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Fortinet FortiWeb vs Hillstone I-Series Server Breach Detection System comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th)
Hillstone I-Series Server B...
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (29th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (25th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
Kacem CHAMMALI - PeerSpot reviewer
Even if an attacker detects the IP address, they can't connect directly to the server due to FortiWeb
The xFF, or X-Forwarded-For feature, IP reputation, and protected hostname. We can block access using the IP address, so no one can connect to our web server or website using the real IP. They need to use the FQDN instead. Even if an attacker detects the IP address, they can't connect directly to the server due to FortiWeb and the option to protect the hostname. All traffic passes through FortiWeb. Machine learning capabilities in FortiWeb: I don't use machine learning all the time. In the initial phase of FortiWeb deployment, we use the learning process to detect the traffic passing through FortiGate to our website.
DAVI TEIXEIRA - PeerSpot reviewer
Beneficial AI detection, helpful support, but modern UI needed
The initial setup of the Hillstone I-Series Server Breach Detection System requires a bunch of steps starting with installing the hardware and setting it up. However, most of the setup is done by the vendor. I rate the initial setup of the Hillstone I-Series Server Breach Detection System an eight out of ten. The vendor provides free training in the software provided.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Cloudflare has many features."
"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"The support services, performance, and pricing are all valuable features. The performance is excellent."
"The GUI is user-friendly and it's easy to understand how to manage it."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiWeb is the ease of integration and configuration."
"Before a platform faces the internet, Fortinet FortiWeb inspects the traffic."
"Banks have to be compliant with PCI and other things, and FortiWeb is absolutely amazing in terms of providing these reports. Otherwise, they will have to spend a lot of time on them."
"FortiWeb offers a good price for the marketplace. In the Sri Lankan market, it's hard to find high-end products that can match FortiWeb's pricing. For high-end solutions, the price is always extremely high."
"We can block access using the IP address so no one can connect to our web server or website using the real IP."
"It's the extra security that is the most valuable feature. You have insight into your traffic. There are some great insights into what utilities hackers are trying to exploit. It blocks a lot of stuff from the internet."
"One or two people can maintain and support the solution. The maintenance is not difficult."
"The most valuable features of the Hillstone I-Series Server Breach Detection System are the AI detection and monitoring of common threats."
 

Cons

"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."
"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."
"The pricing could be improved."
"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."
"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."
"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."
"The upgrade process could be a bit smoother."
"Fortinet WAF came out recently, and there is not much feedback about customer experience. For each project, customers ask about the scenarios and references of the customers who have implemented this solution, which we don't have. They need to simplify the customer experience and provide more information so that we can propose Fortinet Fortiweb as a WAF solution to customers and convince them. They need to improve their service and training. We need good training to implement and use it properly and know more about it. We still don't know much about Fortinet WAF. We didn't get any proper training sessions. Other vendors like Cisco, Palo Alto, Check Point, and Barracuda provide such sessions. Whenever we receive a request from a customer for this solution, we just give the price. We don't propose this solution because we don't know much about it. We propose whatever we are familiar with and what is supported."
"​Their support needs improvement."
"A user interface or dashboard for troubleshooting is needed."
"Its threat intelligence capabilities may not be as advanced as some competitors."
"It can be better with web application firewalls."
"The solution is not very scalable, to scale up would require another deployment with a new appliance and a change to the network."
"The reporting could be optimized."
"The UI dashboard view needs to be improved because it is ugly. If it was more modern it would be better. Additionally, better integration with other databases would be good."
"Hillstone I-Series Server Breach Detection System can improve by having more anti-spam features that will hopefully eliminate all of the other threats."
 

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."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The license cost depends on the size of the box or the size of the solution. It can go from €200 Euros to a few hundred thousand Euros a year depending on your size."
"The price is competitive."
"FortiWeb can be purchased in VM mode for a lower price and the same features."
"FortiWeb offers these services at a price that SME customers can afford, but it's also suitable for large enterprises. Still, they need to put in more work to gain a greater share of enterprise business because they face stiff competition in this segment from F5, Cloudflare, and some others."
"The solution is a bit expensive when compared to other products."
"Due to the situation in Iran with the sanctions, the price of this solution is very expensive."
"Keep a loose margin between your actual bandwidth and the product sizing when using hardware appliances. Only virtual machines are upgradable to larger sizes."
"FortiWeb is more expensive than some competing products."
"The price of the solution is good. It is less expensive than the other solutions in the market. There are not any additional features or hidden costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
41%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 Fortinet FortiWeb?
The WAF profiles has been effective at mitigating web-based threats.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb?
Fortinet FortiWeb is cost-effective compared to solutions like F5. It offers strong performance for the price, provid...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?
The cloud-based security service of Fortinet FortiWeb could be enhanced to match the level of providers like Cloudfla...
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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Hillstone sBDS
 

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.
Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
Norbert Wiener University, Regional Government of the Amazon
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), F5, Microsoft and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: May 2025.
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