Azure Web Application Firewall vs Imperva Web Application Firewall comparison

Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

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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

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes

Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

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Mano Senaratne

Management Consultant at a consultancy with 201-500 employees

Comprehensive suite simplifies configuration while frequent updates require management

Mainly, it comes with the complete suite of Microsoft services. I can use it in conjunction with the best options and other features that come with it. Configuration is much easier than using different platforms. For example, if I have hosted the application in AWS and am using the Application Firewall from Azure, there are certain additional steps to follow when configuring them. With Microsoft, everything is within a single suite, making it easier to configure and plan. Azure continually upgrades platforms and sends us messages to upgrade to the next version, simplifying the process. Later, it's much easier if I want to upgrade the software platform, scale it, or move it to a different application host as the whole suite comes together. The return on investment is good. If I am doing applications for clients, I can invoice them for better costs. Most applications that I run and use have a better return on investment.

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Abdullah Jin

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Offers bot protection and DDoS Protection and protects public-facing portals

Support is one thing I wish Imperva could improve. They follow the phone model and keep rotating you from one customer service person to another. The layer one support isn't very clear about the workings of the product. My feedback is primarily about Imperva Cloud, not on-premise. On-premise is a whole new story. Support is the issue for Imperva Cloud. It's also a bit pricey. It's a premium service and very expensive. The licensing model is not very straightforward. Every feature is priced separately, and to enjoy maximum protection, you'll have to spend a lot of money. The licensing model is a bit complex, and each feature is very pricey. For example, API security and web application protection are two separate license packages.

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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 solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."

"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."

"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"

"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."

"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service."

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."

"The most valuable feature is its usability."

More Cloudflare pros

"Azure WAF is extremely stable."

"The most valuable feature is that it allows us to publish our applications behind the firewall."

"Configuration is much easier than using different platforms."

"The solution has good dashboards."

"The most valuable feature of Azure Web Application Firewall is its ability to filter requests and block false positives by using custom rules and the OWASP rule set."

"It's a good option if you want a solution that's ready to go and easy for your team to learn. It's cloud-based, so you don't need to buy or maintain any hardware infrastructure."

"We have found the most valuable features to be the web application, minimal skills required for management, control through policies, and automation."

"The integration it has with GitHub is great."

More Azure Web Application Firewall pros

"The valuable features of Imperva WAF include its effective security breach prevention through automatically updating rules."

"The most important feature I have found to be the ease in how to do the backup and restores."

"The most valuable feature of Imperva, in addition to its strong knowledge base, is its effective protection for web applications."

"Configuration for different application sources is most valuable. We can segregate the traffic that an application is carrying and identify the sizing in Imperva."

"The solution is very scalable. It is one of the most important features. You can also expand resources and features as well."

"The solution is scalable."

"If you are using the appliance as opposed to the virtual deployment, it can stand as the network layer-two and provide real transparency."

"The most valuable features of the Imperva Web Application Firewall are DDoS, malware, and the other malicious threat prevention it provides. Additionally, third-party integration is available. You can forward the log for further analysis."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pros

Cons

"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."

"The product needs to improve its automation."

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."

"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."

"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."

More Cloudflare cons

"The support for proxy forwarding could improve."

"The documentation needs to be improved."

"Azure WAF should not be deployed in the middle of the traffic."

"Upgrading the platform regularly is necessary for security, however, frequent updates every six months or year from Azure can be a maintenance overhead."

"In Brazil, we have some problems with the phone service that affect our connection with the cloud. However, it isn't common."

"I would say that Azure's customer service is not that good...I am not very happy with the support offered."

"Deployment should be simplified so that a non-techie can handle it."

"From my point of view, there is no need for improvement."

More Azure Web Application Firewall cons

"They recently separated the WAF and the DAM management gateways in order for each of these to be managed from different areas, so I believe it now requires additional investments for what was previously a single complete solution."

"The only disadvantage of Imperva is that it is a pretty costly solution."

"I don't really use it and therefore can't speak to areas of improvement."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by adding more features to the dashboard. increasing the visibility of the real-time events, besides configuring the administration itself."

"I loved the approach of the cloud. The cloud has a lot of new features, like advanced web protection and DDoS protection. If those could also be on-boarded onto the on-prem versions, that would be ideal. They need to pay attention to both deployment options and not just favor one."

"The tool's UI is complicated. It would be best to have a more accessible UI dashboard to make the job easier."

"The user interface could be better."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall could improve the console by making it easier to use."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"We are using the free version."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The price is for this solution is fair and there is a license needed."

"I give the pricing a nine out of ten."

"Azure WAF has price advantages over other WAF solutions. The pricing model is flexible because you pay on a scale based on the level of protection you need."

"We have an enterprise agreement with Microsoft and the pricing is good."

"The price is reasonable. It is approximately $2,000 US per month."

"The price of the solution depends on your architecture and how you manage it. You can control the cost in Azure quite well. The costs do not directly correlate to expenses in the features we are using."

"There are a couple of different licensing models."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."

"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."

"The solution's pricing is an issue."

"Make sure you understand the way that Imperva charges. It's very affordable. However, I would like to see a package with the Virtual Patching included. You get to do patching separately."

"The price is high compared to other solutions like FortiWeb."

"Imperva’s pricing is a bit higher in the market since it offers a full-blown WAF."

"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.

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845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 Azure Web Application Firewall?

The integration it has with GitHub is great.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Web Application Firewall?

The pricing is okay at the moment. Sometimes, when opting for a higher SKU, it's not the WAF itself that's costly but...

What needs improvement with Azure Web Application Firewall?

While using it, I identified certain areas where it would have been good to have additional features. Right now, I ca...

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

My recommendation is Imperva.

Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?

For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you hav...

DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DDoS Protection Service and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?

You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot ...

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

AWS WAF vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 40% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

More Azure Web Application Firewall Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 16% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

Radware Alteon vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

More Imperva Web Application Firewall Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare

Download Cloudflare product report

Azure Web Application Firewall

Download Azure Web Application Firewall product report

Imperva Web Application Firewall

Download Imperva Web Application Firewall product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) provides centralized protection of your web applications from common exploits and vulnerabilities. Web applications are increasingly targeted by malicious attacks that exploit commonly known vulnerabilities. SQL injection and cross-site scripting are among the most common attacks.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

Imperva Web Application Firewall is a versatile solution that protects web applications and databases from various attacks, including DDoS, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection attacks. It offers data security, availability, and access control and can be deployed on-premises or on the cloud.

The solution has good security against web attacks and offers advanced bot protection, API security, and mitigation features. Imperva WAF is easy to configure and deploy; it has good customer service and an excellent user interface.

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.

Information Not Available

BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens

Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall