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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs Fortinet FortiWeb comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)
Barracuda Web Application F...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (17th)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th)
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Anne-Aimee Wollerich - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing bot traffic effectively enhances usability for non-technical users
Barracuda Web Application Firewall lacks some of the more specified and structured features offered by solutions like Tenable. Although Tenable is more expensive and less easily deployable, its features are more deepened and chiseled, particularly for IT personnel. For example, Tenable provides more comprehensive dark web scanning capabilities, which Barracuda could improve upon.
OcheEluma - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced security with comprehensive traffic inspection and some downtime automation needs
One area that needs improvement is the handling of SaaS downtime. When there is downtime at their data center, it becomes a transit point issue for us, causing downtime in our environment as well. Although measures like built-in redundancy and manual switching between data centers exist, there is room for improvement in making these transitions automatic without impacting the customer. Automating the migration without manual intervention would significantly enhance user experience during downtime. Additionally, being able to read non-flagged traffic for operational purposes could also be an area to improve.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."
"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."
"The UI is good."
"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"The solution ensures layer seven is secure from attacks."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of use and the signature base."
"It allows us to scale out to multiple phase servers."
"The updating and signature features are my primary use case for the solution. These features are beneficial to my organization."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward, especially if you enlist assistance."
"The product has fantastic support services."
"It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs in our environment."
"Has a good dashboard."
"Other than the additional security with exploit protection, we have simpler certificate handling, as we can keep internal servers using internal certificates continuously distributed and updated by Active Directory Group Policy, while the public certificates become updated only in a single place, FortiWeb itself."
"The reason I recommend this product is because it guarantees that your network will be safe if it is set up properly and you fully utilize most of the functions."
"FortiGate is a stable product."
"The support services, performance, and pricing are all valuable features. The performance is excellent."
"The valuable feature of Fortinet FortiWeb vulnerability scanner"
"The ability to configure multiple policies for different requirements is a strong feature of Fortinet FortiWeb."
"High-performance and detection engines, provide a high rate of exposure of web attacks."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall (WAF)."
 

Cons

"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."
"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."
"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."
"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."
"If you know nothing about networks, then you can't set it up."
"There are issues when upgrading firewalls and we experience different issues across customers."
"I faced an issue when Barracuda decided not to support Azure Stack Hub anymore, which was a significant issue as we had many customers using it on that platform."
"We encountered a few glitches while implementing API security features into the product."
"There's potential for improvement in the platform's CMS integration."
"As most people are aware, the implementation is not easy."
"I think the main area for improvement in this product is learning it, as can be seen when comparing it to the F5 web application firewall. F5 has a very powerful learning phase when you start using your web application firewall against your site. Barracuda has something like this, but not with the same functionality from my point of view."
"A user interface or dashboard for troubleshooting is needed."
"Another area for improvement is logging. When troubleshooting, the logs sometimes take a while to update. We've had people report that some things aren't logged if they're successful. It's a bit hit-and-miss. For example, sometimes people access one of our services, and it's successful, but we don't see that in the logs."
"HA Architecture needs improvement. I would improve it by working on AP HA."
"If the price was lower, it would be a bit more attractive, as an option, to the customers."
"I had some small problems when I was upgrading firmware. After the upgrade, some of my certificates were deleted.​"
"​Their support needs improvement."
"Fortinet WAF came out recently, and there is not much feedback about customer experience. For each project, customers ask about the scenarios and references of the customers who have implemented this solution, which we don't have. They need to simplify the customer experience and provide more information so that we can propose Fortinet Fortiweb as a WAF solution to customers and convince them. They need to improve their service and training. We need good training to implement and use it properly and know more about it. We still don't know much about Fortinet WAF. We didn't get any proper training sessions. Other vendors like Cisco, Palo Alto, Check Point, and Barracuda provide such sessions. Whenever we receive a request from a customer for this solution, we just give the price. We don't propose this solution because we don't know much about it. We propose whatever we are familiar with and what is supported."
"Fortinet FortiWeb could improve data integration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"They have competitive pricing."
"While I would have to check on the price of the solution, I feel it to be okay and it matches the market price."
"Our licensing fees are paid annually and the cost is between €600 and €800 (approximately $665.00 to $885.00 USD)."
"Cost is a bit on the higher side. Big companies can afford it."
"They only offer a yearly licensing plan."
"The pricing is less compared to other web applications."
"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."
"The Barracuda Web Application Firewall is quite expensive."
"The license cost depends on the size of the box or the size of the solution. It can go from €200 Euros to a few hundred thousand Euros a year depending on your size."
"When I use any other firewall, I have to take a license. It could be a perpetual license or subscription-based. In both cases, we have to pay some amount in advance, whereas in the case of FortiWeb, when using it as a service, I am paying half a dollar only for the domain name, and then I am paying based on the traffic or the number of requests."
"The price is competitive."
"It keeps changing, but it's based on the size of the VM you buy and also the traffic throughput you want from it, whereas what we have on Azure is just the traffic throughput. You can also pay on a monthly basis from Azure. During each part of the project, it's okay to get Azure-based licensing or AWS-based licensing for FortiWeb, but over time, you would want to go with the perpetual license. You should go to Fortinet and buy the license from them. So, there is a two-step process there."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb depends from customer to customer because some customers are considering using other solutions, such as Imperva. The price of Fortinet FortiWeb sits well for the middle-sized customers that we deal with."
"The maintenance fee for this product could be improved."
"The pricing is in the middle. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten. It feels like a justified cost for the features."
"Cheaper than others."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise30
 

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 Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
Our primary use case was to track the traffic on websites or webshops to identify potential malicious actors, such as...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
The pricing for Barracuda is quite high compared to other OEMs. Each transaction requires my purchase team to negotia...
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiWeb?
The WAF profiles has been effective at mitigating web-based threats.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb?
The pricing for Fortinet FortiWeb varies with different models having different prices. It depends on the requirement...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?
There is room for improvement in Fortinet FortiWeb. The team was only from FortiGate itself. They are making new firm...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar
Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiWeb and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,785 professionals have used our research since 2012.