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F5 Shape Security vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 2025

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
Ranking in Bot Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Fraud Detection and Prevention (6th)
Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in Bot Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
133
Ranking in other categories
CDN (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), API Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Bot Management category, the mindshare of F5 Shape Security is 17.0%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 11.9%, down from 13.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Bot Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
F5 Shape Security17.0%
Imperva's Application Security Platform11.9%
Other71.1%
Bot Management
 

Featured Reviews

Nikolay Dimitrov - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Bhupesh-Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced network security with effective threat filtering and good bot managing features
We use Imperva DDoS protection to safeguard our network from multiple attacks. It is especially useful to protect websites or applications by redirecting traffic to eliminate threats Imperva DDoS increases our uptime to 99.99% by filtering and managing traffic to ensure only genuine traffic…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of configuration."
"F5 Shape Security's most valuable feature is performance."
"The solution is stable."
"Gives us the ability to trace each connection, and to have logs to be able to differentiate between a positive and a false-positive intruder action."
"Very scalable and very stable firewall for web applications, with a good interface in its cloud version. Mitigation is its most valuable feature. The technical support for this product is also good."
"There is a quick switch between any of the the nodes if something goes wrong, where there's a there's an attack against a specific area. The security setup is reasonably easy. It's not a problem to do setups and rules and integrations. And, yeah, just the the back end team is also very willing to insist if there's questions that that we cannot answer or with these questions that we do have"
"The compliance is the most valuable aspect."
"It has fewer false positives"
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is a highly stable solution and is very mature."
"Learning mode and custom policies are helpful features."
 

Cons

"The tool's price is high."
"I want the solution's custom exclusion rules to be more granular."
"The solution should integrate with something that looks at continuous security management."
"Their portal is very limited and needs improvement."
"I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators of compromise."
"Sometimes, it takes a bit of time for the technical staff of the solution to get back to our company with a resolution for our problems."
"I am not sure if this application has a policy where you can create your custom policy and run it as our firewall. We should have some ability to also create some custom policy, then run it as a firewall."
"We had an issue when securing the web applications for DDoS protection."
"There could be some limitations that from the converged infrastructure perspective: when you want to converge with everything and you want Imperva to get there easily because it's not a cloud component. For example, when you want to build servers and you're using OneView to manage your software-defined networks, implementing Imperva right away is not that simple. But if you're doing just a simple cloud infrastructure with servers in there, you're good to go. Also, we are not able, with Imperva, to block by signatures. Imperva by itself needs to be complemented with another service to do URL filtering."
"A limited tool if you're looking to customize."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is moderately priced."
"For enterprise contracts you will be in touch with a dedicated account manager who will guide you regarding licensing."
"There are some licenses that you have to buy to use some features. Its price could be better. Price is always important because, at the end of the day, customers have a budget. If you can meet the budget, you can sell, and if you don't, you cannot sell."
"The tool is expensive."
"It is a very expensive solution. The price is very high. A lot of customers tell us that they would love to use Imperva more. I have some customers who have 50 websites, but they have only 10 websites on Imperva because of the price. They would love to have all their websites running through Imperva, but they can't. They have to choose the more critical websites to protect because the price is very high. It is a very good product, but it is too expensive. If you buy a plan for 20 megabytes and you don't consume all of your 20 megabytes, it is okay, but if you consume more, you are charged for the superior traffic."
"We have an issue with Imperva Incapsula in the Iraqi market because of the high price."
"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."
"Varies depending on the needs of the customer."
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
32%
Retailer
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business83
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about F5 Shape Security?
The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of configuration.
What needs improvement with F5 Shape Security?
There could be some improvement in the options to make custom exclusion rules to be more granular. Sometimes, the solution blocks something that you don't want to be blocked. The solution should al...
What advice do you have for others considering F5 Shape Security?
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 brows...
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 do you like most about Imperva Incapsula?
We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.
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...
 

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 F5, Imperva, Akamai and others in Bot Management. Updated: August 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.