Fastly vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

Fastly and Imperva are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Fastly is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.0, while Imperva is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.4. Fastly holds a 2.9% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Imperva’s 8.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Fastly users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Imperva users who would recommend it.

Fastly

Read 9 Fastly reviews

2,199 Views
924 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Imperva Application Securit...

Read 133 Imperva Application Security Platform reviews

10,598 Views
3,391 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Fastly

Imperva Application Securit...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 21, 2025

Imperva Application Security Platform and Fastly compete in application security. Imperva is favored for its in-depth security features, whereas Fastly is preferred for speed and adaptability due to its edge cloud platform.

Features: Imperva provides advanced web application firewall, threat analytics, and threat radar, all crucial for protecting sites from various attacks. Fastly's strengths lie in its content delivery network, edge computing capabilities, and real-time traffic analysis, offering scalability and performance.

Room for Improvement: Imperva could enhance its deployment process and improve user interface intuitiveness. Fastly might benefit from expanding its security feature set and offering more robust compliance options. Documentation could also be clearer for both tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fastly simplifies deployment with its quick setup and responsive support. Imperva, while having a more detailed setup procedure, provides strong security assurances backed by dependable customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Imperva is a higher-end solution with considerable initial costs, aligning with companies seeking comprehensive security and long-term benefits. Fastly offers flexible pricing options that attract businesses focused on scalability and immediate performance gains.

To learn more, read our detailed Fastly vs. Imperva Application Security Platform Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. Imperva Application Security Platform

January 2026

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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

Fastly

Ranking in CDN

8th

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

20th

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

10th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Imperva Application Securit...

Ranking in CDN

2nd

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

3rd

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

133

Ranking in other categories

Bot Management (1st), API Security (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Fastly is 2.9%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 8.2%, up from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform	8.2%
Fastly	2.9%
Other	88.9%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Patel Parth

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.

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reviewer1247523

Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

Solution ensures website availability and proactive threat mitigation

Over the seven years, the most valuable features of Imperva DDoS that I have found are related to DDoS attacks, which are a group of attacks, and not all of them can be resolved on the endpoint level before the website. Using the web firewall before the website is a common use case to protect against malicious requests to the website. I have utilized Imperva's Intelligent Traffic Filtering feature. This feature helps me understand how the attack is progressing and what is happening inside the requests to our website. It allows me to granularly grant or deny access to certain parts of our website. This helps when we know our customers and the types of requests that can be sent from them, enabling us to block some malicious requests. Imperva DDoS has User Behavior Analytics and Threat Intelligence on its board, and this helps us to be protected proactively. Imperva DDoS connects to its database of threats, storing whole information about attacks all over the world in one simple engine. Everyone can use this feature, which can connect to this engine and get information about what is going on at the world level. That is the way to be protected at the company's level. The integration capabilities of Imperva DDoS are very easy and simple. We can run it in 2 hours.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."

"Its initial setup process is straightforward."

"Fastly provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."

"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."

"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."

"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."

"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."

"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."

More Fastly pros

"The most important feature I have found to be the ease in how to do the backup and restores."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is stable."

"There is no need to have an appliance in house for the services because it is on the cloud."

"The most valuable features of the Imperva Web Application Firewall are DDoS, malware, and the other malicious threat prevention it provides. Additionally, third-party integration is available. You can forward the log for further analysis."

"The solution is very scalable. It is one of the most important features. You can also expand resources and features as well."

"This product is a reliable defense from malicious attacks on a network environment."

"There are some features that are configured by default, so even without doing much, it can still provide a level of protection."

"Setup was straightforward, very simple. I only entered the domain and Incapsula returned the DNS data that I needed to change for the protection to be configured."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pros

Cons

"We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers."

"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."

"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 solution's pricing could be better."

"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."

"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."

"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."

"Support is not that great."

"The tool needs to improve CPU and storage memory."

"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."

"We had an issue when securing the web applications for DDoS protection."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by providing better features, such as improved prevention of zero-day attacks. Additionally, it should include a VR meta-analysis."

"The initial setup could be simplified. Every time you have to install the solution you have to get in touch with support or somebody that can to do that for you."

"There’s nothing that’s missing in terms of features."

"Incapsula services also provides load balancing services for their service IP address environment. So far, with monitoring their services, the IP address was only changed once."

"The reporting is missing some features, such as: only two export formats, and the time period does not include the last day, week, year."

More Imperva Application Security Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."

"It is an expensive solution."

"The pricing has been very competitive."

"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."

"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."

"Imperva’s pricing is a bit higher in the market since it offers a full-blown WAF."

"Make sure you understand the way that Imperva charges. It's very affordable. However, I would like to see a package with the Virtual Patching included. You get to do patching separately."

"Imperva charges us based on bandwidth, which is better than other vendors that charge us according to data transfer."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."

"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."

"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 price is high compared to other solutions like FortiWeb."

"Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user68487

Security Expert with 51-200 employees

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	83
Midsize Enterprise	25
Large Enterprise	61

Questions from the Community

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.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fastly?

You need to pay a premium price for the tool.

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What needs improvement with Fastly?

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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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Fortinet FortiWeb vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 5% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 4% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fastly

January 2026

Download Fastly product report

Buyer's Guide

Imperva Application Security Platform

January 2026

Imperva Application Security Platform report

Download Imperva Application Security Platform product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Overview

Fastly helps the world’s most popular digital businesses keep pace with their customer expectations by delivering fast, secure, and scalable online experiences. Businesses trust Fastly’s edge cloud platform to accelerate the pace of technical innovation, mitigate evolving threats, and scale on demand.

Fastly

Imperva Application Security Platform delivers comprehensive and continuous web threat protection. Renowned for its ease of use, it shields web applications and databases from various cyber threats while integrating seamlessly with cloud and on-premises environments.

Imperva Application Security Platform protects web environments by offering advanced security measures against threats like DDoS attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting. As a robust web application firewall, it provides extensive monitoring and bot management capabilities. The platform integrates content delivery networks for enhanced performance and scalability, while real-time traffic analysis ensures consistent protection. Despite its strengths, improvements can be made in policy management and customization options. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and more competitive pricing models. The inclusion of AI for enhanced analytics is also anticipated.

What are the key features of Imperva Application Security Platform?

Correlated Attack Validation: Enhances threat assessment by linking related security events.
Threat Radar: Offers visibility into potential and ongoing threats.
Virtual Patching: Provides protection against vulnerabilities without immediate code changes.
IncapRules: Allows creation of custom security policies.
DDoS Protection: Defends against large-scale distributed denial-of-service attacks.
CDN Integration: Improves content delivery speed and reliability.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

User-Friendly Administration: Simplifies setup and ongoing management tasks.
Seamless Integration: Ensures smooth operation with existing infrastructure.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Shields digital assets from a wide range of threats.
Hands-On Support: Provides timely and effective customer service assistance.

Imperva Application Security Platform is implemented in industries needing strong database and application protection. Companies use it to enforce geolocation restrictions and manage bots, benefiting sectors like finance and e-commerce where data security and threat monitoring are critical. Its ability to protect and ensure data accessibility makes it integral to business operations prioritizing cyber resilience.

Imperva

Sample Customers

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

Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. Imperva Application Security Platform

January 2026

Free Report: Fastly vs. Imperva Application Security Platform

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