No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs Uplynk comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 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
Sponsored
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall...
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Uplynk
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Data Replication (8th), CDN (8th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 12.4%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is 1.9%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Uplynk is 1.9%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare12.4%
F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)1.9%
Uplynk1.9%
Other83.8%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.
Nawapol Boonlerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Engineer at BigFish Enterprise Ltd.
Comprehensive network protection has mitigated DDoS risks and supports secure on-prem operations
Currently, there are no weaknesses or disadvantages in F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) that I have identified. It is a little bit expensive, and I think about additional features they could have in the future to make it even better. For example, I have thoughts about the price. Currently, it does not integrate, and I would assess the importance of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)'s integration with cloud services as significant. Currently, I use only one site, and I cannot tell you about F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) centralized security policies. I have not used F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)'s Threat Intelligence capabilities. I have not used their dynamic traffic shaping feature. So far, the only thing that could be improved is the pricing of F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM).
AliKhalil - PeerSpot reviewer
manager at a non-profit with 501-1,000 employees
Reliable live streaming has increased our continuous viewership and maintained audience trust
Uplynk is deployed in my organization on-premises and is fully on-site. Uplynk supports our business continuity or disaster recovery plans because it's really well protected and it doesn't lag or crash when there's a spike in all areas. Uplynk helps us comply with regulatory requirements in our industry by keeping us live. Uplynk integrates really well with other systems or tools we use. You need a whole team to really run Uplynk because there are so many moving pieces, the code, the app, and other components. My experience with Uplynk's analytics or reporting capabilities is that they are especially helpful to update the teams and our stakeholders. I would describe Uplynk's flexibility or customization options as really easy, really customizable, and it integrates in many areas. Uplynk helps me deliver content to different devices or platforms by allowing us to upload on and stay live on tablets, computers, and televisions. It allows us to stay live to get those viewerships. Uplynk is a software that saves time, but you need a solid team to run Uplynk to ensure viewership and everything is moving because there are many pieces to keep. I advise others looking into using Uplynk that it takes many different areas: coding, integration, APIs, and all that. It takes a team to run it, and you need to be a big company. If you're streaming and doing all that at a big scale, use it. If you're on a smaller scale, Uplynk is going to be really hard for you to manage. It's not something that's simple; just use the ones that are basic out there if you're an influencer and things like that. I would rate this product a nine overall.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CloudFlare has positively improved my site's speed, performance and security."
"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."
"It's very user-friendly."
"DDoS protection is this product’s most valuable feature."
"The initial setup is extremely easy but will require access to your Domain Name Servers."
"It blocks various attacks and mitigates disasters from occurring."
"The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP AFM is all of my workers enjoy using it."
"I would say it's a good, stable solution; we haven't had a major issue with the AFM."
"F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager's most valuable feature is load balance. It is readily available and uncomplicated."
"The protection is very useful."
"It is a highly stable solution."
"The setup and functionality are fairly straightforward."
"The product is stable, scalable, and easy to use."
"Uplynk has positively impacted our organization by bringing us more viewership, as it does not glitch and stays stable during spikes in viewership, leading to approximately a 15 to 20 percent increase in viewership because there's no lag and nothing fails."
"The customer support and service responsiveness were excellent."
"The Rules Engine V4 is the most valuable feature."
"Without EdgeCast, our website was taking 10 to 15 seconds to load; with EdgeCast, it loads under five seconds and it's a good product."
"It's super easy to use and integrate with."
"The product is easy to use and easy to implement."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the Uplynk platform for streaming purposes."
"I recommend this solution because, for me, it's one of the most efficient and performant CDN operators."
 

Cons

"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."
"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"At the end, it is worth than giving your house keys to the NSA."
"Technical support is lacking."
"More insight into analytics and threats would be a good place to start improving Cloudflare."
"The one feature that is paid is the custom nameservers instead of using the default ones, I want to use a custom one."
"Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region."
"The Always Online feature has room for improvement. It seems to work sometimes and not others even with the pro version."
"I have encountered challenges with the price of the solution."
"F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is an expensive solution. They are one of the best in the market, but the price could be cheaper."
"Some spam can go by the firewall."
"The interface for applying the features could use improvement. There are too many buttons."
"The web gateway feature could improve in F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM)."
"The initial setup of F5 BIG-IP AFM in a complex environment was simple. However, the full deployment took us approximately one year."
"NGINX, which F5 purchased, has room for improvement in its features, particularly its load balancing or application load balancing features."
"F5 should increase its capability to prevent zero-day attacks. Having advanced technology similar to other vendors like Palo Alto for zero-day attack prevention would be valuable."
"We could not create more than 15 custom rules."
"The tool needs to resolve its lack of innovation."
"To improve Uplynk, it should be made more user-friendly, as it takes a lot of moving pieces to make it work."
"In the next release, I would like to see more global endpoints for their CDN and a lower price."
"The web interface of the Verizon Edgecast portal is very old. It's not user-friendly, slow, and it is missing some valuable features like the ability to make bulk changes."
"The pricing was initially very expensive."
"The comparable features that we are looking at fits into Cloudflare's free version, as opposed to Verizon EdgeCast, which we are paying for."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"It's very expensive, and you pay extra for the models."
"The product is expensive."
"The price of F5 BIG-IP AFM is a little more expensive than other firewalls on the market."
"F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) is an expensive solution. They are one of the best in the market, but the price could be cheaper."
"The solution is slightly on the higher priced side."
"F5 BIG-IP AFM is an affordable solution. There were not any additional fees other than the standard licensing."
"F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager is not an expensive solution."
"We have purchased a five-year licensing package for the product."
"When I modeled it out, we are spending somewhere between $600 to $800 a month with Verizon EdgeCast."
"The product is cheaper compared to other solutions."
"Be careful about the options because to have all the features can be very expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Engineering Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare DNS?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
The standard license is reasonably priced, but additional features like the WAF can be more expensive. There are plen...
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
Currently, there are no weaknesses or disadvantages in F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) that I have identifi...
What is your primary use case for F5 Advanced Firewall Manager?
I am starting to learn and working with F5 team to conduct a proof of concept, and I do have experience with F5 Rules...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Edgio Global CDN?
I wasn't a part of the pricing, setup cost, and licensing discussions, but from what I heard from my colleagues, they...
What needs improvement with Edgio Global CDN?
To improve Uplynk, it should be made more user-friendly, as it takes a lot of moving pieces to make it work. Uplynk i...
What is your primary use case for Edgio Global CDN?
My main use case for Uplynk is live channels around the clock. Since we're in the television business, we're constant...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
F5 AFM, F5 Advanced Firewall Manager
Edgio, Limelight Content Delivery, Limelight Orchestrate Delivery, Limelight Origin Storage, Global CDN, Verizon EdgeCast
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
TD Ameritrade, Plus500, Solvay Bank, Yahoo, Deckers Brands, and Coach
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager (AFM) vs. Uplynk and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.