AWS Shield vs Imperva DDoS comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Imperva are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.4, while Imperva is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.6. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 6.6% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Imperva’s 6.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Imperva users who would recommend it.

AWS Shield

Read 7 AWS Shield reviews

2,434 Views
1,410 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Imperva DDoS

Read 78 Imperva DDoS reviews

2,359 Views
1,732 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

AWS Shield

Imperva DDoS

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Imperva DDoS and AWS Shield are competing products in the domain of distributed denial-of-service attack protection. AWS Shield holds an advantage due to its seamless integration with AWS infrastructure, making it more appealing to AWS-centered businesses, while Imperva DDoS gains preference for pricing flexibility and superior support.

Features: Imperva DDoS offers real-time security updates, comprehensive multi-layered attack defense, and robust threat detection and mitigation. Complementing AWS services, AWS Shield provides automatic protection, requires no customer intervention, and features advanced attack analytics. Each product effectively caters to its user base, with AWS Shield benefiting AWS users through native integration.

Room for Improvement: Imperva DDoS could enhance its integration with third-party infrastructures, improve its user interface for easier navigation, and speed up the deployment process. AWS Shield could benefit from expanding its protection scope outside the AWS ecosystem, making its user interface more accessible to those unfamiliar with AWS, and offering more detailed reporting options for non-AWS integrations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AWS Shield stands out with its straightforward deployment, especially advantageous for AWS users due to minimal latency and automatic protection features. Imperva DDoS offers enhanced deployment support with a dedicated team, appealing to users needing extra assistance. While AWS Shield's integration benefits AWS clients, Imperva shines with accessible customer service for guidance.

Pricing and ROI: Imperva DDoS provides competitive pricing with flexible plans, catering to businesses with evolving needs, possibly offering a lower overall cost. AWS Shield, bundled with AWS services, delivers value within the AWS framework with predictable costs and potentially higher ROI for AWS users. Although AWS Shield's cost-effectiveness suits existing AWS customers, Imperva might offer more economical options for businesses with varied needs.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Shield vs. Imperva DDoS Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield vs. Imperva DDoS

June 2025

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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

AWS Shield

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Imperva DDoS

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CDN (6th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (18th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of AWS Shield is 6.6%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva DDoS is 6.3%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Manikandan-R

Senior Project Manager at Synopsys Inc

Solution provides essential protection with good support and a simple setup

I have noticed a pattern developing in approximately five minutes. If it were possible to provide these patterns with historical data spanning six months, three months, or two months directly from the console, it would be extremely beneficial. It would allow for easy inquiries and facilitate the retrieval of relevant parts without having to manually check logs or examine movements. Instead, if all historical data were available, I could consult six months' worth of identified patterns efficiently through AWS without relying on external sources. This solution is particularly suitable for startups or medium-sized startups. I would rate the overall solution eight out of ten.

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DerrickAkankwasa

Cyber Security Engineer at Isolutions Associates Ltd (ISOLS)

Provide DDoS protection and better security at effective rate

It is expanding its number of data centers for scrubbing traffic. Currently, there is only one POP for cleaning in South Africa. They might add another POP in North Africa, possibly in Nigeria or Egypt. Latency concerns customers, especially in regions like East and West Africa, where traffic has to travel to South Africa before returning. Increasing the number of POPs across the continent would help address these latency issues and improve overall service. While the platform is already quite strong, there’s always room for improvement, especially in keeping up with emerging trends and new types of attacks. Enhancing security capabilities could be beneficial. Integrating more advanced AI features could significantly improve its effectiveness and help customers leverage these tools more effectively. It would be great to see more focus on AI integration to handle and analyze data more efficiently.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature."

"The solution operates smoothly at its baseline level, and we do not encounter any issues at that level."

"It is integrated with AWS. So, it gives you a good first step."

"We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, which is crucial for us. It's easy to use and set up and stops attacks on our servers. We haven't encountered any attack problems because the solution stops them in real-time. AWS Shield specifically focuses on defending against denial-of-service attacks, making it a great solution for that type of threat."

"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."

"The product is easy to use."

"It is quite scalable, and we have not faced any issues with its scalability."

"I am impressed with the product's multiple features like security."

"Scalability is pretty easy on the base platform. You just add another, and you're ready to go."

"Provides Anti-DDoS protection, as well as other protections like SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting, and antiscanner. These types of protection are valuable to the business due to the daily attacks on our portals, and that often cannot be seen without a tool like this."

"It fits our requirements, as well as our budget."

"Imperva Incapsula has many valuable features. One, it protects the top 10 OWAS vulnerability, the open web application software platform, this is standard. Secondly, it protects against broken authentication. As well, it has remote execution of code."

"Technical support provides good, quick responses."

"Technical support was very helpful."

"It blocks all types of attacks."

"We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping."

More Imperva DDoS pros

Cons

"The management of it is a bit hard. If you don't engineer it on the front side, it is hard to go back in and change it. It could be improved in terms of architecture requirements and then ongoing support requirements as a secondary component to it. People tend to set up things like this, and they just expect it to work without the care and feeding that needs to go back into it either from an application team or a network environment team."

"The product needs to improve its logs and reports to make it read better."

"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced."

"The product is expensive."

"The time taken to detect anomalies must be reduced."

"The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements."

"We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need."

"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a situation is normal or abnormal."

"The weakest point of Imperva is their first level of support, which should be improved. They should also improve the access and security logs viewing directly on the portal. I would like to see better access and security logs through the portal and not only through a SIM solution. Currently, if you want to explore your access and security logs from Imperva, you need a SIM tool or a SIM infrastructure on your side to do it. You can't do it manually or directly through the portal, which is a big problem for us. I had a call yesterday with Imperva for the roadmap, and I just told them this. They agreed that this is an improvement point from their side."

"I would like to see automated reporting to improve visibility."

"Imperva always needs to adjust to new versions of cyber attacks, it needs to be faster, improve the resiliency of the software of the solution."

"The solution should integrate with something that looks at continuous security management."

"It would be better if we were able to manage and apply changes to multiple websites/web applications, and search WAF logs for multiple websites, via the Incapsula dashboard."

"The log analytics interface within Incapsula isn't really good. For example, if you have to get all logs from there, it's a very cumbersome process."

"Certificate management could be improved."

"Some maintenance must be performed by our IT team."

More Imperva DDoS cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It depends on your subscription level and the volume that you're spending with AWS. So, it is very relative to the consumption alignment in your subscription level. It is a well-constructed, scalable pricing option, but it is relative to how much you're spending on AWS. Because the more you spend, typically, the more you get off on services like this. I find it to be comparable to other solutions."

"The tool's pricing is good."

"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."

"The tool is cheap."

"The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."

"We have an issue with Imperva Incapsula in the Iraqi market because of the high price."

"Although the pricing can be a little high, it is worth the protection and security that it offers."

"The license is on a yearly basis."

"It is a very expensive solution. The price is very high. A lot of customers tell us that they would love to use Imperva more. I have some customers who have 50 websites, but they have only 10 websites on Imperva because of the price. They would love to have all their websites running through Imperva, but they can't. They have to choose the more critical websites to protect because the price is very high. It is a very good product, but it is too expensive. If you buy a plan for 20 megabytes and you don't consume all of your 20 megabytes, it is okay, but if you consume more, you are charged for the superior traffic."

"Pricing could be more competitive."

"We are satisfied with the pricing."

"The solution's price is high for small companies."

More Imperva DDoS pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user68487

Security Expert with 51-200 employees

Nov 6, 2013

CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall

CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Shield?

We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, whi...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Shield?

The tool is cheap.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Shield?

Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a situation is normal or abnormal. I am unsure how much this duration can be reduced...

See all answers

What do you like most about Imperva Incapsula?

We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.

See all answers

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 provided. I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap a...

See all answers

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 of compromise. For example, the initiation of an attack on the endpoint level cou...

See all answers

Comparisons

Cloudflare vs AWS Shield

Compared 35% of the time

Azure DDoS Protection vs AWS Shield

Compared 23% of the time

Cloudflare One vs AWS Shield

Compared 18% of the time

Prolexic vs AWS Shield

Compared 5% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs AWS Shield

Compared 3% of the time

More AWS Shield Competitors

Cloudflare vs Imperva DDoS

Compared 25% of the time

Akamai vs Imperva DDoS

Compared 18% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs Imperva DDoS

Compared 8% of the time

Radware DDoS vs Imperva DDoS

Compared 7% of the time

Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs Imperva DDoS

Compared 2% of the time

More Imperva DDoS Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield

June 2025

Download AWS Shield product report

Buyer's Guide

Imperva DDoS

April 2025

Download Imperva DDoS product report

Also Known As

No data available

Imperva Incapsula

Overview

AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Imperva DDoS is a solution that offers protection for web applications and websites and all their associated business-critical data from cyberattacks. The cloud-based application delivery service helps improve user experiences by improving their performance. Through its security platform, Imperva DDoS also provides DDoS mitigation, a web application firewall, and a global load balancer, and includes a content delivery network — all designed to maximize performance.

Imperva DDoS Features

Imperva DDoS has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

API security
Web application firewall
Bot management
Application delivery
Runtime protection (RASP)
Discovery and assessment
Data protection
Data risk analytics
Data privacy
Application delivery control (ADC)
Content delivery network (CDN)
DDoS mitigation
Global server load-balancing (GSLB)
Web application firewall (WAF)
Client-side protection
Runtime protection

Imperva DDoS Benefits

There are several benefits to implementing Imperva DDoS. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Reduce web application risk: Imperva DDoS includes automatic policy creation and fast rule propagation that give your IT and security departments the ability to use third-party code without risk while working at the pace of DevOps.

Security from edge to database: Imperva DDoS’s WAF feature secures from edge to database, so the traffic you receive is only the traffic you want.

Safeguard sensitive and personal data: Imperva DDoS provides visibility into sensitive and personal data, with the controls to protect that data and the ability to unify management across cloud, on-premises, and in hybrid environments to help accommodate changing threats, new regulations, and challenging audits.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Imperva DDoS users.

PeerSpot user, Etienne W., CDN & Cybersecurity Engineer - Web performance & security at CDN Tech / Ecritel, says, “It is a good solution that allows us to protect websites. It is stable, scalable, quick and easy to use.” He goes on to explain, “WAF protection works almost out-of-the-box. The Anti-DDoS mitigation in less than 1s, I saw it many times in production, I can say it works. CDN has high performances, and the Smart Caching mode is really "smart" (you can do some efficient caching even if you're not a specialist). Its unique interface for managing security performance and ease of use are the most valuable features of this solution."

An IT Senior Manager at an outsourcing company mentions, “The most valuable features are DDoS protection. The Incapsula [Imperva DDoS] environment helps us monitor all the web activity. All the web activity is passed through their WAF cloud services, then that can help us to monitor those activities. That can help protect against DDoS hacking.”

Another PeerSpot reviewer, Ben D., Sales Executive at EVVO LABS, comments, "Imperva Incapsula [DDoS] has many valuable features. One, it protects the top 10 OWASP vulnerability, the open web application software platform, this is standard. Secondly, it protects against broken authentication. As well, it has remote execution of code."

A Solutions Architect at a financial services firm states, “The solution's most valuable aspect is that it is easy to configure. The solution keeps itself up to date itself and there's no customization that we need to do. It makes it extremely easy and cuts back on the amount of work required, and saves us on man-hours.”

Imperva

Sample Customers

netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code

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

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield vs. Imperva DDoS

June 2025

Free Report: AWS Shield vs. Imperva DDoS

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Shield vs. Imperva DDoS and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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