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Imperva Application Security Platform vs R&S Web Application Firewall (DenyAll) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 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) (12th)
Imperva Application Securit...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
133
Ranking in other categories
CDN (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (2nd), API Security (2nd)
R&S Web Application Firewal...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (42nd)
 

Q&A Highlights

PM
Aug 31, 2021
 

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.
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.
SS
Geo-localization and IP reputation help to keep our clients secure and more available
The area that should be improved is licensing. When using an active/passive cluster, we have to pay 70% of the master appliance and license for the passive server that does not work. Since we know that only one server works at a time, we should pay only one license for the appliances and for the support as well. In my opinion, this has to be improved. If possible, the client software should be a web application instead of downloading software for the management. This can avoid login problems when they update or patch.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
"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 features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."
"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."
"Protection is the best solution since it has profile functionality."
"Imperva Incapsula has many valuable features. One, it protects the top 10 OWAS vulnerability, the open web application software platform, this is standard. Secondly, it protects against broken authentication. As well, it has remote execution of code."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is that it is easy to configure."
"Imperva is easy to use and deploy. The UI is excellent."
"The features I have found most valuable with Imperva Web Application Firewall are account takeover protection, advanced bot protection, and API security."
"The dashboard is good and user-friendly."
"The setup of Imperva DDoS was easy."
"Gives us the ability to trace each connection, and to have logs to be able to differentiate between a positive and a false-positive intruder action."
"The three most valuable features that I noticed are the geo-localization of the user, the IP reputation, and the compartmental analysis."
 

Cons

"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."
"Technical support is lacking."
"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."
"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"The pricing could be improved."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"Their portal is very limited and needs improvement."
"The user interface could be better."
"I am not sure if this application has a policy where you can create your custom policy and run it as our firewall. We should have some ability to also create some custom policy, then run it as a firewall."
"We faced issues regarding compliance with client procedures. The client had strict compliance rules, and Imperva needed to be on a VM, while the client required containerization, causing a conflict. They went with Imperva for the on-premise version but shelved the cloud project due to too many blockers."
"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."
"The tool needs to improve CPU and storage memory."
"Imperva now offers add-ons to add functionality, but I would like to see these included in the product, even if it would cost more."
"The UI interface needs improvement."
"The area that should be improved is licensing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I give the price a five out of ten."
"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."
"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"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."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The price is reasonable."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."
"There are a couple of different licensing models."
"For enterprise contracts you will be in touch with a dedicated account manager who will guide you regarding licensing."
"The tool is expensive."
"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."
"Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well."
"It is not expensive compared to the other similar solutions in this category."
"It is a very affordable solution."
Information not available
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Answers from the Community

PM
Aug 31, 2021
Aug 31, 2021
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot management.
2 out of 5 answers
RF
May 19, 2020
We have had a very good experience with FortiWeb.
JD
May 20, 2020
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot management.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business83
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise61
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.
Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot mana...
What do you like most about Imperva Incapsula?
We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provi...
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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
Rohde & Schwarz Web Application Firewall, R&S WAF, DenyAll Web Application Security
 

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.
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
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Find out what your peers are saying about F5, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: September 2025.
868,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.