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F5 Silverline Managed Services vs Fastly comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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 Silverline Managed Services
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
21st
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fastly
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
18th
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
10th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
CDN (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of F5 Silverline Managed Services is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 1.3%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Fastly1.3%
F5 Silverline Managed Services1.3%
Other97.4%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

RM
Senior Network Security Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Manages network threats and supports application control with ease
The best advantage of F5 Silverline Managed Services is that it is easy to use. The admin guide they provide is easy to understand and allows for implementation within a few days. The traffic manager and the monitoring tool are valuable as well. The monitoring tab displays GET and POST requests in a readable format, making it accessible even to non-tech-savvy individuals. It offers effective reports and monitoring capabilities.
PP
Technical support engineer at Adobe
Optimized ecommerce performance and improved access control through image handling and IP filtering
I believe that Fastly should provide guidelines for their WAF blocking rules. It should be public what the rules are that are blocking their contents. I believe Fastly should provide regional IP addresses instead of POP IPs. Fastly should provide features similar to Cloudflare regarding a block list. Additionally, a POP address should be there with a wide range of IP addresses provided, public static IP addresses, so customers can integrate egress IPs. Fastly should provide WebP image processing on the backend instead of on the fly. It would be a very useful feature to avoid unnecessary time for browser to browser and local cookies. I believe that Fastly service has a few gaps. We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers. There should be transparency.

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 is flexibility."
"The most important feature is that they have seven firewall protection, to protect our web servers."
"The product’s UI is easy to understand."
"F5 technical support is really good."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"F5 Silverline offers load balancing, flexibility, and reliability."
"The stability of the solution is very good."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Silverline Managed Services is the benchmark performance."
"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."
"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"Fastly combines both the CDN side and the Signal Sciences next-generation WAF, which is closely integrated with the CDN, allowing us to use both products seamlessly."
"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."
"Fastly provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."
"Support is good; the product works as advertised. We have a Slack connection with them. So we can basically ask for help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly."
 

Cons

"There is a lot of room for improvement with their tech support. I am not sure F5 Silverline Managed Services can be classified as having tech support."
"There is room for improvement in the stability of the solution."
"You need to have Linux knowledge in order to use the shell."
"The product could be improved on the global load and the integration with the other solution like Cisco and Dell. As a representor of the operation, we prefer to have one platform which can accommodate all type of integration. We are also looking for more improvements in the security policy configuration."
"We'd like more AI to be used. Right now, they don't use it enough."
"F5 Silverline Managed Services can improve by adding features that Palo Alto has."
"Improvements could include the creation of highly optimized profiles, optimization deployments, and compression profiles for better performance."
"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be better."
"It is missing a "staging" platform to deploy a test configuration with all of the real settings, which would allow us to properly test before putting it into production."
"We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers."
"Stronger analytics would be helpful, like showing configurations that haven't served a certain amount of traffic in a while. With many properties, things can get lost track of - duplicates or unused configurations not properly decommissioned."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."
"Support is not that great."
"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product’s pricing is reasonable."
"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be reduced."
"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be better, they are not very flexible. The price of the solution is based on the requirements of the enterprise."
"F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall works based on your bandwidth. They look at the clean bandwidth and do the pricing. 20% of a total pipe would be a clean bandwidth. The list price or a non-negotiated price for F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall would be around $2,200 per application per year for everything that you need. When you get into an enterprise kind of a setup, they negotiate this to the last bit. I would easily take 20% on that, which would be the cost, but it should cover all your Advance WAF features, bot protection, tech campaign, etc. It is built as a package and gives you most of the capability. You don't get the mobile SDK, which is an additional license. Mobile SDK is required only if you're buying or if you have a mobile application, and you are going to instrument F5 or Imperva into your mobile appliance. This anyways would be an additional module. It doesn't come within the WAF, but it is a WAF feature."
"It is an expensive solution."
"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Insurance Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

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 have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Silverline Managed Services?
The solution is quite reasonably priced, with costs being lower in comparison to competitors. On a scale where ten is very expensive, I would rate the pricing as three. It offers cost savings and i...
What needs improvement with F5 Silverline Managed Services?
Automating processes could enhance F5 Silverline Managed Services. For example, introducing preemptive support prompts would reduce the manual effort required for creating policies or blocking spec...
What do you like most about Fastly?
Support is good; the product works as advertised. We have a Slack connection with them. So we can basically ask for help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly.
What needs improvement with Fastly?
I believe that Fastly should provide guidelines for their WAF blocking rules. It should be public what the rules are that are blocking their contents. I believe Fastly should provide regional IP ad...
 

Also Known As

F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, F5 Silverline DDoS Protection
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Twitter, Airbnb, Alaska Airlines, Pinterest, Vimeo, The Guardian, The New York Times, Ticketmaster, The Drupal Association, Opera, about.com, imgur, Etsy, Foursquare, GitHub, New Relic, shopify, Shazam, Firebase
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. Fastly and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.