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F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Imperva Web Application Firewall 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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.4
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
CDN (11th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (20th), API Security (7th), AWS Marketplace (28th)
Imperva Web Application Fir...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
FM
Protects web applications with comprehensive security features
All features are valuable. In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation. This is a comprehensive package for web application security. The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation.
Abdullah Jin - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers bot protection and DDoS Protection and protects public-facing portals
Support is one thing I wish Imperva could improve. They follow the phone model and keep rotating you from one customer service person to another. The layer one support isn't very clear about the workings of the product. My feedback is primarily about Imperva Cloud, not on-premise. On-premise is a whole new story. Support is the issue for Imperva Cloud. It's also a bit pricey. It's a premium service and very expensive. The licensing model is not very straightforward. Every feature is priced separately, and to enjoy maximum protection, you'll have to spend a lot of money. The licensing model is a bit complex, and each feature is very pricey. For example, API security and web application protection are two separate license packages.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."
"Cloudflare has many features."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."
"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and 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."
"Imperva is easy to use and deploy. The UI is excellent."
"The most valuable features of the Imperva Web Application Firewall are performance and flexibility. We can extend or customize the box itself."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is stable."
"Imperva WAF's strongest features are the detection of web application threats and vulnerabilities in the source code."
"Configuration for different application sources is most valuable. We can segregate the traffic that an application is carrying and identify the sizing in Imperva."
"The solution is cloud-based and offers us good uptime. It has combined web and API security. Therefore, with one license, you access both application security and also API security."
"The most valuable features of Imperva Web Application Firewall are the monitoring of databases and the dashboards are easy to understand."
"Very intuitive and granular configuration - It does not require much time, or advanced knowledge, for configuration and maintenance."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"DNS Management."
"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF."
"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."
"The user interface could be better."
"If they can bring in generative AI features, that would be useful."
"The signature updates could be faster. Sometimes we have to upload signatures to the Imperva portal for checking and analysis before we can use them."
"Sometimes our web application firewall will slow down."
"It's a complicated tool to keep."
"I don't really use it and therefore can't speak to areas of improvement."
"The support for the on-premises version needs improvement."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is a good system, but we found that the visibility of the diverse-path server, e.g. where the traffic is coming from, the different IPs, etc., needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"A free version of the solution is available."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"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."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"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."
Information not available
"The tool is expensive."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."
"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."
"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
"It is very costly, but the return on investment is very high. Its cost was around $70,000, and we got it back in just six months."
"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."
"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Insurance Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
I am not involved in sales, so I do not deal with the pricing aspect directly. I give the cost of the solution a four...
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
It's a long way to be perfect, of course, as with all solutions. The main issue is integration with other parts or pr...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
There are two main use cases for Distributed Call Services: DDoS or Distributed attacks protection and WAF web applic...
Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?
For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you hav...
DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DDoS Protection Service and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?
You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
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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.
Information Not Available
BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
845,712 professionals have used our research since 2012.