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F5 Shape Security 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 Shape Security
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Fraud Detection and Prevention (21st)
Imperva Application Securit...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
147
Ranking in other categories
CDN (2nd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (1st), API Security (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. F5 Shape Security is designed for Fraud Detection and Prevention and holds a mindshare of 1.6%, down 2.1% compared to last year.
Imperva Application Security Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection, holds 7.7% mindshare, up 7.3% since last year.
Fraud Detection and Prevention Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Shape Security1.6%
ThreatMetrix4.3%
Riskified3.0%
Other91.1%
Fraud Detection and Prevention
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform7.7%
Cloudflare11.9%
Radware DDoS6.4%
Other74.0%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Nikolay Dimitrov - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Engineer at Paysafe / IBM
Easy to configure and blocks bot attacks for web users
The solution is deployed on the F5 cloud. The solution's real-time analytics help you see what has been blocked. It helps to see whether the attack category was an automation attack or a fake browser. F5 Shape Security has a normal dashboard. We are doing F5 Shape Security migrations for 30 customers. F5 Shape Security uses Javascript. For a lot of competitors, the Javascript can be reverse-engineered by attackers to bypass the protection. F5 Shape Security has machine learning authentication of the Java script. If you had hacked it, the encryption would have been changed. It's really hard for attackers to reverse engineer the F5 Shape Security JavaScript. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"F5 Shape Security's most valuable feature is performance."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of configuration."
"It mitigates all of the availabilities of risks around web applications."
"An improvement has been to our website: It increases the speed of our response, the capacity of the site, and optimizes the bandwidth.​"
"The solution is scalable."
"The most valuable aspect of it is that it blocks all types of attacks."
"Automatic failover between primary and secondary sites enables high availability and accelerates disaster recovery."
"Basic setup is simple but, as with any caching/WAF setup, there are tricks you need to learn, but it works really nice out of the box!"
"The solution has been quite stable. I have not seen any bugs at all."
"The solution is very affordable; it's based on the average traffic utilization, not the DDoS traffic, so if you're being DDoSed, you don't pay extra for the absorption of the DDoS traffic."
 

Cons

"The tool's price is high."
"I want the solution's custom exclusion rules to be more granular."
"Pricing can be improved, as it is quite expensive."
"In the past, I have had bugs on the WAF."
"They could improve by minimizing false positive results."
"I would like the solution to improve its support response time."
"Communication declined a bit as they got bigger – 7/10."
"The support for the on-premises version needs improvement."
"I loved the approach of the cloud. The cloud has a lot of new features, like advanced web protection and DDoS protection. If those could also be on-boarded onto the on-prem versions, that would be ideal. They need to pay attention to both deployment options and not just favor one."
"The Imperva Web Application Firewall automations are good, but there is still room for improvement with them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is moderately priced."
"The solution's price is high for small companies."
"We have an issue with Imperva Incapsula in the Iraqi market because of the high price."
"The cost is on par with other solutions such as Cloudflare and Akamai."
"​Although the pricing can be a little high, it is worth the protection and security that it offers.​"
"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
"The cost is somewhere around $10,000 a site. For every site, you pay individually. For every DNS entry, you have you pay."
"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Healthcare Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business88
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise70
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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

Shape Security
Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Wells Fargo, Loblaw, JetBlue, Zoosk
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about BioCatch, NICE, ThreatMetrix and others in Fraud Detection and Prevention. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.