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F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs IIS PHP Windows comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
CDN (7th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (18th), API Security (8th)
IIS PHP Windows
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.1
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Application Server (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

F5 Distributed Cloud Services and IIS PHP Windows aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. F5 Distributed Cloud Services is designed for CDN and holds a mindshare of 2.1%, up 2.1% compared to last year.
IIS PHP Windows, on the other hand, focuses on Application Server, holds 0.9% mindshare.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Distributed Cloud Services2.1%
Cloudflare14.7%
Akamai11.3%
Other71.9%
CDN
Application Server Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IIS PHP Windows0.9%
Tomcat13.1%
Oracle WebLogic Server10.2%
Other75.8%
Application Server
 

Featured Reviews

Mohan Janarthanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Centralized security has protected APIs and optimized multi‑cloud traffic management
F5 Distributed Cloud Services has been used for two years for DDoS protection, and there is a particular feature called API protection. Within API protection, there is malicious user mitigation, which is one particular technology that has been implemented. This is a kind of advanced bot attack prevention. Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting. If some users are having anomaly detection or someone is trying to do a bot attack, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge for that particular user alone and not for all users. For example, if someone is trying to act as a rogue, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge in the backend system on that particular system, so they cannot try again and again at the same time. It is for a concurrent session, and it will give the CAPTCHA challenge. This MUG, malicious user mitigation, prevents bot attacks. F5 Distributed Cloud Services includes the real-time intelligence feature, which helps with threat response strategies from a threat intelligence perspective. For example, if there are geo-restrictions or geo-based restrictions, sometimes people may come in through proxy-based servers, and it will prevent that. The load balancing feature optimizes application performance. Observability is the basic piece where F5 got introduced. This observability piece provides end-to-end visibility on the application performance. It gives complete end-to-end visibility across network latency and application performance issues. Sometimes when it is getting more than 200 pages, it throws errors such as 300, 400, or whatever has been configured, including 500 errors. F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve traffic management efficiency. Most applications are hosted in the Check Point and F5 firewall, F5 web application firewall, where applications and traffic management can be accessed in a single dashboard. Automated threat detection is a basic feature of F5 Distributed Cloud Services meant for that purpose. There are two scenarios with automated threat detection, which is provided by F5. It is a completely machine learning solution that came from the bot defense, and it automatically protects against sophisticated attacks.
Ersin Akyüz - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Developer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
A reliable and flexible platform for hosting PHP applications and WordPress websites in Windows environments.
One of the most valuable features of IIS is its graphical management interface, which simplifies website configuration and administration. IIS Manager makes it easy to create new websites, configure application pools, manage bindings, and adjust server settings without relying heavily on command-line tools. Compared to Apache or Nginx, where configuration often involves manually editing files, IIS provides a more centralized and user-friendly management experience. I particularly appreciate how straightforward it is to manage multiple websites and configure PHP applications within a Windows environment. This approach can save time on routine administrative tasks, especially for developers and administrators who regularly work with Windows based infrastructure.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services has positively impacted my organization from the security point of view, as all our applications are in a very stable, safe mode."
"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."
"Elastic environments are the most valuable features because I can pull these apps and migrate the on-premises environment to the Distributed Cloud environment, and this capability is very strong and the security regarding the apps is really very powerful."
"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."
"F5 is known for being the best load balancer in the market. Customers with an existing module can easily adopt additional modules without investing in new hardware."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve my traffic management efficiency overall because it is cheaper than Silverline."
"The flexibility of using PHP for both front-end and back-end, along with integrating with SQL databases, has positively affected my day-to-day work and project outcomes, speeding up processes and making them more reliable."
"The most valuable feature is IIS Manager, which makes website administration straightforward. Creating websites, managing application settings, and configuring PHP hosting through a graphical interface is convenient, particularly in Windows environments. Microsoft’s enterprise technical support has also been excellent in my experience."
"IIS PHP Windows has positively impacted my organization by helping to deploy customer websites that have very small budgets, allowing the organization to assist those clients, which builds trust with them."
"If you want to host your PHP or Laravel-based application in Windows, you can definitely use this extension, and using this extension you can host your PHP or Laravel application in IIS and it will have super speed."
"IIS PHP Windows impacts my organization positively because my applications perform very well here when compared with XAMPP."
"In my experience, the best features IIS PHP Windows offers include allowing us to host the PHP application with better performance compared to XAMPP, which we were previously using because XAMPP was giving slow performance."
 

Cons

"One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced."
"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."
"I would evaluate F5 technical support as not particularly fast in replying, but it is effective."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services still does not have the same flexibility as BIG-IP. It does not have iRules."
"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the perspective of implementation and customer expectations, which sometimes differ from reality."
"For small players, it is completely not worth it."
"The worst experience is that with so many solutions available, it is very complicated to know all of the solution modules, and the offers from F5 Distributed Cloud Services are vast."
"One area for improvement is resource efficiency. In my experience, running PHP applications on Windows with IIS can require more memory and CPU resources than comparable Linux based environments. Windows Server licensing can also increase hosting costs, making IIS less attractive for smaller projects without specific Windows requirements."
"I chose a rating of seven out of ten because IIS PHP Windows is good for small enterprises with manageable aspects, but it has very high resource usage and requires a Windows server license, contributing to the overall cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Insurance Company
8%
Construction Company
40%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
Regarding pricing, I believe the prices are much higher than I expected, but for the time being, the customer is still paying. It is not really a cheap product. From a pricing perspective, there sh...
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
An improvement for F5 Distributed Cloud Services could be in usability. It is very powerful, but it can also be quite complex. When you have many applications and routes, the troubleshooting proces...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
Our main use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the application traffic management and security for our web applications. We rely on F5 Distributed Cloud Services primarily for load balancin...
What needs improvement with IIS PHP Windows?
One area that could be improved is resource efficiency, particularly CPU and memory consumption. In my experience, running PHP applications on Windows with IIS can require more system resources tha...
What is your primary use case for IIS PHP Windows?
My primary use case for IIS PHP Windows is hosting and managing PHP-based websites, particularly WordPress applications, in Windows Server environments. Throughout my career as a software developer...
What advice do you have for others considering IIS PHP Windows?
I would rate IIS PHP Windows 8 out of 10. It is a reliable solution for hosting PHP applications, particularly in environments where Windows Server is already part of the infrastructure. One of its...
 

Overview

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