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Fortinet FortiWeb vs SonicWall Web Application Firewall [EOL] 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 Web Application ...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (2nd)
SonicWall Web Application F...
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
HameedAhmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Joint Director at PAA
Security threats have been reduced through seamless deployment and strong integration with other tools
I have used Fortinet FortiWeb's integration features. We have easily integrated all of the applications with the product. Most of the applications we are using are in-house built. My technical team is looking after the best features. I have not used it extensively for maybe two and a half years. I have been involved in the installation, but I am not actually using the product. I work with it from time to time but not extensively. I would assess Fortinet FortiWeb's adaptive machine learning and artificial intelligence as having new patches installed regarding artificial intelligence, but when we bought it, I think the learning feature was there. Now they have installed artificial intelligence features through patches. We have a complete portfolio of Fortinet in our organization, including FortiMail, Fortinet FortiWeb, and FortiGate, along with multi-factor authentication. All of the products are from Fortinet. Fortinet tools integrate with each other and work in conjunction. I think Fortinet FortiWeb has helped us meet regulatory compliance because we are not a regulatory organization, but our sister organization is regulatory. We have regulatory compliance with the International Civil Aviation Authority, whose audit teams have checked our data center and these security products, and they are satisfied with us. The question about leveraging Fortinet FortiWeb's automated policy management does not pertain to my domain because I am not so technical, but I am in a management role now. My engineer is more technical than me. I would rate this product an eight point five out of ten.
Narender Reddy - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at iLenSys Technologies Pvt Ltd
A stable and durable solution that can be used for security and tunneling
We use SonicWall Web Application Firewall for security and tunneling We should get the logs from the solution, and it should communicate with the local DNS. There is some lag in the solution's technical support response time. I have been using SonicWall Web Application Firewall for one year.…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product has a valuable security control functionality."
"The most valuable part of the solution for us overall is exactly that it is a Software-as-a-Service product."
"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."
"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."
"The initial setup process is simple."
"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."
"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."
"The most valuable features in Fortinet FortiWeb are sandboxing and threat prevention."
"The most valuable feature is that this product represents a whole solution, including a WAF, and even anti-defacements."
"The GUI is user-friendly."
"My experience with the solution has been very positive."
"The most important feature of this solution is protection from attack."
"It's stable and works efficiently against OWASP Top 10 attacks."
"The interface is very straightforward and easy to use."
"Fortinet FortiWeb has positively impacted my organization because most of our servers and applications are secure from hackers and other security threats."
"The solution is more advanced and efficient than its competitors such as Meraki."
"Capture ATP is a good additional feature in the latest version."
"We use SonicWall Web Application Firewall for security and tunneling."
"The solution offers better data protection than competitors."
"SonicWall Web Application Firewall is very smooth and cool, and a very user-friendly firewall."
 

Cons

"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."
"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"The reporting could be more granular."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"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."
"Describing security rules should be improved. It's tricky to define new feature tools when you want to describe an attack pattern and want to block it."
"It costs too much."
"The downside to FortiWeb is it had issues integrating with HSM. They fixed the issue, however, it took a long time to fix and it wasn't pleasant."
"We also need configuration settings that indicate the advantages or disadvantages of enabled features."
"Lacks functionalities that are available in other solutions."
"The product is complicated to set up."
"The tool's price and performance are areas of concern where improvements are required."
"The solution needs an access management feature with API integration so we can assign certain levels of access within groups."
"We have a lot of unknown errors popping up in the latest version."
"We should get the logs from the solution, and it should communicate with the local DNS."
"The solution needs an access management feature with API integration so we can assign certain levels of access within groups."
"The latest version needs a lot of work because it's not yet as stable as the previous versions. We're getting a lot of unknown errors popping up."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"It is not too pricey."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"The solution is expensive."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."
"The solution is cheaper compared with other solutions. It has a yearly license."
"​It really pays off to buy licences for multiple years​."
"The solution gives us the best price to performance ratio."
"There's only one payment for the duration of the license. On a scale from one to five, I would rate pricing at four. I have not encountered any additional costs on my projects involving Fortinet FortiWeb."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The license to use Fortinet FortiWeb is approximately $14,000."
"It keeps changing, but it's based on the size of the VM you buy and also the traffic throughput you want from it, whereas what we have on Azure is just the traffic throughput. You can also pay on a monthly basis from Azure. During each part of the project, it's okay to get Azure-based licensing or AWS-based licensing for FortiWeb, but over time, you would want to go with the perpetual license. You should go to Fortinet and buy the license from them. So, there is a two-step process there."
"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 pricing is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business60
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise36
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb?
The pricing for Fortinet FortiWeb varies with different models having different prices. It depends on the requirement...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?
There is room for improvement in Fortinet FortiWeb. The team was only from FortiGate itself. They are making new firm...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiWeb?
Fortinet FortiWeb is very good as a web application solution. I have been working with Fortinet FortiWeb since 2020.
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Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
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