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F5 Advanced WAF vs SiteLock comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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 ...
Sponsored
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 Advanced WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SiteLock
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
37th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (44th), CDN (15th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (27th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.5%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Advanced WAF is 4.7%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SiteLock is 1.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Advanced WAF4.7%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall4.5%
SiteLock1.6%
Other89.2%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
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.
reviewer2797602 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Granular security policies have protected critical applications and ensure safe user and admin access
Improvements could be made regarding the log information from the backend CLI. There are enhancements needed; if a request gets blocked on the TCP layer, there should be traces or data to verify which source generated these requests, including the source and port information for initiation. These data are missing from F5 Advanced WAF. Besides that, another improvement could be refining the bot detection to minimize false positives; it should be able to verify more granularly between legitimate and non-legitimate clients. Overall, I find everything else good. A wish list feature I have is for the Technical Assistance Center (TAC) to respond more promptly. Their response time needs improvement; while they do not take excessive time, it can be enhanced, especially given it is a security product.
it_user723534 - PeerSpot reviewer
Guitarist at a media company with self employed
It's not easy to get out once you're in
Sitelock may perform a useful service, but be wary of giving them your credit card information. When you sign on for the paid service, Sitelock: * Hides (makes it difficult to find) that they default the auto-renew (you can't sign up without agreeing to have them automatically bill your credit card every year). * Hides (makes it difficult to find) how to stop auto-renew: * You can't just stop auto-renew from your billing panel, the way you can with reputable businesses. * You have to hunt their website for a link (in extremely small font) to the page which contains instructions for cancelling. * When you get to that page, turns out it's the 5000+ word "Terms of Service" document, which you have to scour to find a phone number. Then, you have to call and get put on hold (or if you like, they will call you back three days later). Once you finally get through, you have to jump through a lot of security hoops. All of the above, just to cancel the service. Their product may or may not be OK, but be forewarned that with Sitelock, it's not easy to get out once you're in.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
"We like that there's load balancing, firewall capabilities, DDoS protection, et cetera, all covered by Cloudflare."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."
"I'm highly satisfied. It's remarkably user-friendly, enabling me to quickly identify issues, and deploy solutions, and it offers the necessary features."
"This is a good product; it's reliable and scales well."
"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."
"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."
"The bot defense capability, as well as protection from brute force attacks and OWASP Top Ten, are notable features."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its extensive set of capabilities for application protection, including DDoS prevention, and its ability to work with Pentesters and external scanners to observe user activity and eliminate false positives."
"In terms of F5 Advanced WAF's most valuable features, I would definitely say its stability, as F5 is one of the most stable products and either as the load balancer or the web application firewall, it is very stable."
"The solution isn't too expensive. The license allows you to license what you need and leave out what you don't need."
"It also has antivirus and DDoS mitigation capabilities. We have enabled these features."
"If I would compare F5 with other solutions, the main differences are the support and the stability of the code, it has fewer bugs."
"The product is very stable; it is a PCI company, so there are 10,000-12,000 people using the solution, and all of the internet payments are behind the ASM for the F5."
"The support experience is better than average."
"Not only did SiteLock's website scanner find the issue with my website, but with SiteLock I was able to implement a security system to prevent future breaches."
"It seems to provide a bit of useful information on website health."
 

Cons

"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."
"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."
"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."
"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."
"We don't even use Cloudflare Bot Management because it's too expensive; you need to pay per request, and it's much cheaper to get one or two additional machines."
"Support can be challenging at times."
"I think the price is very high. This is what I hear from the customers."
"The solution's dashboard could be improved. When you're moving from policy to policy, the logs and the integration of the logs in other systems aren't straightforward."
"F5 needs to improve API protection with a single F5 solution, without requiring additional modules."
"The solution is very expensive so should only be used in the right environment."
"There is a learning curve that extends the time of implementation."
"For me, an area for improvement in F5 Advanced WAF is the reporting as it isn't so clear. The vendor needs to work on the reporting capability of the solution. What I'd like to see in the next release of F5 Advanced WAF is threat intelligence to protect your web application, particularly having that capability out-of-the-box, and not needing to pay extra for it, similar to what's offered in FortiWeb, for example, any request that originates from a malicious IP will be blocked automatically by FortiWeb. F5 Advanced WAF should have the intelligence for blocking malicious IPs, or automatically blocking threats included in the license, instead of making it an add-on feature that users have to pay for apart from the standard licensing fees."
"One of our customers is a bit unhappy about the reporting options."
"One area for improvement in the product is its SSO integration, which posed challenges and required significant effort to resolve."
"Sitelock may perform a useful service, but be wary of giving them your credit card information."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is not too pricey."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"There is a perpetual license that comes with your hardware. There is also an additional fee for support."
"As far as the pricing of F5 Advanced WAF I would rate it a four out of five depending on what features I am looking for. Imperva is more expensive."
"I rate F5 Advanced WAF's pricing a three out of ten."
"The cost is slightly above average."
"F5 Advanced WAF technical support comes at a cost, and it's expensive."
"F5 bundles up services and the bundle is what you pay for rather than individual components."
"There are various plans available for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF as a Service, including a trial version."
"It is expensive. Its price should be better. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. Its licensing is also based on the model. There are no additional costs."
"You can't just stop auto-renew from your billing panel, the way you can with reputable businesses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
8%
Construction Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise31
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced WAF?
F5 Advanced WAF is somewhat costly compared to other vendors, but it is worth the investment due to the stability it ...
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?
Improvements could be made regarding the log information from the backend CLI. There are enhancements needed; if a re...
What is your primary use case for F5 Advanced WAF?
My main use case for F5 Advanced WAF is to protect external and internal applications from cyber attacks and to preve...
What do you recommend for a securing Web Application?
That's one of the most critical questions any development team faces! Securing a web application requires a layered a...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
galaxyguitar.com, robertasinc.com, indiarunning.com, comprarenpr.com, idbasolutions.com, newgrip.com
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Advanced WAF vs. SiteLock and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.