Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler comparison

Barracuda Networks and NetScaler are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Barracuda Networks is ranked #17 with an average rating of 8.4, while NetScaler is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.2. Additionally, 94% of Barracuda Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of NetScaler users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Barracuda Web Application Firewall and NetScaler are web application security solutions. Barracuda is favored for its pricing and support, while NetScaler is often preferred for its advanced functionality.

Features: Barracuda Web Application Firewall offers essential security, straightforward management, and virus scanning, making it suitable for simpler and cost-effective solutions. NetScaler provides robust load balancing, sophisticated traffic management, and extensive SSL offloading, making it ideal for complex enterprise needs.

Room for Improvement: Barracuda could enhance its advanced threat protection and scalability. NetScaler might improve its user interface simplicity and reduce the technical complexity of deployment. Also, streamlining licensing models could benefit both.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Barracuda excels in simplified deployment and responsive customer support, making it suitable for smaller businesses. NetScaler requires technical expertise for deployment but offers comprehensive support options, which benefits larger enterprises.

Pricing and ROI: Barracuda presents a cost-effective option with low initial setup costs and predictable pricing, suitable for smaller operations. NetScaler, while involving higher upfront costs, justifies them with its extensive feature set, delivering significant long-term ROI for businesses with complex networks.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler

April 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

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.

Read full review

UmeshKumar2

Senior System Administrator at Wipro Limited

If an attack is continuous, it can block it temporarily for two to three minutes

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. I use both Barracuda WAF and F5 but Barracuda is easy to use. F5 offers more control at another level. You can control your ship like a user. In Barracuda WAF, you can add or modify anything only with the help of support. Most of the features in Barracuda WAF are available in GUI mode. In the second version of F5, you can write iRules and apply them easily on the device. If you need something in the parameter level, you need to scan and then enable and disable the metacharacter for that particular parameter. There are some profilings available in Barracuda but they are not like F5. F5 has more general and applicable heuristics than Barracuda. However, there are good things about Barracuda too. 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. This feature is not available in F5. F5 handles the implementation of single parameters and environmental parameters for financial applications easily. The profiling aspect is slower in Barracuda. Barracuda is easy for new people since everything that you need to implement the solution is available through the UI. You need little guidance for the solution. Anyone with knowledge of the HTTP header and signatures can use it very easily. It is more like Cisco in networking.

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DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking

Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

Read full review

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."

"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."

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."

"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."

"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."

"Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."

"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."

More Cloudflare pros

"It allows us to scale out to multiple phase servers."

"It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs in our environment."

"This product gives us visibility into what is going on in two servers, including connections and sessions, real-time alerts, very good reporting, and KPIs. It makes managing security of a critical server very easy, with a friendly GUI."

"The most valuable feature is the rule set."

"The customer service and support from Barracuda have been excellent."

"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."

"The most valuable features of Barracuda Web Application Firewall include advanced bot protection, DDoS protection, and addressing the top ten vulnerabilities."

"The solution offers multiple security features. There are machine learning features and great URL encryption. It also offers multi-protocol support against DDoS attacks."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall pros

"The solution is very stable."

"The MAS integration for HDX Insight has provided teams with significant visibility into network performance of the user's connection."

"Provides resiliency for applications that reside on servers, as well as connectivity to remote applications."

"My clients use it for load balancing."

"Compared to other solutions, Citrix ADC is much more robust in terms of the native integration to cloud platforms. It is far more robust from an operational point of view as well."

"Global load balancing between data centers."

"The most valuable features are the VDA Delivery, Gateway Fort, and the load balancing."

"Citrix Director has been great. It gives us one pane of glass to be able to monitor what's going on with the user sessions as well as to keep on top of the virtual desktops, any servers that may be offline or behaving suspiciously, or any troublesome spots like disconnections. We also use Citrix Studio for maintaining the actual servers that are hosting these applications. We use it for delivery groups in case we need to modify delivery groups in regards to which groups have access to which applications. It has been very helpful."

More NetScaler pros

Cons

"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."

"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."

"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."

"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."

More Cloudflare cons

"The incident reporting needs to be improved."

"There are false positives that I am receiving when compared to other WAFs."

"The policy updates could be improved."

"We encountered a few glitches while implementing API security features into the product."

"There are issues when upgrading firewalls and we experience different issues across customers."

"Barracuda Web Application Firewall's load balancing feature could be improved."

"The solution needs to leverage some additional features to a broader scale of software-defined networks."

"This product could easily progress to be among the industry leaders. I think they need to improve enterprise level automation. It integrates with a small number of vulnerability scanners, so report results should be imported manually; same for SIEM integration."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall cons

"The WAF component needs to be simplified so that it is easier to use."

"Technical support sometimes takes a little longer because of the multilevel ticket priority."

"It does not have a sandbox cloud service and antivirus. It should have on-prem or cloud sandboxing and antivirus."

"Citrix ADC is a complex product, and it takes time to understand these things. But the documentation is poor, and the deployment is difficult. Integration could also be better because what I find is that you cannot easily integrate the panel in the second sector. What I have found is that in the last index, there is a limitation when getting validated. Technical support could also be better."

"The technical support has room for improvement."

"Citrix ADC can improve if it provides a more user-friendly interface and clear working protocols. Citrix is not working with classic RFC, it is working with Citrix RFC, which is not common in the world. If engineers of Citrix can provide us with more information on working with the classic IP networks it would be a benefit."

"The technical support could be better. Whenever I contacted support, I rarely got the solution that we needed. And most of the time, I finished fixing the problem by looking on the internet or by finding documents about the problem on Google."

"The tool needs to add a feature where we can access the network policy access manager."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

"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."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The product is expensive."

"They only offer a yearly licensing plan."

"They have competitive pricing."

"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."

"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 inexpensive."

"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."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"Citrix NetScaler VPX is not the cheapest solution out there, but you get what you pay for."

"You get the value for your money. There aren't any hidden fees."

"Citrix NetScaler's pricing is slightly above average but not overly expensive. I would consider F5 BIG IP to be the most expensive, Citrix NetScaler to be the second most expensive, and then Kemp Load Balancer to be the third."

"F5 BIG-IP is much more expensive than Citrix ADC. For example, If we choose two platforms, Citrix ADC, 3000 version, and we choose F5, F4200 version. F5 BIG-IP has connections, timers, and throughput similar to Citrix ADC, but the price is very expensive."

"It is true that it is a bit pricey compared to newer technologies coming to the market. For example, A10 is a load balancer that does everything that Citrix can and it does a lot more than what NetScaler does when it comes to the security space, and their prices are so cheap. Every box comes with its own license and support built into it. When you compare that with NetScaler, you have to buy licenses separately, you have to buy a support agreement that is going to be separate. A small NetScaler, even if it is a VPX which is a virtual server, could cost you close to $150,000 to $200,000 dollars. So the pricing is really high."

"We get value for money. Its price is fair. I don't think it is overpriced."

"Citrix ADM costs us approximately $5000 per month."

"This product is more expensive than some of the competitors."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Citrix ADC?

The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?

After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 25% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 21% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 8% of the time

Radware Alteon vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

Barracuda Load Balancer ADC vs NetScaler

Compared 2% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Web Application Firewall

May 2025

Barracuda Web Application Firewall report

Download Barracuda Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

May 2025

Download NetScaler product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“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.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“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.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Barracuda Web Application Firewall is a game-changing cloud-connected security solution that enables organizations to safeguard both their applications and their data from an ever-growing array of advanced cyber threats. It offers protection from cyber attacks that target not only data and applications stored on the cloud but also those that are housed on web servers. 43% of the time a breach takes place via a compromised application. Barracuda Web Application Firewall prevents these types of breaches from occurring.

Barracuda Web Application Firewall denies hackers the ability to penetrate your system by using a number of techniques to keep your organization safely insulated. The first method of protection consists of two parts. The first part involves a thorough scanning of all inbound web traffic. This solution monitors everything that comes into the system. It employs IP reputation intelligence, which filters all incoming data. If the source of the data has a bad reputation, it is blocked by the firewall. Administrators now have a way of locking out many common threats that could otherwise compromise sensitive networks. These scans can also allow administrators to protect their systems from within as DLP (Data Loss Prevention) protocols. If any sensitive data attempts to leave, administrators will automatically be alerted and the data will be blocked from exiting.

Barracuda Web Application Firewall can also be set up to apply the AAA (Authentication, Authorization & Accounting) framework to an organization’s network. If an intruder manages to get past the authentication stage, the authorization protocols kick in. After the authorization stage comes accounting, which works by tracking and logging users’ activities so that administrators will be in a position to prevent long-term damage from being done. This three-step process can be implemented without requiring administrators to make changes to their applications.

Key Features

Some of Barracuda Web Application Firewall’s key features include:

The ability to employ adaptive profiling. Administrators will have an easier time enforcing security policies once this feature is enabled. It takes data from safe sources and builds profiles that can be used to create whitelisting protocols that prevent unsafe actions from occurring on the system.
The ability to assess threats in real time. Barracuda Web Application Firewall uses machine learning to detect new threats and attacks as they emerge.
The ability to manage the Barracuda Web Application Firewall system from a single interface. Administrators can manage their Barracuda Web Application Firewall configurations from one centralized location.

Reviews from Real Users

Barracuda Web Application Firewall stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. One of the main ones is the robustness of the solution. Users are given access to a vast variety of security features in a single product.

PeerSpot user Muhammed S., a Presales Solutions Architect at Hilal Computers, notes this when he writes, "The solution offers multiple security features. There are machine learning features and great URL encryption. It also offers multi-protocol support against DDoS attacks."

Other reviewers note that Barracuda Web Application Firewall is user-friendly, easy to set up, stable, and reliable.

Barracuda Networks

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

NetScaler

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

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler

April 2025

Free Report: Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler

Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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