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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs Imperva Web Application Firewall 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
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Barracuda Web Application F...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (18th)
Imperva Web Application Fir...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th)
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user566739 - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 07, 2016
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Syed MajedHussain - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use with enhanced cybersecurity and seamless web traffic filtering
Our clients primarily use Barracuda Web Application Firewall to filter their web traffic and ensure they are secure enough to protect their cybersecurity workloads We have sold these solutions to academic clients like universities. They appreciated the ease of use and the signature base. The…
Abdullah Jin - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

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 solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"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."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"Has a good dashboard."
"Even when we were upgrading to a new OS, we didn't have any difficulties with the product. The stability is good."
"The solution is user-friendly and easy to set up."
"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."
"Its recommendation about the probabilities on the website is great. It also has free probability managers for the website, which is really helpful. The protection engine, signature-based protection behavior, and analysis features are also great. It also has an ATP module for sandbox scanning and behavior analysis for file uploads."
"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."
"It allows us to scale out to multiple phase servers."
"If an attack is coming continuously, you can ask the device to block it temporarily for two to three minutes. F5 has not provided us with an option to block certain IPs for some time. Barracuda can help you block someone if the source is from a different IP. You can apply the rule to the device and block it for whatsoever time you want. The solution will unblock the IP after the prescribed time as well."
"The compliance is the most valuable aspect."
"The WAF itself has been very valuable to me because it has such a complete range of features. Another reason why I like it is because it also takes care of the total overview of the traffic over the network."
"The most valuable features of the Imperva Web Application Firewall are DDoS, malware, and the other malicious threat prevention it provides. Additionally, third-party integration is available. You can forward the log for further analysis."
"There are some features that are configured by default, so even without doing much, it can still provide a level of protection."
"Compared to other web application firewalls in the market, Imperva does things in the most accurate way."
"The solution can scale."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is stable."
"Imperva is easy to use and deploy. The UI is excellent."
 

Cons

"There are some issues with the CDN services."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"Support response time could be improved."
"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."
"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"We encountered a few glitches while implementing API security features into the product."
"I would like to see a native multi-cloud cover."
"I would like to see an improved capacity to store logs so that they will be available for a longer time."
"The incident reporting needs to be improved."
"There are false positives that I am receiving when compared to other WAFs."
"It is not stable nor mature."
"The usability of the interface could be improved."
"I would suggest that someone implementing this product is knowledgeable in the IT field, and with the network needs. It is complex."
"The tool needs to improve CPU and storage memory."
"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."
"They recently separated the WAF and the DAM management gateways in order for each of these to be managed from different areas, so I believe it now requires additional investments for what was previously a single complete solution."
"Some of the features should be included in the next release is a file integrating monitoring tool. This feature should be improved."
"It's a complicated tool to keep."
"The process to upgrade from one version to another can be a lot simpler than it is currently."
"An improvement for Imperva WAF would be to reduce the number of false positives and create more strong use cases based on AI/ML or behavioral analytics."
"I'd like the option to pick your bot protection."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"A free version of the solution is available."
"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."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"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."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The product is inexpensive."
"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 solution is based on a licensing model and might be $360 for the hybrid version."
"The price is reasonable, more so than other products."
"The price of this solution is okay."
"They have competitive pricing."
"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."
"The Barracuda Web Application Firewall is quite expensive."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."
"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."
"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."
"The solution's pricing is an issue."
"It is a very affordable solution."
"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."
"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."
"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."
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Answers from the Community

it_user566739 - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 8, 2016
Dec 8, 2016
To prevent OWASP TOP 10 (SQL Injection, XSS, XSFR...etc) attacks, stop L7 DDoS like SlowLoris and HeavyURL, protect against web fraud, phishing and endpoint malware (Dridex) on endpoint machines outside administrative control, secure application API's, the option to deploy as a managed service in the cloud and available on premises, use DAST integration for policy building with Qualys, Cenzic, ...
2 out of 13 answers
it_user307584 - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 7, 2016
Today i would say Barracuda is the better WAF based on that Imperva Dev slowed down over the last two years and the customers give bad feedback on the support, but there is a newer generation of WAF´s in the market that is better than Imperva and Barracuda, both in performance and price, PT application firewall, the only visionary in the GMQ
Dec 7, 2016
Neither. F5 Networks Sent from my iPhone
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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...
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?
I use Barracuda Web Application Firewall mainly for web application protection. I have worked with Barracuda for six ...
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...
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...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
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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
BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.