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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs HAProxy comparison

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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

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)
HAProxy
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (19th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (24th), Bot Management (12th), Service Mesh (2nd)
 

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.
Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful for for small and quick load-balancing tasks
What I like best about the product is its simplicity and speed. When you need to set up a load balancer quickly, HAProxy offers options like sticky sessions and round-robin. It's also fast to configure, including adding SSL for security. While it may have fewer options than other solutions like F5, HAProxy gets the job done for basic load-balancing tasks. The reliability features of HAProxy were particularly useful in a scenario where I needed to test load balancing between two Tomcats. Since these domains were inaccessible, I set up a third Docker with HAProxy, which had access to the Tomcat domains. I then configured HAProxy to handle the load balancing. This setup allowed the client to interact with HAProxy. The solution's integration with other elements is easy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."
"The tool is user-friendly."
"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"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."
"The stability of the product is good. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The solution has been quite stable. It's reliable."
"The customer service and support are exceptional, and I would give them a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable features are the client VPN and content filtering."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the simplicity of configuration."
"There is no one special feature, but the WAF itself is valuable: user-friendly protection against web attacks etc., authentication, reporting, accountability, alerting, and hardened OS."
"What I like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall is its availability. I also like that it's an easy-to-use solution."
"The solution ensures layer seven is secure from attacks."
"Stability is number one."
"Tech support is super-quick to respond, and always on target with answers specific to the current issue."
"The solution is effective in managing our traffic."
"We were able to use HAProxy for round robin with our databases, or for a centralized TCP connection in one host."
"The anti-DDOS PacketShield filtering solution (embedded in the physical appliances) as well as the BGP route injection are great features and heavily used."
"The most important features would be the load-balancing of HTTP and TCP requests, according to multiple LB-algorithms (busyness, weighted-busyness, round robin, traffic, etc). Another important feature that we cannot live without is the username/passwd authentication for legacy systems that had none."
"​​Reliability. HAProxy is the most reliable product I have ever used."
"It is a crucial tool in ensuring smooth service provision without any interruptions."
 

Cons

"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"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."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."
"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."
"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"One of Barracuda's limitations is its user interface. The GUI for configuration is not intuitive and has remained largely unchanged for the past 10 to 12 years."
"In the Barracuda Web Application Firewall, there should be more affordable options for WAF as a service."
"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."
"The incident reporting needs to be improved."
"The solution needs to leverage some additional features to a broader scale of software-defined networks."
"I would like to see better controlling of the traffic."
"There are issues when upgrading firewalls and we experience different issues across customers."
"If you know nothing about networks, then you can't set it up."
"The web stats UI, which provides the status of the health and numbers, could greatly benefit from having a RESTful interface to control the load-balanced nodes. Although there is a hack around the UI (by issuing a POST request to HAProxy with parameters), a RESTful interface would greatly improve the automation process (through Chef and Ansible)."
"We've changed solutions as it doesn't fit with our current needs."
"I would like to evaluate load-balancing algorithms other than round robin and SSL offloading. Also, it would be helpful if I could logically divide the HAProxy load-balancing into multiple entities so that I would install one HA Proxy LB application which could be used for different Web servers for different applications. I am not sure if these features are available."
"The only area that I can see needing improvement is the management interface, since it is pretty much all through the CLI or configuration. A GUI/web interface could be helpful for users who are not as experienced in the Linux shell. However, HAProxy does have another product that we evaluated called ALOHA, which has a web front-end, but we found it did not meet our needs."
"HAProxy could improve by making the dashboards easier to use, and better reports and administration tickets."
"The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved."
"HAProxy is very weak in the logging and monitoring part and requires improvement."
"We need to handle new connections by dropping, or queuing them while the HAProxy restarts, and because HAProxy does not handle split config files."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We don't have any issues with the price."
"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."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The price is reasonable."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"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."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"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."
"Cost is a bit on the higher side. Big companies can afford it."
"They have competitive pricing."
"The product is inexpensive."
"Our licensing fees are paid annually and the cost is between €600 and €800 (approximately $665.00 to $885.00 USD)."
"For small companies, the price is very expensive because the WAF is an enterprise-level application, not intended for smaller businesses. In my opinion, the price is right for enterprise-level use."
"The Barracuda Web Application Firewall is quite expensive."
"The pricing is less compared to other web applications."
"The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."
"The product is open source."
"The tool is open-source."
"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."
"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."
"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."
"HAProxy is free open-source software."
"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
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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
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
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 Business15
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise15
 

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...
Do you recommend HAProxy?
I do recommend HAProxy for more simple applications or for companies with a low budget, since HAProxy is a free, open...
What do you like most about HAProxy?
The solution is effective in managing our traffic.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

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
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,785 professionals have used our research since 2012.