Imperva Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler comparison

Imperva Web Application Fir...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

NetScaler and Imperva Web Application Firewall compete in application protection. User feedback indicates NetScaler holds an edge due to favorable deployment flexibility and robust support, while Imperva is recognized for its superior security features despite higher costs.

Features: NetScaler offers flexible deployment models, including the TriScale architecture, SSL offload capabilities, and global server load balancing to aid in cost management. Imperva provides inline transfer mode, strong threat intelligence, and extensive web application security for comprehensive protection.

Room for Improvement: NetScaler can enhance feature innovation, improve configuration capabilities, and manage frequent disruptive updates. Imperva could benefit from reducing its pricing and simplifying its licensing structure, alongside enhancing its configuration interface and management processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetScaler boasts adaptable deployment across on-premises and hybrid clouds but requires simplified configuration management. Its customer service sees mixed reviews in terms of responsiveness. Imperva is straightforward in cloud deployment but less so on-premises, with customer support noted for lack of responsiveness and high pricing complexities.

Pricing and ROI: NetScaler's pricing is considered high and complex, yet its ROI remains favorable due to management cost savings. Imperva's pricing is premium, justified by advanced security features, with its ROI seen as worthwhile by various users, though perceptions of cost-effectiveness differ.

To learn more, read our detailed Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler Report (Updated: June 2025).

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler

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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

Imperva Web Application Fir...

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetScaler

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

14th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

107

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st), Network Management Applications (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Imperva Web Application Firewall is 5.6%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 3.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Mitesh D Patel

Senior Technical Consultant- Cyber Security at Ivalue Infosolution

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.

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DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking

Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has fewer false positives"

"The valuable features of Imperva WAF include its effective security breach prevention through automatically updating rules."

"Data masking is the most valuable feature of this solution."

"The compliance is the most valuable aspect."

"Imperva is a Gartner leader, so its scalability, performance, and features are excellent."

"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."

"Very scalable and very stable firewall for web applications, with a good interface in its cloud version. Mitigation is its most valuable feature. The technical support for this product is also good."

"The solution is very scalable. It is one of the most important features. You can also expand resources and features as well."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pros

"Citrix Web App API Protection allows you to enable a blocking mode"

"I like the solution's simplicity compared to Citrix's on-prem solutions."

"It is a stable solution. It crashed only once, four years ago...There is a return on investment using the solution."

"Just one solution can handle thousands of users... So, it is a very convenient tool to use."

"The load balancing feature and the fact that you can do context switching in the WAF are the most valuable. We majorly use it for load balancing, but we also use it for context switching in the WAF. It is also robust and very easy to work with and manage."

"The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic enters our environment."

"The most valuable features are for the ADMs and the overall monitoring environment."

"The solution is very stable. We don't have any downtime or issues of that nature."

More NetScaler pros

Cons

"The signature updates could be faster. Sometimes we have to upload signatures to the Imperva portal for checking and analysis before we can use them."

"I am looking for more data enrichment. We should have the ability to add our own custom data to the system, to the live traffic."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall could improve the API integration. It was complex for us. Additionally, The onboarding could be better."

"The initial setup could be simplified. Every time you have to install the solution you have to get in touch with support or somebody that can to do that for you."

"If they can bring in generative AI features, that would be useful."

"It would be nice to have more security control over mobile applications so I would suggest adding more mobile security features. It would also be beneficial to see improvements in regards to interface bandwidth performance, CPU time, and RAM size. Learning capability of the device is quite weak."

"I think that better bot protection is needed in this solution."

"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."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall cons

"Finding relevant documentation for learning NetScaler can be challenging, especially for beginners who prefer a web interface over command-line interfaces."

"Native integration needs to be improved. You cannot build ISE codes natively. For DevOps, integration would be very helpful because it would be a lot simpler from an operational standpoint."

"I am not an expert in this solution, but simplicity and user-friendly interfaces are crucial for me. I would appreciate advice from Citrix, particularly in the form of an interactive guide for API protection. It would be helpful if they could provide specific points and recommendations for cybersecurity, indicating areas that need attention or improvement. I find such interactive guidance valuable."

"When a new version comes out, sometimes, my existing configuration gets wiped out. They should work on this so that my existing configuration doesn't get impacted with an upgrade to a newer version. There could also reduce frequent firmware upgrade activities and have a stable version so that once we upgrade it, we don't have to upgrade it for two to three years."

"Citrix ADC is a complex product, and it takes time to understand these things. But the documentation is poor, and the deployment is difficult. Integration could also be better because what I find is that you cannot easily integrate the panel in the second sector. What I have found is that in the last index, there is a limitation when getting validated. Technical support could also be better."

"I would like to see the virtual and desktop license included in the pricing."

"An area for improvement would be the difficulty in finding information about standard licensing costs over the internet. They should provide some reference prices on the net to be quickly referred to."

"Overall the price of Citrix ADC could be more competitive."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."

"There are a couple of different licensing models."

"There are some licenses that you have to buy to use some features. Its price could be better. Price is always important because, at the end of the day, customers have a budget. If you can meet the budget, you can sell, and if you don't, you cannot sell."

"The tool is expensive."

"Imperva’s pricing is a bit higher in the market since it offers a full-blown WAF."

"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."

"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."

"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"We have a yearly licencing fee, and there are no additional costs."

"Citrix NetScaler VPX is not the cheapest solution out there, but you get what you pay for."

"I give the price of the solution a seven out of ten."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight or nine out of ten."

"The solution is undoubtedly very good, but it is expensive."

"Citrix Web App and API Protection are in the middle when we talk about pricing and licensing"

"The tool is cheap."

"The pricing could be lower."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.

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860,632 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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?

My recommendation is Imperva.

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 have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc.

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 of DDoS attacks that were well managed (even not seen by the customer) by Imperv...

What do you like most about Citrix ADC?

The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic enters our environment.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?

After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more expensive.

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexity. While it could be easier to manage, it is like transitioning from driving a ...

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Product Reports

Imperva Web Application Firewall

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Also Known As

No data available

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

Overview

Imperva Web Application Firewall is a versatile solution that protects web applications and databases from various attacks, including DDoS, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection attacks. It offers data security, availability, and access control and can be deployed on-premises or on the cloud.

The solution has good security against web attacks and offers advanced bot protection, API security, and mitigation features. Imperva WAF is easy to configure and deploy; it has good customer service and an excellent user interface.

Imperva

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

Sample Customers

BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler