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Fastly vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

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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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in CDN
1st
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
Fastly
Ranking in CDN
8th
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
11th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (19th)
Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in CDN
4th
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
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th), Bot Management (2nd), API Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 18.8%, up from 17.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 2.6%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 7.3%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudflare18.8%
Imperva's Application Security Platform7.3%
Fastly2.6%
Other71.3%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Nick Wilsdon - PeerSpot reviewer
An easily scalable and stable product that provides exceptional support
The product should provide improved bot detection and management. The product should also provide support for code management. Everybody working in CDN is currently looking for ways to better manage code deployment with various authorization levels and synchronization with our lower environments. Matching up what's happening in CDN with what's happening on the origin regarding testing would always be useful.
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 solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"It's very user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"The UI is good."
"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."
"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong 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."
"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
"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."
"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"There is no need to have an appliance in house for the services because it is on the cloud."
"The solution is very good at intercepting traffic before it gets to our data centers."
"I am impressed with the product's automatic bot mechanism. It also gives us the control to create our own custom bot rules."
"This product is a reliable defense from malicious attacks on a network environment."
"On the activity log, I can see the exact details, the visit, and the threat."
"Its unique interface for managing security performance and ease of use are the most valuable features of this solution."
"It is an effective threat mitigation tool."
"It fits our requirements, as well as our budget."
 

Cons

"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"Support is not that great."
"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."
"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."
"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."
"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 only disadvantage of Imperva is that it is a pretty costly solution."
"The Imperva Web Application Firewall automations are good, but there is still room for improvement with them."
"The salespeople tend to exaggerate its capabilities, which can cost you money if you don't verify the information."
"Analytics in the area of risk need to be improved to supply more information to the users for creating better environments."
"The process to upgrade from one version to another can be a lot simpler than it is currently."
"I don't really use it and therefore can't speak to areas of improvement."
"The support for the on-premises version needs improvement."
"The reporting is missing some features, such as: only two export formats, and the time period does not include the last day, week, year."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"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."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
"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."
"It is an expensive solution."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."
"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."
"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."
"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."
"For enterprise contracts you will be in touch with a dedicated account manager who will guide you regarding licensing."
"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."
"Pricing could be more competitive."
"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."
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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
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business83
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise61
 

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 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 h...
What needs improvement with Fastly?
Fastly has POPs with huge servers across the world, so it works effectively everywhere except the mainland China regi...
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 mana...
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 provi...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
 

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.
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.
Find out what your peers are saying about Fastly vs. Imperva Application Security Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.