Exinda vs Steelhead comparison

GFI and Riverbed are both solutions in the WAN Optimization category. GFI is ranked #5, while Riverbed is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.0. Additionally, 87% of GFI users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Riverbed users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 10, 2024

Steelhead and Exinda compete in the WAN optimization market. Despite both having strong offerings, users favor the comprehensive feature set of Exinda, suggesting it is worth its cost, while Steelhead is often preferred for its support and pricing.

Features: Steelhead is valued for efficient data compression, application acceleration, and reliable support. Exinda excels with granular bandwidth management, real-time monitoring capabilities, and advanced analytics.

Room for Improvement: Steelhead users suggest improvements in reporting capabilities, scalability, and software updates. Exinda users desire more intuitive configuration options, enhanced technical support, and better user interface design.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Steelhead is noted for its straightforward deployment and reliable customer support. Exinda offers complex deployment but compensates with superior customization options and better network optimization. Users highlight the need for better deployment documentation for Exinda.

Pricing and ROI: Steelhead is seen as more cost-effective, with a faster ROI due to lower initial setup costs. Exinda, although higher in price, is justified by potent features and network optimization that deliver significant ROI. Differences in pricing strategies affect user demand, with Steelhead being favorable for budget-conscious buyers while Exinda attracts those prioritizing advanced capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Exinda vs. Steelhead Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Exinda vs. Steelhead

June 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 900,747 peers since 2012

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 Web Application ...

Featured Reviews

Dean Barisic

CTO at PlayNirvana

Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks

I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.

Read full review

Marek Jaworski

Senior Engineer, Team Lead, Network Operations at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Allows us to have better control over our network by shaping traffic more gently

There might be room for improvement in the speed and throughput of some of their devices. They're getting a bit slow on some of the bigger devices. It would be helpful if there were some sort of an ISP model. Also, while I don't think it would be possible for them to do, it would be better if they had the Citrix support and the visualization to visualize your network. Besides that, it fits its purpose as a shaper and accelerator. Some people would say things like, "Add a firewall to it," but I disagree. I think a firewall's a firewall, and Exinda's a shaper and accelerator.

Read full review

Chaudhary Muhammad Moez Manzar

Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Reduces operational costs through bandwidth optimization but struggles with high traffic licensing and complex deployments

The logs in Steelhead are fantastic. There is a deep level of logs such as top 10 docker and top 50 docker. I can check from the top 50 docker which type of application is optimizing well and which type of traffic is not optimized. Steelhead provides logs and percentage levels, which is good. I can see any type of log report, report security, different types of report availability, but it is not customizable. Overall, this is a good feature. Steelhead provides real-time optimization with graphs and tables on real-time optimization, informing us packet by packet including port, source IP, destination IP, and destination port number. This reporting and real-time monitoring is fantastic, although I faced a problem in Oracle. Steelhead mainly saves the money that needs to be paid to ISPs. My actual traffic is around 2 GB, but I purchased a link from the ISP for only around 700 to 800 MB. All the prices that need to be paid monthly to the ISP are saved, which is a significant saving for my company after using Riverbed.

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

"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."

"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."

"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."

"This solution does a good job of preventing web application attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting attacks."

"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."

"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."

"It is configurable via API."

"Cloudflare has positively impacted my organization by making it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple clients; I can easily go in and access their accounts, make changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"Exinda can show you which product uses how much throughput and can help you manage it."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to provide very granular classes of service. That's important because it allows us to prioritize certain traffic types over others, to a very granular level."

"The benefit that we have seen is that if we turn it off, people notice that the applications are running slowly."

"The most valuable features are the shaper, accelerator, and the reporting... it will shape the traffic better than, for example, a Cisco, because it's more gentle on the shaping side of things. Suppose you were selling a 20-meg link. Because you can shape to the nth degree of traffic, the 20-meg link feels like about a 30 to 40-meg link."

"Customer Service: Top notchTechnical Support: Top notch"

"The most valuable feature is the ability to manage the traffic at the application layer. It makes things a lot easier. We're not digging for port numbers and IP addresses and different services... It makes us far more responsive in our ability to do things and speed up the process. We're a very small shop, so having something that's straightforward and easy to use is a big help."

"It has the ability to prioritize, providing an automatic optimization. I can put it in a hierarchy and know that certain devices will be prioritized over others. It is able to identify the traffic. It can pick out whether if its a Zoom meeting (or something like that), then it's able to put that somewhere in the hierarchy based on the traffic type."

"A customer can either buy 50 Mb with us or 50 Mb with somebody else, but they'll get a 70 Mb feel with us because we can shape it a little bit better."

More Exinda pros

"You should buy SteelHead for WAN optimization because it delivers more."

"It is very good at optimizing WAN traffic and it has so many more features on top of that which help global enterprises monitor, identify and police traffic by application type, IP subnet, source, and/or destination."

"It is very easy to install the solution."

"SteelHead works from the application. I use it to optimize traffic from Amazon. It is mainly used for customers who need to increase the traffic to 33K. For other users, it has been more of an operation."

"The devices were great, and proved to be a very valuable asset to the company."

"TCP optimization... caches a particular TCP connection and the next time a user uses that connection he will reach the destination easily."

"Steelhead mainly saves the money that needs to be paid to ISPs; my actual traffic is around 2 GB, but I purchased a link from the ISP for only around 700 to 800 MB, and all the prices that need to be paid monthly to the ISP are saved, which is a significant saving for my company after using Riverbed."

"Steelhead is stable, and it can even help you avoid service interruption in the event of a power outage. If your hardware fails, technical support will replace your device quickly."

More Steelhead pros

Cons

"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"

"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."

"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."

"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."

"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."

"Its stability could be better."

"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"What I don't like is the fact that I haven't purchased the overall management interface. That is the interface that allows you to manage multiple Exindas. Personally, I think Exinda should provide that for free. I think that if you buy more and more Exinda boxes, you shouldn't then have to incur a charge for the overall management software. While I can manage each Exinda separately, if they provided me with the overall management platform for free that would probably encourage me to buy more appliances."

"The updating of applications that the system knows about could be a little quicker. For example, Zoom had been out for a while, but it took a while for it to show up as an application that Exinda could natively handle. We had to write some things in order to handle Zoom, initially."

"One of the concerns that we've had with Exinda is the fact that ever since GFI took over Exinda, they haven't really put in much time into actually developing the product."

"It should improve the quality of service. It can improve their connection to the internet and your IP."

"Creating the custom application is a bit awkward. I kind of have to guess my way through it sometimes."

"A lot of working with this solution is really intuitive. I have picked it up mostly on my own. I'm sure that there are some things that maybe I hadn't thought of or really hadn't considered, and I think it would be good just to promote some day courses. I don't really see a whole lot that comes out for Exinda as far as training or informational sessions through our normal resellers. It would be cool to know more about the solution by utilizing educational resources or even have Exinda promoted a bit better."

"In terms of improvement, one thing that has always frustrated me about it is that when you look at real-time monitoring, you can only filter it by IP address. You can't filter it by anything else. It would be good if we could filter by VLAN."

"The areas for improvement would be around the support service that GFI provides."

More Exinda cons

"Steelhead's handling of encrypted traffic could be improved because it requires some complex configuration to optimize encrypted traffic, especially when working with Microsoft protocols for mail servers and VPN services"

"There are issues with the tech support and scalability."

"The advertised “fail open” feature doesn’t work as expected."

"Setting up QoS marking is not all that intuitive."

"The product needs improvement in its integration with SDN."

"The application response time of the solution can be improved."

"Currently what we have in the system can not support the software-defined networks, so I won't say it's scalable."

"Application response time and network performance could be improved."

More Steelhead cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not too pricey."

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."

"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."

"The solution is expensive."

"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"It is priced well for the market, for what it needs to do."

"The pricing and licensing are pretty fair and really competitive. There are other SD-WAN solutions that are pretty costly because they build in a service where they'll manage it for you, which is really great. I don't know if Exinda has that option as well. However, we are a small shop and cost-conscious. For things like this, we are accustomed to self-managing and this solution suits us just fine. For a tool that gives you, like the graphs and reporting, it has a fair price point."

"The solution is expensive and the service contacts are costly too. The cost of the device makes the value proposition borderline acceptable for us. The service contract fees we pay is approximately $30,000 annually."

"Across our 12 data centers, we spend around $150k annually."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which WAN Optimization solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Construction Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Construction Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	1
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	14

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The price of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

We just did an assessment for our 47 datacenters around North America. The top two enterprise-level network monitorin...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Riverbed Steelhead?

I am currently working with Riverbed for replication between PR to DR for synchronization purposes, and for WAN optim...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Riverbed Steelhead?

Application performance may improve with Steelhead, but it varies application to application. Some applications, such...

See all answers

Comparisons

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

Check Point WAF (formerly CloudGuard WAF) vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Radware Cloud WAF Service vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall Competitors

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform vs Exinda

Compared 27% of the time

Noction IRP vs Exinda

Compared 22% of the time

Sangfor WANO vs Exinda

Compared 19% of the time

WAAS vs Exinda

Compared 4% of the time

More Exinda Competitors

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform vs Steelhead

Compared 14% of the time

WAAS vs Steelhead

Compared 8% of the time

Aryaka Unified SASE Platform vs Steelhead

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN vs Steelhead

Compared 7% of the time

Sangfor WANO vs Steelhead

Compared 6% of the time

More Steelhead Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

June 2026

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

Exinda

June 2026

Download Exinda product report

Buyer's Guide

Steelhead

May 2026

Download Steelhead product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

No data available

RIverbed Steelhead

Overview

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall integrates DDoS protection, load balancing, and firewall capabilities. Its ease of use, configurability, and robust security measures make it a versatile choice for protecting web applications.

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall provides a comprehensive defense against threats with advanced reporting and robust security measures. It includes DNS integration, rate limiting, and extensive rule sets, all within a SaaS model that allows API configurability. Users value its caching, scalability, and pricing, although enhancements are needed in rate-limiting and third-party integration. Improvements in customer support, especially in India, real-time controls, and user documentation are also desired. Users seek a more intuitive dashboard, better log management, and improved alert systems, along with multitenancy capabilities and enhanced reporting.

What are the key features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

DDoS Protection: Shields applications from denial-of-service attacks
Load Balancing: Ensures efficient traffic distribution
DNS Integration: Enhances domain name system security
Rate Limiting: Controls traffic flow and reduces abuse
Extensive Rule Sets: Offers customizable security rules

What benefits and ROI can users find in reviews?

Scalability: Easily adapts to growing business needs
Pricing: Offers reasonable pricing structure
Caching: Improves application performance and speed
Configurable Security: Provides customizable defense settings
Efficient Management: Simplifies security and application control

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall finds application in industries like banking and retail by acting as a comprehensive security gateway, managing authentication and authorization while protecting web applications from malicious Layer 7 traffic. It also implements load balancing, CDN, and zero-trust policies, supported by advanced reporting, analytics tools, and threat scoring to meet specific industry needs.

Cloudflare

Exinda provides granular traffic management and application performance monitoring with policy-based traffic shaping for prioritizing critical applications.

Exinda offers a user-friendly interface for managing bandwidth, ensuring business-critical applications receive priority while controlling non-essential traffic. Real-time monitoring offers network visibility, identifies bottlenecks, and suggests policy adjustments. It supports WAN optimization, satellite link management, and bandwidth control, aiding entities from corporate offices to remote locations.

What are Exinda's key features?

Granular Traffic Management: Provides precise control over network traffic.
Application Performance Monitoring: Monitors and analyzes application performance.
Policy-Based Traffic Shaping: Prioritizes critical applications efficiently.
Real-Time Monitoring Dashboard: Offers network visibility and identifies issues.
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies bandwidth and traffic control.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Efficient Resource Utilization: Ensures critical applications receive necessary bandwidth.
Improved Network Performance: Identifies and resolves network bottlenecks.
Enhanced Traffic Control: Balances and limits non-critical traffic efficiently.
Actionable Insights: Provides recommendations for policy optimization.

Exinda is implemented in industries for WAN optimization, helping manage satellite links and control bandwidth on campuses and remote locations. It aids troubleshooting by monitoring satellite services and prioritizes network traffic for customers.

GFI

Steelhead is designed to optimize WAN performance by reducing data load and enhancing network efficiency. It utilizes advanced data compression and caching techniques to improve speeds and manage bandwidth, crucial for cost reduction.

Steelhead offers enhancements in data throughput and network optimization with its ability to improve TCP and WAN efficiency. Organizations benefit from scalable data referencing and adaptive transfer schemes that simulate LAN-like speeds over WAN. Its monitoring features provide insights into network dynamics, although potential improvements are noted in areas like QoS configuration and handling encrypted traffic. Users also recognize challenges in upgrading, GUI design, and monitoring tools.

What are Steelhead's key features?

Data Compression: Reduces data size for efficient WAN usage.
WAN Optimization: Enhances network speed and lowers costs.
TCP Optimization: Improves data flow over WAN connections.
Scalable Data Referencing: Encourages efficient data transfers.
Real-Time Monitoring: Offers insights into network performance.
Local Caching: Stores data locally to speed up access.
QoS Management: Prioritizes critical traffic effectively.

What benefits can organizations expect from Steelhead?

Cost Reduction: Decreases expenses related to bandwidth usage.
Improved Network Performance: Enhances application and data transfer speeds.
Bandwidth Management: Allows prioritization for critical tasks.
Reduced Latency: Mitigates delay issues in data transmission.

Steelhead is widely used in industries like banking and distribution for optimizing traffic between data centers and ensuring efficient branch connectivity. It addresses latency problems, boosts application performance, and helps reduce data traffic. In environments with limited bandwidth, its features ensure critical data is prioritized, creating significant cost savings.

Riverbed

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

UMass Dartmouth, MLB Network, R&R Ice Cream, Savills, Manhattan School of Music, Blum Shapiro, Cincinnati Public Schools, City of Richmond, Genting Casinos, The Salvation Army, VoIP Unlimited, Frontier Silicon, Lakeshore Toltest, CTI Foods

ElAraby, SFK Leblanc, Bobst Group, Northwest Pipe Company, Halkbank, Tradebridge, EFG Hermes

Buyer's Guide

Exinda vs. Steelhead

June 2026

Free Report: Exinda vs. Steelhead

Find out what your peers are saying about Exinda vs. Steelhead and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Exinda vs. Steelhead report.

See our list of best WAN Optimization vendors.

We monitor all WAN Optimization reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.