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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 ...
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Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (6th)
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

"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"The most valuable part of the solution for us overall is exactly that it is a Software-as-a-Service product."
"It is configurable via API."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."
"This is a good product; it's reliable and scales well."
"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
"We did use another solution, but, compared with the competition, we got the best ratio of performance to price when we chose Fortinet."
"The most valuable features are support and security."
"All the features that FortiGate contains are very suitable for our business. We work with other products in Fortinet, FortiWeb, FortiSandbox, FortiMail, and FortiCache. We use all UTM features like self-encryption, encryption, all UTM features."
"The most valuable feature is that this product represents a whole solution, including a WAF, and even anti-defacements."
"The initial setup was straightforward, it was easy."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"It is cost-effective compared to other solutions."
"FortiWeb is easy to operate with a reasonably high level of protection. FortiWeb provides multiple deployment options with a physical or virtual (FortiWeb-VM) appliance, and acts either as a reverse/transparent proxy or out-of-band. It is also available on AWS and Azure."
"The solution offers better data protection than competitors."
"SonicWall Web Application Firewall is very smooth and cool, and a very user-friendly firewall."
"Capture ATP is a good additional feature in the latest version."
"We use SonicWall Web Application Firewall for security and tunneling."
"The solution is more advanced and efficient than its competitors such as Meraki."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"Support can be challenging at times."
"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."
"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."
"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."
"FortiWeb could have an inbound load balancing pack."
"A user interface or dashboard for troubleshooting is needed."
"The product needs to be more stable."
"Fortinet FortiWeb could improve data integration."
"We also need configuration settings that indicate the advantages or disadvantages of enabled features."
"The F5 solution has more features than Fortinet FortiWeb, such as multiple load balancing."
"Lacks functionalities that are available in other solutions."
"The hardware does not measure up. Fortinet does not have sturdy hardware."
"We should get the logs from the solution, and it should communicate with the local DNS."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"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."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"It is not too pricey."
"Previously, for each project, the cost was $800 to $1,000 per application. Now, it's $100 to $120. For some of the applications, there is a 90% reduction, and for some of the applications, there is a 50% reduction. We're paying only $500 to $600."
"The product provides very good prices to customers. The price is set well and offers great value for money."
"​It really pays off to buy licences for multiple years​."
"Keep a loose margin between your actual bandwidth and the product sizing when using hardware appliances. Only virtual machines are upgradable to larger sizes."
"The license to use Fortinet FortiWeb is approximately $14,000."
"The cost isn't expensive."
"The pricing is pretty good. We do pass a lot of traffic through our API servers. Something like 100 gigs of web traffic is a fair amount for reduced JSON API calls, but the cost is $50. For that peace of mind, we have thousands and thousands of customers that are protected by that $50, so it's a no-brainer."
"Its subscription prices are cheaper, and it is not very expensive. From a price perspective, Fortinet is a very well-known security vendor. Subscriptions are very simple. They have a couple of licenses on an appliance, and that's it. The cost is not that big. One license is 40K, which they give with all the products. Another one includes the subscriptions for threat prevention, IPS, sandboxing, etc, which is more than enough."
"The pricing is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
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 Enterprise37
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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