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Fortinet FortiWeb vs Symantec Web Application Firewall comparison

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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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
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
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th)
Symantec Web Application Fi...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (27th)
 

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.
OcheEluma - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced security with comprehensive traffic inspection and some downtime automation needs
One area that needs improvement is the handling of SaaS downtime. When there is downtime at their data center, it becomes a transit point issue for us, causing downtime in our environment as well. Although measures like built-in redundancy and manual switching between data centers exist, there is room for improvement in making these transitions automatic without impacting the customer. Automating the migration without manual intervention would significantly enhance user experience during downtime. Additionally, being able to read non-flagged traffic for operational purposes could also be an area to improve.
Vatsal Mehta - PeerSpot reviewer
Boosts Security Measures with Easy Deployment and Implementation
Regarding areas for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall, I think they can enhance the features they currently focus on, as there are various types of web applications, and it would be great if they could develop features to cater to all these types. For example, a feature to scan for unauthorized plugins or extensions could let us know if those extensions are authorized, unauthorized, or malicious. There's room for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall by introducing AI into their dashboard so that we can query the dashboard and fetch data insights, similar to querying ChatGPT for answers. They currently have this feature but can make improvements for better querying to get insights.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."
"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"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."
"Fortinet FortiWeb is priced well."
"Fortinet FortiWeb has improved my organization by protecting our customer's web infrastructure environment."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall (WAF)."
"Security Fabric integration. This is really a value-added feature as FortiWeb can interact with the rest of the client’s Fortinet pack to provide an intelligent security layer like (FortiSIEM for central log management and correlation, FortiGate, FortiSandbox for malware analysis, etc.)."
"The most valuable feature is that this product represents a whole solution, including a WAF, and even anti-defacements."
"It allows specific IP whitelisting or even regional whitelisting, ensuring only whitelisted traffic from certain geographical regions can access the environment."
"It's stable and works efficiently against OWASP Top 10 attacks."
"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiWeb is the ease of integration and configuration."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"The best feature of Symantec Web Application Firewall is that it is very easy to use, and the deployment and implementation processes are really easy."
"The setup was straightforward."
"The best feature of Symantec Web Application Firewall is that it is very easy to use, and the deployment and implementation processes are really easy."
"The solution has an up-to-date data repository to deal with external threats."
 

Cons

"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."
"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."
"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."
"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"For advanced users, it would be really useful to have access and the ability to manipulate packets. If we can access and manipulate the contents of packets, even encrypted packets... that would be powerful. Since we're looking at packets arriving at our network, we would have the private key to access those packets and their information."
"It would also be helpful if they could introduce easier reporting. It's good to have those reports that go to C-level management, and Fortinet does provide some graphs, but if they went into some more detail, that would be great."
"I would like to see more improvements with respect to threat intelligence."
"Lacks a VM demo to enable testing prior to purchase."
"No solution is 100% secure and the security could always be worked on."
"The false positives are annoying.​"
"A better load balancer is needed when multiple servers are used for the same website."
"I would like to have an antivirus option."
"There's room for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall by introducing AI into their dashboard so that we can query the dashboard and fetch data insights, similar to querying ChatGPT for answers."
"There's room for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall by introducing AI into their dashboard so that we can query the dashboard and fetch data insights, similar to querying ChatGPT for answers."
"I'm not convinced that it's necessary the best solution going forward in the future."
"Sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."
"It would be an improvement if the management dashboards were not reliant upon Java."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"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."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"Keep a loose margin between your actual bandwidth and the product sizing when using hardware appliances. Only virtual machines are upgradable to larger sizes."
"It is an expensive suite and it is an expensive solution, but it is a manageable one for an enterprise."
"Fortinet FortiWeb's pricing is reasonable. Its licensing costs are yearly."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb is reasonable. This is one of the key factors of why we use this solution."
"If one is very cheap and ten is very expensive, I rate the product price as three or four."
"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."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb is expensive in our Ethiopian currency."
"Due to the situation in Iran with the sanctions, the price of this solution is very expensive."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
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?
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 needs improvement with Symantec Web Application Firewall?
Regarding areas for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall, I think they can enhance the features they curr...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Web Application Firewall?
Our use case for Symantec Web Application Firewall is primarily for security purposes as we develop web application s...
What advice do you have for others considering Symantec Web Application Firewall?
I would recommend Symantec Web Application Firewall to other users due to all the benefits I mentioned earlier, such ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Symantec WAF, Blue Coat Protecting Web Applications
 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiWeb vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.