Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service 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 Web Application ...

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 5.4%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 8.1%, up from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform	8.1%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall	5.4%
Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service	0.9%
Other	85.6%

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Dean Barisic

CTO at PlayNirvana

Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks

I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.

Security management has reduced ransomware risk and now protects cloud workloads efficiently

Tarandeep Kaur

DevOps Manager at Flash.co

The best features that Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service offers are an intuitive centralized dashboard, allowing us to manage policies, Internet protocol servers, antiviruses, anti-DDoS attacks, and traffic shaping across multiple sites. This feature enables seamless scaling of our environments, especially as we work within Amazon Web Services. Additionally, real-time threat intelligence helps us to detect threats in real-time. Another major feature I love is application control and VPN support, providing granular visibility and protection without needing separate appliances. The centralized dashboard is helping us streamline visibility across our admin panels and provides site-to-site visibility deployed directly to our AWS environment, securing VPC traffic and ensuring the firewall is in place. The real-time threat intelligence is an advanced feature helping us track real-time attacks, such as anti-DDoS attacks, ransomware, or viruses that can compromise system integrity. Through the intuitive centralized dashboard, we can manage policies and set rules, assisting us effectively.

Solution ensures website availability and proactive threat mitigation

reviewer1247523

Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

Over the seven years, the most valuable features of Imperva DDoS that I have found are related to DDoS attacks, which are a group of attacks, and not all of them can be resolved on the endpoint level before the website. Using the web firewall before the website is a common use case to protect against malicious requests to the website. I have utilized Imperva's Intelligent Traffic Filtering feature. This feature helps me understand how the attack is progressing and what is happening inside the requests to our website. It allows me to granularly grant or deny access to certain parts of our website. This helps when we know our customers and the types of requests that can be sent from them, enabling us to block some malicious requests. Imperva DDoS has User Behavior Analytics and Threat Intelligence on its board, and this helps us to be protected proactively. Imperva DDoS connects to its database of threats, storing whole information about attacks all over the world in one simple engine. Everyone can use this feature, which can connect to this engine and get information about what is going on at the world level. That is the way to be protected at the company's level. The integration capabilities of Imperva DDoS are very easy and simple. We can run it in 2 hours.

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."

"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."

"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."

"We like that there's load balancing, firewall capabilities, DDoS protection, et cetera, all covered by Cloudflare."

"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."

"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."

"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."

"There is a huge signature repository"

"I like its ability to identify known attacks, including DDOS attacks. It's valuable because software must be able to stop known attacks. Application attacks are evolving all the time. When it comes to software-as-a-service, we need to have software that knows about all the latest attacks. It should also protect against major unknown attacks."

"Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service's real-time attack detection feature has improved our customers' threat response strategies significantly."

"Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service has positively impacted our organization by reducing cyber threats like ransomware and phishing by ninety-five percent."

"The most valuable features of the solution are it is plug and play, has automated policies, a simple configuration, and is easy to create rules."

"The solution can be used for threat prevention or as a cloud-to-cloud backup system"

"The product's bot protection feature is valuable for our company."

"It provides an ease of policy management."

"I like the user-friendly interface."

"Very scalable and very stable firewall for web applications, with a good interface in its cloud version. Mitigation is its most valuable feature. The technical support for this product is also good."

"Incapsula provides a very simple to install and configure solution, that can be up and running in minutes."

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

"The solution is very good at intercepting traffic before it gets to our data centers."

"Imperva has a complete picture of how the applications are utilizing it. It is handy. DDoS is good. It has an internally managed database. It is very easy to integrate. We have integrated it with SIEM services."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is stable."

"The solution is cloud-based and offers us good uptime. It has combined web and API security. Therefore, with one license, you access both application security and also API security."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pros

Cons

"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."

"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."

"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."

"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."

"The reporting could be more granular."

"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."

"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"The price of their licensing model is a bit steep, and the pricing and SIEM integration sometimes create challenges, and we need to get professional help with those areas."

"It's a very specific solution that is only requested for a customer's web code or their global IT policy."

"We found it a bit slow when accessing it through the web browser. The URL also exposed the user name and the hashed password. When I log into my Barracuda WAF user portal, I could see the username and the hashed password on the URL itself. So, it is not very secure, and it is important to take that off."

"One significant area for improvement in Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service lies in its market positioning and pricing strategy."

"The solution can improve by bundling Security Operation Center (SOC) with the WAF-as-a-Service, it would provide a lot more value to customers."

"The stability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"Their portal is very limited and needs improvement."

"The cost could be lower; our end clients need to have a high budget to purchase this solution."

"I miss being able to integrate the dashboard with other BI tools we are using. We have to export and import data to be able to present it, and doing so is a lot of work."

"The salespeople tend to exaggerate its capabilities, which can cost you money if you don't verify the information."

"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 support for the on-premises version needs improvement."

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

"The initial setup could be simplified. Every time you have to install the solution you have to get in touch with support or somebody that can to do that for you."

More Imperva Application Security Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"

"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."

"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."

"It is not too pricey."

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."

"The solution is expensive."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"It's very difficult for me to give an estimate of the cost. All I know is that we sell the box itself as a service."

"The product is expensive but it offers flexible pricing. It could be affordable."

"I rate the product's price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high. There are no additional costs to be paid apart from the standard licensing fees attached to the solution."

"Pricing could be more competitive."

"The tool's pricing is good."

"The license is on a yearly basis."

"There are a couple of different licensing models."

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

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

"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."

"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."

More Imperva Application Security Platform 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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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…

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

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Government

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

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	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	2

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	84
Midsize Enterprise	25
Large Enterprise	62

Questions from the Community

The price of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is reasonable.

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...

What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...

What needs improvement with Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

I see that cost can be a limitation for small businesses. Additionally, if they can provide more advanced features an...

What is your primary use case for Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

We primarily use Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service for raising security incidents by proactively blocking malware, ransomwar...

What advice do you have for others considering Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service?

I rate Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service a five out of five overall. The reason I choose five out of five is that all the th...

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...

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Comparisons

Compared 8% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

Alibaba Cloud WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

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Fortinet FortiWeb vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 14% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 13% of the time

AWS WAF vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 10% of the time

Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 7% of the time

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) vs Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Compared 6% of the time

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Cloudflare vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 6% of the time

Akamai vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 6% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 3% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 2% of the time

More Imperva Application Security Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service

Download Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service product report

Imperva Application Security Platform

Download Imperva Application Security Platform product report

Imperva Application Security Platform report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

Barracuda WAF as a Service

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

Overview

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.

Cloudflare

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service is a comprehensive solution designed to provide application security, DDoS protection, SSL authentication, protocol support, and application delivery. It is a plug-and-play solution with automated policies, simple configuration, and easy rule creation.

The solution can be used for threat prevention or as a cloud-to-cloud backup system based on email protection with cloud security. It is also a web application firewall and covers major protection and threat management functions. With Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service, customers can ensure the security of their web code and comply with global IT policies.

Barracuda Networks

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

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Salvation Army

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

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs. Imperva Application Security Platform