Azure Web Application Firewall vs Imperva Web Application Firewall comparison

Microsoft and Imperva are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Microsoft is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.4, while Imperva is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.9. Additionally, 92% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Imperva users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Imperva Web Application Firewall and Azure Web Application Firewall compete in the web security product category. Imperva seems to have the upper hand due to its feature-rich environment that appeals to advanced security needs, although Azure offers more affordable and flexible pricing options.

Features: Imperva Web Application Firewall offers advanced features like correlated attack validation, threat intelligence, and virtual patching. Users find its dynamic profiling and ease of integration appealing. Azure Web Application Firewall offers ease of configuration within Azure or AWS and flexibility in creating custom rules, and it effectively filters against false positives.

Room for Improvement: Imperva's areas needing improvement include UI intuitiveness, policy management, and more seamless integrations. Users report challenges with real-time traffic visibility and a complex upgrade process. Azure's documentation lacks clarity and could benefit from better community and support resources. Users find its pricing plans less accessible for small to mid-sized companies.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Imperva supports a wide variety of deployment options, including on-premises and hybrid cloud, making it versatile. Customer service is well-regarded, though sometimes slow. Azure WAF is primarily cloud-focused and has seamless integration into Azure environments. Customer service is reliable but not always prompt or localized.

Pricing and ROI: Imperva Web Application Firewall is considered costly with complex pricing models. It provides high ROI for critical sectors but can be a barrier due to its high cost. Azure Web Application Firewall's flexible and affordable pricing appeals to those controlling costs in cloud environments. Azure's scalability and flexible pricing are highlighted, while Imperva's high ROI isn't overlooked despite its premium cost.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

April 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

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

"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."

"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."

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."

"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."

"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 solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

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

More Cloudflare pros

"It has been a stable product in my experience."

"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."

"Azure WAF is extremely stable."

"The solution has good dashboards."

"Configuration is much easier than using different platforms."

"It's great for protecting against DDoS attacks."

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

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

More Azure Web Application Firewall pros

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

"I have had a positive experience with Imperva Web Application Firewall's tech support so far. They are knowledgeable and respond on time."

"There are many features. There is ease of deployment. You can deploy the Imperva Web Application Firewall in two to three minutes. After that, you have to set the policies. For setting policies, you have toggle buttons. You can turn something on or off."

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

"Protection is the best solution since it has profile functionality."

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

"One good thing about Imperva Web Application Firewall is it can be on the cloud and also it can be on-premise."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is stable."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Support response time could be improved."

"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."

"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."

More Cloudflare cons

"Some Azure applications, like the web application firewall, require a certain level of SKU for hosting setup. The basic setup does not allow me to use the web application firewall and other additional services."

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

"We would like to see additional site services using AI to provide information about blocking requests and offer analytics on the origin of calls."

"The knowledge base could be improved."

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

"From a reporting perspective, they could do more there."

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

"The support for proxy forwarding could improve."

More Azure Web Application Firewall cons

"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."

"It would be useful if the solution used more intelligence in attack protection. For example, firewalls are to be dependent on the configuration, but if they could have some data science around it the solution would be even better. The profiling of the traffic, and making decisions surrounding that should be intelligence-based, instead of being based on the configuration of the firewall itself."

"I would like the solution to improve its support response time."

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

"The UI interface needs improvement."

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

"I think that better bot protection is needed in this solution."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The product's pricing is cheap."

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

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

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

"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."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."

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

"It is very costly, but the return on investment is very high. Its cost was around $70,000, and we got it back in just six months."

"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."

"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."

"The tool is expensive."

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

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

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...

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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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Azure Web Application Firewall?

The integration it has with GitHub is great.

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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...

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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...

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

My recommendation is Imperva.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

AWS WAF vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 36% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Bastion 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 15% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 13% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 8% of the time

F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

More Imperva Web Application Firewall Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Azure Web Application Firewall

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Imperva Web Application Firewall

May 2025

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

Buyer's Guide

Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

April 2025

Free Report: Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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