"The pricing of Akamai is moderate, in my opinion. My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to Akamai. There are no additional costs besides the licensing costs for the solution."

More Akamai pricing and cost advice

"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."

"The cost is on par with other solutions such as Cloudflare and Akamai."

"For enterprise contracts you will be in touch with a dedicated account manager who will guide you regarding licensing."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall's pricing is expensive."

"Imperva charges us based on bandwidth, which is better than other vendors that charge us according to data transfer."

"The solution's pricing is an issue."

"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"The cost is somewhere around $10,000 a site. For every site, you pay individually. For every DNS entry, you have you pay."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CDN solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	88
Midsize Enterprise	25
Large Enterprise	70

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare DNS?

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.

What needs improvement with Akamai?

Other solutions are probably easier to set up, but you have more capability in Akamai. It would be beneficial if they...

What is your primary use case for Akamai?

We are using many of the solutions from Akamai, with the WAF in front of it and distribution to multiple targets wher...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai?

The pricing is good, with no complaints about costs, which is essential when deciding to have Akamai in your network.

Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?

Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot mana...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?

The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provi...

What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?

I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators o...

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Comparisons

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Fastly vs Cloudflare

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Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

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Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

Uplynk vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

Windows Azure CDN vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon CloudFront vs Akamai

Compared 4% of the time

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Fortinet FortiWeb vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 4% of the time

Fastly vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 3% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 3% of the time

Link11 vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 3% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 2% of the time

More Imperva Application Security Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare

Download Cloudflare product report

Akamai

Download Akamai product report

Imperva Application Security Platform

Download Imperva Application Security Platform product report

Imperva Application Security Platform report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

Akamai enhances performance and security for web applications with features such as a robust CDN and web application firewall. It supports traffic management and improving content delivery speed through a global data center network.

Akamai, known for its web application firewall and CDN, provides comprehensive solutions catering to enterprises with advanced needs like traffic offloading, logging, security, and scalability. Its global Points of Presence network and threat intelligence capabilities, incorporating AI and machine learning, ensure strong security and traffic management. Users appreciate the ease of integration and management, despite the complexity and navigation challenges of the Akamai console. The potential improvements in API security, caching strategies, and migration processes alongside competitive pricing could broaden its appeal. Akamai primarily focuses on content delivery, video streaming, and caching, supporting sectors such as streaming, gaming, and businesses requiring rapid content delivery and cyber threat protection.

What are Akamai's key features?

Web Application Firewall: Protects against common vulnerabilities and threats.
CDN: Enhances website performance by reducing load times.
Security: Includes DDoS protection and threat intelligence.
Traffic Management: Efficient handling and scaling of web traffic.
Global Presence: Extensive data centers for faster content delivery.
Automatic Updates: Ensures security features are up-to-date.

What benefits do users find with Akamai?

Improved Performance: Faster content delivery enhances user experience.
Enhanced Security: Robust protection against cyber threats.
Scalability: Accommodates growing traffic demands seamlessly.
Integration Ease: Simplifies operational workflows.
Reliability: Ensures consistent uptime and performance quality.

In streaming and gaming industries, Akamai optimizes content delivery and security measures, meeting the demands for rapid, secure, and reliable services. Businesses leverage its CDN and monitoring capabilities to reduce load times and enhance application performance, whilst increasing protection against cyber threats.

Akamai

Imperva Application Security Platform delivers comprehensive and continuous web threat protection. Renowned for its ease of use, it shields web applications and databases from various cyber threats while integrating seamlessly with cloud and on-premises environments.

Imperva Application Security Platform protects web environments by offering advanced security measures against threats like DDoS attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting. As a robust web application firewall, it provides extensive monitoring and bot management capabilities. The platform integrates content delivery networks for enhanced performance and scalability, while real-time traffic analysis ensures consistent protection. Despite its strengths, improvements can be made in policy management and customization options. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and more competitive pricing models. The inclusion of AI for enhanced analytics is also anticipated.

What are the key features of Imperva Application Security Platform?

Correlated Attack Validation: Enhances threat assessment by linking related security events.
Threat Radar: Offers visibility into potential and ongoing threats.
Virtual Patching: Provides protection against vulnerabilities without immediate code changes.
IncapRules: Allows creation of custom security policies.
DDoS Protection: Defends against large-scale distributed denial-of-service attacks.
CDN Integration: Improves content delivery speed and reliability.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

User-Friendly Administration: Simplifies setup and ongoing management tasks.
Seamless Integration: Ensures smooth operation with existing infrastructure.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Shields digital assets from a wide range of threats.
Hands-On Support: Provides timely and effective customer service assistance.

Imperva Application Security Platform is implemented in industries needing strong database and application protection. Companies use it to enforce geolocation restrictions and manage bots, benefiting sectors like finance and e-commerce where data security and threat monitoring are critical. Its ability to protect and ensure data accessibility makes it integral to business operations prioritizing cyber resilience.

Imperva

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Capital One, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Disney, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Home Depot, HP, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, LinkedIn, McDonald's, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Oracle, PayPal, Pinterest, Qualcomm, Rakuten, SAP, Spotify, Tesla, Toyota, Visa, Walmart, WeWork

Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.

Akamai vs. Imperva Application Security Platform