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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

"The impact of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's integration with existing web technologies on our site's performance and security measures is quite great, actually."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."
"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."
"I have not had any issues with this solution, and I would recommend it to others who are interested in using it."
"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."
"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"It is configurable via API."
"Customers find the load balancer feature as the most valuable."
"The anti-bot protection is the solution's most valuable feature. Safe-guard or credential staffing are also useful features."
"Overall, F5 Advanced WAF is a strong, dependable enterprise solution that works best when seen as a long-term security platform rather than a quick add-on; once properly designed, sized, and tuned, it runs quietly in the background and effectively does its job without constant attention."
"It's flexible and powerful, and the users can input their own rules to the system."
"If I would compare F5 with other solutions, the main differences are the support and the stability of the code, it has fewer bugs."
"F5 technical support is excellent. They are experts who always provide the right solution, and they understand the problem. Their response and resolution times are good."
"I definitely recommend this solution because of the time you save on analysis."
"The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the security features and the protection."
"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

"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."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."
"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."
"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."
"The learning curve was steep initially."
"There is a gap in report management."
"The user interface (UI) seems a bit outdated. Making it more user-friendly would be beneficial."
"There are opportunities for improvement in updating the user interface to a more modern look."
"F5 Advanced WAF sells perpetual licenses as perpetual assets during sales without informing me that support ends after a few years."
"I would like to see additional controls."
"I think the contextual-based component needs a lot of help; it is all based on regular expressions, and we are transitioning off to Signal Sciences on some of our WAF components because of the capabilities Signal Sciences has."
"More legacy protocols should be added to the solution."
"The Sandbox integration feature could be improved."
"Sitelock may perform a useful service, but be wary of giving them your credit card information."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"It is not too pricey."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"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 annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The pricing is too high."
"The solution is very expensive so should only be used in the right environment."
"Its price is fair. We have done a couple of deals where they were able to give some kind of discount to the customers. The price was initially high for the customers, but after a couple of negotiations, it came within their budget. They were happy with that."
"F5 bundles up services and the bundle is what you pay for rather than individual components."
"It is a little bit costly, but it has all the features that are required."
"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."
"A yearly license for F5 Advanced WAF is expensive."
"The price of F5 Advanced WAF could improve it is expensive."
"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.