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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Barracuda Web Application F...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (17th)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
123
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Barracuda Web Application Firewall and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Barracuda Web Application Firewall is designed for Web Application Firewall (WAF) and holds a mindshare of 2.0%, up 2.0% compared to last year.
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), on the other hand, focuses on Application Delivery Controllers (ADC), holds 14.9% mindshare, down 15.4% since last year.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Barracuda Web Application Firewall2.0%
Fortinet FortiWeb7.8%
Imperva Application Security Platform7.8%
Other82.4%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)14.9%
NetScaler13.0%
Fortinet FortiADC9.8%
Other62.3%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

Shahzad Abid - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Information Technology at College of Physicians & Surgeons Pakistan
Has protected our legacy applications effectively but has required constant manual filtering due to false positives
I assess the effectiveness of the machine learning-driven threat detection in Barracuda Web Application Firewall as sometimes behaving abnormally, often showing me false positive attacks, so I have to fix these attacks from time to time. From a stability point of view, I would definitely rate Barracuda Web Application Firewall a seven out of ten. There is definitely some room for improvement; nothing is perfect in the world. I am not satisfied with the technical support from Barracuda. I am somewhat disappointed with the technical support that I have received so far. Whenever I generate a ticket for my problem, it goes to the Indian support team, and they all the time start with the most junior team member, consuming all my precious time. At the end, I have to close that ticket without any satisfactory solution. I have complained that they should shift my support to any other region because I don't need Indian support; they are simply pathetic and not up to mark. To improve Barracuda Web Application Firewall, customers should be given ongoing training opportunities regarding the product and its features. I am not familiar with many features that are available, only using those which are necessary for my applications. I believe Barracuda must provide clearer product information or training sessions to make it more user-friendly, as sometimes its interface can be rigid and lacking in helpful resources or user tutorials about its features. For it to get closer to a ten, I think advanced reporting is missing because, as I mentioned earlier, there are many false positive events being recorded. Often, when I analyze these attacks, they turn out to be genuine customers or users interacting with my product, but Barracuda tags them as attackers. Reducing false positives must be a priority.
Bonieber  Orofeo - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital
Identifying compromised traffic and securing data has been a significant advantage
One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication. Additionally, the security aspect of it provides a significant advantage as it helps us secure our data, which is a major investment and benefit for us. Before using this system, we had difficulties in storing our data and managing the traffic that comes in and out.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the strongest points is its robust issue discovery capabilities. Barracuda invests significant efforts in identifying and resolving issues. They have multiple products that work in tandem to perform these checks, which is beneficial because it automates security updates. This is the primary reason I recommend it to my customers."
"It's very simple and predictable, because Barracuda provides a vision of the current state of your application. It gives you an understanding of what is happening on your site and any attempts against you at your source. This is the main value that Web Application Firewall provides our company. These aspects are also the main reason for this documentation process."
"The product has fantastic support services."
"Our customers value the solution's simplicity."
"Setup of this solution is straightforward. It's a stable and scalable solution, with good performance and fast technical support."
"The solution is user-friendly and easy to set up."
"You don't need help from Barracuda to help with the deployment. The deployment is easy."
"What I like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall is its availability. I also like that it's an easy-to-use solution."
"The F5 GTM/BIGIP DNS (Global Traffic Manager) is a valuable feature. This feature allows for DNS load balancing, which means that high availability and load sharing can be done across services locally, as well as across datacenters with advanced capabilities​."
"Tech support has been very quick to respond to all of the needs that we've had. If you want ad-hoc support. They also provide professional services that you can purchase as well."
"iRules are very valuable. In addition to that, the way profiles are depicted by the LTM is also very good."
"One of the greatest things about F5 Load Balancer is that it provides additional capability for handling huge workloads and routing them to an SAP or non-SAP application. It is capable of supporting a large amount of user workload and application connectivity workload. This was the main reason why we chose F5."
"The impact of SSL offloading on reducing server load and latency is very much positive because whatever traffic we receive, we encrypt at our F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) level, which has definitely reduced the additional load and SSL decryption load on the servers, so it has very much helped us and it is very smooth; it will not take much time and will not impact our regular traffic."
"It helps us recognize sessions from certain IPs that are authorized to manage the application. This is a function we haven't found anywhere else."
"Good application firewall."
"The iRule feature is very useful for inspecting HTTP. Sometimes, we use it for modifying the headers of the HTTP."
 

Cons

"There are false positives that I am receiving when compared to other WAFs. The issues with false positives affect client transactions, leading to complaints about blocked transactions."
"They could improve their performance, support, and their upgrades. Their updates used to be good. Their improvements were right on the money but nowadays, the updates are minor."
"The usability of the interface could be improved."
"An area for improvement in Barracuda Web Application Firewall is attack identification. Other banks identified attacks and tracked logs that the solution wasn't able to identify because of its ready-made rules pre-deployed by the vendor. My organization raised this issue with the technical support team. Another area to improve in Barracuda Web Application Firewall is its service desk. The team resorted to stonewalling because they couldn't accept that a feature was missing in the solution, and it was only after a lot of drilling down that the service desk team accepted that, and would be adding that feature in the future. My organization had to submit a report to the Reserve Bank of India with information on the logs identified and the attacks that happened, and that there was a failure on the part of the Barracuda Web Application Firewall. The Reserve Bank of India conducts a tri-monthly cyber risk audit in all Indian banks. Even smaller banks identified and caught attacks that my organization wasn't able to do, so I was looking into other solutions that competitor banks could be using because Barracuda Web Application Firewall failed to identify some of the attacks."
"There are false positives that I am receiving when compared to other WAFs."
"I have found F5 more stable than Barracuda Web Application Firewall. They should improve the stability."
"While the UI is good, it can get a little bit complicated."
"The incident reporting needs to be improved."
"I wouldn't recommend the tool to small companies, considering its high price and the infrastructure needs of small businesses."
"The management interface is unclear, complex, and not concise. I would like a better user interface."
"The user interface of F5 BIG-IP LTM is old and could improve."
"The license terms for "non-commercial" will are challenging for us."
"I think the logging could be improved."
"Reporting could be improved and configuration made easier."
"Cloud native integration should be provided."
"Right now, there are a lot of products within F5's portfolio. They acquired a couple of companies like NGINX and Volterra. Some features and technologies overlapped when this acquisition occurred. They need to refine it and come up with a single, proper solution. F5 should focus more on zero trust network access (ZTNA).They should be more focused on that framework because the industry is moving towards that. Everyone is talking about SASE and zero trust."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing fees are paid annually and the cost is between €600 and €800 (approximately $665.00 to $885.00 USD)."
"The price of this solution is okay."
"The solution is based on a licensing model and might be $360 for the hybrid version."
"The price of the solution is a little expensive. There is a license for this solution and it can be purchased every one, two, or five years."
"They only offer a yearly licensing plan."
"Barracuda costs us $8,000 per year. Barracuda costs $20,000 for a full subscription, when you try to protect multi-site infrastructure, in different geographical zones and for different data centers. If you have only one site, Barracuda will be cheaper."
"The product is expensive."
"The product pricing was competitive for the value it offers regarding security features."
"BIG-IP LTM is considered a premium product, so it's quite expensive and isn't affordable for all customers."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good. We chose to go through the AWS Marketplace because everything that we needed was a soft appliance. We needed something to work in Amazon, and this product was available there."
"The price of F5 BIG-IP LTM could improve."
"It is a little pricey. I wish the pricing was cheaper, but I wish the pricing was cheaper for everything."
"Check other vendors like Cisco, Citrix or A10 Networks. There are plenty in the market with which you can achieve same thing."
"If your IT budget is good, go for it."
"I am a fan of using AWS natively. It is much cheaper."
"The pricing is inclusive of many features."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise32
Large Enterprise85
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs in our environment.
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
I am not using the API protection feature right now because I don't host any APIs through Barracuda Web Application Firewall. I use a second procedure for API, which is point-to-point VPN connectiv...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
At the time I was acquiring Barracuda Web Application Firewall, I found it costly compared to other products. To overcome that price factor, I excluded some features or subscriptions to align with ...
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?
The pricing of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is on the higher side compared to competitors, but it is worth it.
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?
Our main use cases involve multiple applications, so we are using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) services, and we are using WAF and ASM services to secure those applications and load balance...
 

Also Known As

No data available
F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar
Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and other solutions. Updated: September 2020.
881,757 professionals have used our research since 2012.