F5 Advanced WAF and Cloudflare compete in the web application firewall category, with Cloudflare having an advantage due to its simplicity and comprehensive features.
Features: F5 Advanced WAF provides robust security with network detection intelligence, behavior analysis, and anti-bot protection. It offers advanced capabilities for custom rule application and integrates well with global threat intelligence. Cloudflare offers ease of configuration with pre-packaged OWASP rules, comprehensive DDoS protection, and load balancing, making it straightforward to operate while providing strong security coverage.
Room for Improvement: F5 Advanced WAF struggles with complex configurations and a steep learning curve. Users report a non-intuitive interface and desire better reporting features. High pricing is a concern. Cloudflare requires more current documentation and improved third-party integrations. Users would also like to see enhancements in log management and rate-limiting capabilities.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: F5 Advanced WAF is often used in on-premises and hybrid setups, requiring complex deployments and producing variable customer support experiences, particularly with response times. Cloudflare's public cloud model ensures straightforward deployment with its global infrastructure, offering accessible and efficient customer service, though feedback suggests service improvement in handling diverse queries could be beneficial.
Pricing and ROI: F5 Advanced WAF is considered expensive, reflecting its features and high performance. While its ROI is recognized due to enhanced security, users find costs a challenge. Cloudflare's affordable subscription model with a clear pricing structure is competitive, offering comprehensive features with various flexible plans, appreciated for balancing cost and functionality effectively.
My experience with the pricing or licensing of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is that many features can be accessed for free, so the pricing is definitely reasonable.
Time savings in daily operations come from the automatic learning and signature update reducing the need for constant manual rule management, allowing the security and network teams to spend significantly less time handling false positive application-related escalations.
Subscription models offer clearer ROI due to a more competitive pricing scheme.
F5 Advanced WAF protects our organization and provides security, achieving a return on investment.
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to contact them.
The technical support of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between five and seven at maximum.
Both response time and availability need to be improved.
F5 Advanced WAF provides the insights and notifications I need in terms of reporting and alerting.
If there is a bug, the support is usually understanding and resolves issues.
The scalability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between 8 to 9, as it depends upon the use cases and what exactly the client needs.
The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10.
F5 Advanced WAF has been very reliable and consistent for us; in our on-premise enterprise setup, it has been stable and predictable in day-to-day operations without any unexpected crashes or WAF-related downtime in production.
The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available.
I think they're doing a good job with DNS and as support for any domains that I create or that my clients create, it's mandatory for me to ensure they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider.
They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long.
Deployment training for F5 Advanced WAF is lacking and restricts growth by being inaccessible and costly for partners.
Overall, these are not blockers, merely enhancement opportunities, and once tuned, F5 Advanced WAF is very stable and reliable; improving usability, reporting, and onboarding would make it even more effective for larger environments.
There is excellent clarity in the LTM and the WAF.
Licensing is capacity-driven, so you need careful planning based on traffic volume and use cases, and adding features such as Bot Protection impacts costs; once licensing is clear and sized correctly, there are no surprises.
Subscription models have competitive pricing, while perpetual licenses involve an upfront higher cost.
The price is affordable and satisfactory.
The custom rules and the geo-redundant geographical rule feature, which allows me to implement geographical rules for customers, add significant value.
The best features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall are multiple, including the WAF, rate limiter, and bot attack protection.
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools add a layer that we're able to visualize and see before it actually hits the local firewall.
The Advanced Attack Signature database is very strong and regularly updated, effectively blocking SQL injections, cross-site scripting, command injections, and file inclusion attacks while allowing selective enabling or disabling of signatures to avoid blocking genuine traffic.
F5 Advanced WAF offers the best features that are capable of stopping any type of attack, and it is a really reliable and stable product that you can rely on to stop any type of attack.
The perpetual license, despite an initial higher cost, lacks transparency regarding support expiration.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| F5 Advanced WAF | 7.8% |
| Cloudflare Web Application Firewall | 5.8% |
| Other | 86.4% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 15 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 6 |
| Large Enterprise | 6 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 25 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 15 |
| Large Enterprise | 31 |
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.
F5 Advanced WAF is a web application security solution for financial and government sectors, e-commerce, and public-facing websites. It offers protection against various attacks, including botnets, web scraping, and foreign entities. The solution can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and is often used with other security tools. Its most valuable features include DDoS and DNS attack protection, SSL uploading, anomaly detection, and the ability to input custom rules.
F5 Advanced WAF has helped organizations to expose more services to the public while providing an extra layer of protection, preventing revenue loss, and securing connectivity.
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