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Fortinet FortiWeb vs Imperva Web Application Firewall comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 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

Fortinet FortiWeb
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Imperva Web Application Fir...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiWeb is 8.2%, up from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Web Application Firewall is 5.6%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Mitesh D Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively defends against threats like cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and others
It does bring value. For example, consider a BFSI customer. Their application is critical and represents their brand. Without a WAF, an attack could take their application down, harming their reputation. It leads to hampering the customer's workflow. With an Imperva WAF, they protect against attacks like DDoS or SQL injection, ensuring their application remains available and customers are happy. That's the main benefit for both the customer and the organization. The impact depends on the customer's use case. If their business primarily operates online, a CDN is beneficial for traffic optimization. Moreover, the integration options depend on the specific use case of our customers. Generally, integration capabilities are good with SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) parts.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is very good."
"Other than the additional security with exploit protection, we have simpler certificate handling, as we can keep internal servers using internal certificates continuously distributed and updated by Active Directory Group Policy, while the public certificates become updated only in a single place, FortiWeb itself."
"It is a good product. We have just blocked everything coming from some geographical locations or certain countries, and it has been working very efficiently when I look at logs, events, and incidents generated from the system. It is generating very good analytic reports about it. This is the most valuable thing about this solution. It has load balancing and almost everything that a web application firewall needs. It is very flexible and easy to learn and configure. It can be easily learned and configured by using the information available on different channels such as YouTube."
"Fortinet FortiWeb is priced well."
"The most valuable feature is that this product represents a whole solution, including a WAF, and even anti-defacements."
"SSL Offloading simplifies the public certificate handling and brings additional protection features."
"It's easy to use and allows us to integrate solutions together."
"FortiWeb offers machine learning in the latest product. This fixed many problems. There are no false negatives."
"The solution is very scalable. It is one of the most important features. You can also expand resources and features as well."
"Data masking is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"I am impressed with the product's scalability, availability, easy management, and security. We were able to integrate the product with Azure and Sentinel."
"Imperva is easy to use and deploy. The UI is excellent."
"The solution is scalable."
"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."
"Protection is the best solution since it has profile functionality."
"Compared to other web application firewalls in the market, Imperva does things in the most accurate way."
 

Cons

"When there is downtime at their data center, it becomes a transit point issue for us, causing downtime in our environment as well."
"I would like to see the Application Delivery Control (ADC) and Web Application Firewall (WAF) combined in one device."
"The solution is not very scalable, to scale up would require another deployment with a new appliance and a change to the network."
"In my experience, Fortinet FortiWeb could improve the intelligent features to acknowledge whether any threat or incident that's running happened. Then give us the ability to escalate it to layer 2 or layer 3 in the network operations."
"No solution is 100% secure and the security could always be worked on."
"F5 and some other firewalls are easier to customize. FortiWeb could be more flexible and customizable. The documentation could also be improved because many of the advanced features aren't fully documented."
"The solution could improve by being able to handle different use cases."
"A user interface or dashboard for troubleshooting is needed."
"It's a complicated tool to keep."
"I'd like the option to pick your bot protection."
"The tool needs to improve CPU and storage memory."
"I would like the solution to improve its support response time."
"The only disadvantage of Imperva is that it is a pretty costly solution."
"It should be more user-friendly. Like other web solutions, it would be helpful to be able to easily do policy configuration and identification inside the application. Understanding the in-depth configuration of a policy is somewhat difficult for an engineer, and they can improve that."
"I am looking for more data enrichment. We should have the ability to add our own custom data to the system, to the live traffic."
"Sometimes, support tickets don't get addressed quickly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the tool an eight."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb depends from customer to customer because some customers are considering using other solutions, such as Imperva. The price of Fortinet FortiWeb sits well for the middle-sized customers that we deal with."
"Keep a loose margin between your actual bandwidth and the product sizing when using hardware appliances. Only virtual machines are upgradable to larger sizes."
"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Cheaper than others."
"It is not a cheap product. It is not like a Linux or a Genex that you can deploy. It is a hardware appliance, and it is built for a specific reason and reliability. It is an enterprise-class solution. You wouldn't find an SMB investing in something like this."
"​It really pays off to buy licences for multiple years​."
"The maintenance fee for this product could be improved."
"The tool is expensive."
"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."
"It is a very affordable solution."
"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."
"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."
"There are a couple of different licensing models."
"Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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, providing substantial value for our customers.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?
The cloud-based security service of Fortinet FortiWeb could be enhanced to match the level of providers like Cloudflare ( /products/cloudflare-reviews ). Right now, it is more focused on on-prem so...
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.
DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DDoS Protection Service and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?
You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot of DDoS attacks that were well managed (even not seen by the customer) by Imperv...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiWeb vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.