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F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
4.8
F5 Distributed Cloud Services offers cost savings, time efficiency, reduced overhead, and fast ROI with enhanced security benefits.
Sentiment score
5.8
Imperva boosts security, reduces manual interventions, yielding quick ROI, especially in banking, though initial costs can be high.
I would estimate the cost was reduced by approximately 30 percent in the first year.
Information Security at a consultancy with 1,001-5,000 employees
There is definitely a return on investment in F5 Distributed Cloud Services.
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
I do find F5 Distributed Cloud Services to be cost-effective, as it brings benefits and a strong return on investment.
Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB
They know how much money they are losing while the system is down, so by increasing the possibility of not having a down website or web application, return on investment can be calculated easily.
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
I was able to save over seven million dollars last year as return on investment in the company.
Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at Cyberoutcome Limited
I have seen a return on investment with Imperva Application Security Platform, as it is generally associated with time savings, because the review of alerts and the visibility it gives saves us significant operational time.
Ingeniero Preventa at Imperia
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
F5 users praise expertise and reliability but seek improved response times, especially for urgent issues and faster human interaction.
Sentiment score
7.0
The Imperva Application Security Platform's support is praised for responsiveness but criticized for inconsistencies, especially between cloud and on-premises environments.
There is a lot of support from F5 Distributed Cloud Services and the knowledge on the page is very good and reliable.
Engineer Solutions Architect at SCitum
I would provide 9.5 for support.
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Email services are good, but they need to have a good human-based interaction with the call centers.
Senior Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
I would rate the technical support of Imperva DDoS as ten.
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
They need to work faster on the response time because of issues of urgent replies.
Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at Cyberoutcome Limited
Responsive support addressing urgent needs.
Cybersecurity Consultant at Accenture Singapore Services Pte Ltd
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.6
F5 Distributed Cloud Services are highly scalable, efficiently managing complex traffic and handling DDoS attacks with minimal configuration challenges.
Sentiment score
7.4
Imperva Application Security Platform offers scalable solutions for various organizations, with cloud deployment preferred despite some pricing and performance challenges.
I need the traffic management environments in distributed management, which have a very good goal to manage very difficult traffic in the world.
Engineer Solutions Architect at SCitum
99% of customers are using the cloud version of Imperva DDoS protection, so they just purchase the new license and scale as needed.
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
I have not even needed support after deployment, since it has remained stable.
CTO at Malam Engineering PLC
It is easy to always scale to add more users.
Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at Cyberoutcome Limited
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is praised for its high stability, minimal downtime, and effective load balancing, despite occasional configuration issues.
Sentiment score
7.9
Imperva Application Security Platform is praised for stability and reliability, with minor issues occurring mainly during high traffic.
I won't face any issues with stability as a concern because it provides the load balancers and all redundancy, so it's very unlikely that we have any downtime.
Senior Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
It is also a stable product without much glitch or downtime.
Senior Presales Consultant at Techlab security
One notable drawback is that, unlike Fortinet, which offers fast track labs and continuous enablement, Imperva Application Security Platform lacks lab access and fast track labs for enablement and product advertising.
CTO at Malam Engineering PLC
We experienced downtime or crashes with Imperva Application Security Platform when traffic went really strong or fast because people tried to get tickets.
Soc Analyst at Cineplex Inc
 

Room For Improvement

F5 Distributed Cloud Services enhances UI/UX but needs better analytics, API security, pricing, onboarding, and system integration.
Imperva Application Security Platform needs better integration, simpler dashboards, improved AI, and enhanced user interface for higher satisfaction.
The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF.
IT Analyst at Atlas.cz, a.s.
For availability, they have added additional clusters across all the regional edges in the Kubernetes clusters to enhance availability.
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
F5 Distributed Cloud Services doesn't have something like that. That is the reason why CloudFlare remains a leader in that space for small customers and those who have just started or are startups.
Senior Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
To convince my clients, a purely on-prem solution would be ideal since they are financial institutions.
CTO at Malam Engineering PLC
Maybe Imperva DDoS could use endpoints to get information about the attacks before they commence from the endpoint level or establish cooperation with endpoint vendors to share this information.
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Regarding return on investment, ROI, I can say it is noticeable with Imperva Application Security Platform.
Senior Presales Consultant at Techlab security
 

Setup Cost

Imperva's Application Security Platform has high, complex pricing, yet some find it competitive for its security benefits and enterprise flexibility.
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is affordable.
Engineer Solutions Architect at SCitum
I believe the prices are much higher than I expected, but for the time being, the customer is still paying.
Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at BMB
I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap and ten is very expensive.
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
the setup cost was high, with the hardware installation in the data center being particularly expensive.
Cyber Security Product Owner at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
We have noticed faster response times and fewer security alerts because after doing some custom policy tuning, everything seemed to be aligned and we have fewer attacks to monitor and fewer alerts to monitor.
Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at Cyberoutcome Limited
 

Valuable Features

F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a unified platform with advanced security, optimized performance, and efficient multi-cloud operations.
Imperva Application Security Platform offers robust threat protection, user-friendly interface, and comprehensive reporting for enhanced web security management.
The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation.
IT Analyst at Atlas.cz, a.s.
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well.
Senior Network Security Consultant at NTT DATA
Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting.
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
The API security feature is particularly valuable because most attackers do not try to come in from where it is expected.
Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at Cyberoutcome Limited
If someone attempts to access the server, the WAF blocks that SSRF alert, or RCE, Remote Code Execution alert, blocking immediately based on the signature, not only by the payload or the IP address.
SOC Analyst L1 at CMS-IT-SERVICES-PVT-LTD
It reduces the DDoS attacks and reduces the attacks from threat actors, including SQL Injection and zero-day attacks, by using dynamic application profiling from Imperva.
IT Security Analyst & Engineer (Project, Remote) Australia-Europe at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in CDN
6th
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
16th
Ranking in API Security
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in CDN
2nd
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
1st
Ranking in API Security
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
147
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 2.3%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 7.2%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform7.2%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services2.3%
Other90.5%
CDN
 

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.
reviewer2818155 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Application protection has improved and reporting and dashboards still need refinement
I believe Imperva Application Security Platform should have a more interactive wizard. While the dashboard is good, it could be more eye-catching. Based on my perspective, I recommend modifying the dashboards, especially the main dashboard where I can see the traffic hit count, alerts, and other latest information. In terms of reporting, I find it challenging to create reports; in my earlier days, it was difficult. Over time, I have learned how to create reports, but it should be easier to do so. I have used other tools such as firewalls or SolarWinds, where creating a report is straightforward and does not take much time, unlike in Imperva, where I have to add many elements. Modifications in the integration aspects would also be beneficial.
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business88
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise70
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is affordable. I think it is very affordable. I do not think it is expensive.
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced.Specifically, the confidence level on API security that F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
My main use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services is WAF protection.I am using F5 Distributed Cloud Services primarily for securing my infrastructure with layer 7 protection, which F5 provides. Th...
Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot management.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provided. I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap a...
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators of compromise. For example, the initiation of an attack on the endpoint level cou...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Imperva Application Security Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.