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FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) vs Imperva 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
7.2
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)
FortiWeb Web Application Fi...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (16th)
Imperva Web Application Fir...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th)
 

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.
Nitith Unarat - PeerSpot reviewer
Identifies potential DDoS attacks and suspicious domain activity
The price could be close to Imperva; Imperva is the number one firewall. FortiWeb cannot do some kind of ADC solution, like load balancing. I hope they improve that. I'm looking for the ADC solution, the load balancing solution. Because application firewalls with multiple line solutions do come with it. So, I think it should be integrated within FortiWeb WAF.
Abdullah Jin - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers bot protection and DDoS Protection and protects public-facing portals
Support is one thing I wish Imperva could improve. They follow the phone model and keep rotating you from one customer service person to another. The layer one support isn't very clear about the workings of the product. My feedback is primarily about Imperva Cloud, not on-premise. On-premise is a whole new story. Support is the issue for Imperva Cloud. It's also a bit pricey. It's a premium service and very expensive. The licensing model is not very straightforward. Every feature is priced separately, and to enjoy maximum protection, you'll have to spend a lot of money. The licensing model is a bit complex, and each feature is very pricey. For example, API security and web application protection are two separate license packages.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtration, web filter, application filter, and IPS."
"Their support is truly exceptional when I compare it with similar large-sized companies."
"The tool secures our critical applications, especially the mobile money application, which is often targeted by attacks. The solution provides rapid protection and has proven reliable against various threats."
"The most valuable feature is the tool's integration with load-balancing applications, similar to FortiADC. Its importance depends on customer requirements, such as whether they prioritize application load balancing or layer seven protection."
"The features of FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) that have proven most effective in protecting web applications include web filtering, DDoS protection, geo-location blocking, and blocking SQL injection attacks."
"The solution is transparent and smooth."
"The solution's integration with other products is easy. Its most valuable feature is the antivirus engine. The tool helps us comply with GDPR and KVKK standards."
"It is good for web tracking applications."
"The most valuable feature of Imperva, in addition to its strong knowledge base, is its effective protection for web applications."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is a highly stable solution and is very mature."
"The most valuable features of the Imperva Web Application Firewall are performance and flexibility. We can extend or customize the box itself."
"I am impressed with the product's scalability, availability, easy management, and security. We were able to integrate the product with Azure and Sentinel."
"The valuable features of Imperva WAF include its effective security breach prevention through automatically updating rules."
"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."
"One good thing about Imperva Web Application Firewall is it can be on the cloud and also it can be on-premise."
"The WAF itself has been very valuable to me because it has such a complete range of features. Another reason why I like it is because it also takes care of the total overview of the traffic over the network."
 

Cons

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"Support response time could be improved."
"Technical support is not well developed. While there are good engineers, Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."
"The product lacks features offered by enterprise-level firewall tools."
"FortiWeb Web Application Firewall's signature database updates could be improved."
"The documentation is poor."
"Regarding areas for improvement, the documentation needs work. We had issues with a customer because the documentation didn't clearly show which devices can connect with FortiWeb WAF, leading to misconfiguration and difficult meetings. We also need deeper technical support - finding who's responsible for technical aspects is challenging. Hungary has a good Fortinet office with strong sales and pre-sales employees."
"The technical support team is bad."
"FortiWeb could have an inbound load balancing pack."
"It would be good if the solution integrated with other solutions, like SAP."
"There is room for improvement in pricing, and actually, the price is a bit higher because on the same terms I purchased, the support subscription is so high."
"There's always room for improvement. Occasionally, there might be false-positive alerts."
"It's a complicated tool to keep."
"They can provide an option to create reports, automatically import the entire report, and create rules again. In a real-life crisis, it would be helpful to be able to import a report and generate security rules from that report. I should be able to create a simple query and import the reports automatically. It can maybe also tell us the format of the report."
"The Imperva Web Application Firewall automations are good, but there is still room for improvement with them."
"I don't really use it and therefore can't speak to areas of improvement."
"Some of the features should be included in the next release is a file integrating monitoring tool. This feature should be improved."
"I think that better bot protection is needed in this solution."
"The reporting is missing some features, such as: only two export formats, and the time period does not include the last day, week, year."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"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 price is reasonable."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"FortiWeb WAF is priced well for customers compared to other vendors' solutions."
"The licensing cost of the product is pretty high compared to other OEMs in the market."
"It is a cost-effective product. If you need an extra module in the product, there will be an extra cost in addition to the licensing fee."
"The tool is really expensive."
"This product offers two pricing options: a standard package and an advanced package."
"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
"FortiWeb Web Application Firewall's pricing is suited for small or medium organizations."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"It is a very affordable solution."
"Imperva’s pricing is a bit higher in the market since it offers a full-blown WAF."
"It is very costly, but the return on investment is very high. Its cost was around $70,000, and we got it back in just six months."
"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."
"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall's pricing is expensive."
"Make sure you understand the way that Imperva charges. It's very affordable. However, I would like to see a package with the Virtual Patching included. You get to do patching separately."
"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."
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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%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtration, web filter, application filter, and IPS.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
FortiWeb uses a subscription-based license, but there is also an option for a perpetual license. It's not the cheapes...
What needs improvement with FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
There are some issues pertaining to the migration. If some of my customers want to migrate from F5 to Fortinet Firewa...
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 hav...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
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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.
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BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens
Find out what your peers are saying about FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.