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Imperva Application Security Platform vs Symantec Web Application Firewall comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

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
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
147
Ranking in other categories
CDN (2nd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (1st), API Security (1st)
Symantec Web Application Fi...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
28th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 4.5%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 7.4%, up from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Web Application Firewall is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform7.4%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall4.5%
Symantec Web Application Firewall0.8%
Other87.3%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

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.
reviewer2818155 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Application protection has improved and reporting and dashboards still need refinement
I believe Imperva Application Security Platform should have a more interactive wizard. While the dashboard is good, it could be more eye-catching. Based on my perspective, I recommend modifying the dashboards, especially the main dashboard where I can see the traffic hit count, alerts, and other latest information. In terms of reporting, I find it challenging to create reports; in my earlier days, it was difficult. Over time, I have learned how to create reports, but it should be easier to do so. I have used other tools such as firewalls or SolarWinds, where creating a report is straightforward and does not take much time, unlike in Imperva, where I have to add many elements. Modifications in the integration aspects would also be beneficial.
Vatsal Mehta - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Co-Founder & CEO at HEDEHI Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
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

"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."
"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."
"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"This solution does a good job of preventing web application attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting attacks."
"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"Thanks to Incapsula, we got easily manageable DDoS protection; HTTP2 and SSL certificates for all the services; CDN in good locations; and we're now sure that our web services can't be exploited remotely because of the WAF feature."
"I would say compare it to other solutions in the marketplace feature by feature and see how Incapsula reporting and analytics dashboards compare and bot control compares – their solution for bot control is pretty good – and check those features with other enterprise level solutions, you get a lot for your money."
"The most valuable features of the Imperva Web Application Firewall are performance and flexibility, and we can extend or customize the box itself."
"The main benefit is the use case my clients find valuable, because for the product and security there is good API inspection, and if any abnormal API appears or there are any similarities due to changes, the API security features will catch that so allowed APIs will get access while others will be blocked."
"The solution is very good at intercepting traffic before it gets to our data centers."
"Basic setup is simple but, as with any caching/WAF setup, there are tricks you need to learn, but it works really nice out of the box!"
"Keep your sites strongly secured but sleep easier knowing Imperva Incapsula continuously baffles our penetration testers."
"The most valuable features for us are the DDoS and Bot."
"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."
"This product is doing what it should and what we are expecting from it."
"It provides us with a sense of security."
"The solution has an up-to-date data repository to deal with external threats."
"The interface is user-friendly."
 

Cons

"The learning curve was steep initially."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"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."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is very expensive."
"The signature updates could be faster."
"I think the product could be improved by reducing the price."
"It would be useful if the solution used more intelligence in attack protection."
"There are times that we experienced downtime or crashes with Imperva Application Security Platform; there were times that it crashed, it did not load, and we had to wait until it was fine."
"I would like to see automated reporting to improve visibility."
"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."
"The interface seems a bit outdated and simplistic."
"It would be an improvement if the management dashboards were not reliant upon Java."
"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."
"On a scale from one to 10, I would give it a five. I'm not convinced that it's necessarily the best solution going forward in the future."
"One of our issues is that sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"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."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is not too pricey."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"​Although the pricing can be a little high, it is worth the protection and security that it offers.​"
"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."
"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"Pricing could be more competitive."
"There is a license or subscription renewal that our customers pay."
"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."
"The tool is expensive."
"The solution's price is high for small companies."
Information not available
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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
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
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 Business88
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise70
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...
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 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...
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators o...
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 WAF
Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
Symantec WAF, Blue Coat Protecting Web Applications
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva Application Security Platform vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.