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Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 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
Ivanti Virtual Web Applicat...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
44th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
0
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (17th)
NetScaler
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
25th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (5th), Network Management Applications (17th)
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user712188 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a tech company
Jun 30, 2018
 

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.
MD
Consultant at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Good feature set and is simple to deploy
In terms of what needs improvement, the price could be lowered. We've tried to deploy more of them but our purchasing department has said that they're way too expensive and they would prefer to use something else. We sort of stopped deploying them because of that. There are additional costs to the standard licensing. There are bandwidth prices. The feature set is quite good. We've been told to stop using them because of the price. If they can do something to address that I believe it would be better. On the latest version they've got a community edition, which is quite a good bandwidth, but in essence, it's to address the entry-level price. When you get to 10 gig bandwidth, it's way too expensive.
LD
Information Technology Division Director at Ethiopian Roads Administration
Offers better visibility into user sessions compared to other solutions
Improvements are needed to address the issue of machines becoming unregistered, ensuring stability for end users. Troubleshooting with Citrix support can be challenging, so clearer diagnostics would be beneficial. As for global server load balancing, it works well on-premises, depending on user volume and service stability. Overall, it's satisfactory for us.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have not had any issues with this solution, and I would recommend it to others who are interested in using it."
"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."
"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"We like that there's load balancing, firewall capabilities, DDoS protection, et cetera, all covered by Cloudflare."
"The initial setup process is simple."
"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."
"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."
"The impact of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's integration with existing web technologies on our site's performance and security measures is quite great, actually."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that it is simple to deploy. The deployment took us ten minutes."
"The solution is extremely stable."
"I think it's a really, really solid, well-run, nice solution."
"My advice to anyone who is looking at implementing Citrix ADC is if they need flexibility, it's a stable product; it's one of the better appliances that I have used, even in a virtual environment, it's working great."
"What I like most about Citrix NetScaler is its stability, and I didn't see a lot of issues with it."
"It is the best product out there."
"I prefer this solution because of its user-friendly interface. I find it simple and close to what I am currently using, which is Citrix Fortiva Access for Multi-Factor Authentication. I appreciate the familiar user interface and troubleshooting tools it offers."
"It is a stable solution. It crashed only once, four years ago...There is a return on investment using the solution."
"An 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."
 

Cons

"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."
"We don't even use Cloudflare Bot Management because it's too expensive; you need to pay per request, and it's much cheaper to get one or two additional machines."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the price could be lowered. We've tried to deploy more of them but our purchasing department has said that they're way too expensive and they would prefer to use something else."
"It can be difficult to setup."
"When a new version comes out, sometimes, my existing configuration gets wiped out."
"Alert Management could be improved."
"Sometimes there are stability issues with certain releases."
"We had some bugs in the previous firmware. These were not big issues, but more testing on the firmware would be key to happier customers."
"Manageability and adaptability can also be challenging for end customers."
"The only thing customers told me that could be improved is that they would like to be able to purchase and receive the products in one box, rather than two boxes. This is something related to marketing, though."
"The solution's pricing is a big concern and should be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The solution is expensive."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"It is not too pricey."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
Information not available
"You can do CapEx and then a yearly monthly fee, or you can do a subscription model, whether that's one month, month-to-month, or three-year subscription model."
"Its licensing cost is much higher than other products, but it is acceptable because it is a one-time investment, and we are getting our requirements fulfilled when we buy this product. So, there is no issue with the pricing."
"Citrix ADM costs us approximately $5000 per month."
"We get value for money. Its price is fair. I don't think it is overpriced."
"When compared to other solutions, the cost is high."
"In Turkey, everything is good, but it seems expensive for us due to the currency exchange. I don't have a specific rating scale, but if I had to rate the price, I would say it's around a six out of ten."
"NetScaler does the same thing as an F5 and it's cheaper."
"F5 BIG-IP is much more expensive than Citrix ADC. For example, If we choose two platforms, Citrix ADC, 3000 version, and we choose F5, F4200 version. F5 BIG-IP has connections, timers, and throughput similar to Citrix ADC, but the price is very expensive."
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Answers from the Community

it_user712188 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a tech company
Jun 30, 2018
Jun 30, 2018
Zeus was a great company - Its a shame Riverbed screwed up the acquisition and destroyed it. The product has been in a state of limbo for several years, I wouldn't trust Pulse to make anything out of it. Go with F5 or Citrix if you have the money. If money is an issue then go with Kemp or Loadbalancer.org which are #1 and #2 at the value end of the market. Radware is pretty cool as well - but ...
2 out of 5 answers
MS
network specialist at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 19, 2018
As far as I know, Netscaler has special hardware solution SDX where you can run virtual appliance (VPX) so much as you need and license determines the total system performance. It's not a problem for scaling virtual appliance by each application. You can ask Citrix managers for details. I hope it will be helpful.
GB
unemployed
Jun 19, 2018
My thought would be Barracuda Cloud WAF. This will work in 15 min. With lb and default templates. Go to demo.Barracuda.com Select WAF for hardware or select cloud. Additional info ask if needed
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Construction Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Performing Arts
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise58
 

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What advice do you have for others considering Citrix NetScaler?
Each product has its advantages, and combining certain features of F5 and NetScaler could be beneficial. I'd rate the...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADM?
Regarding pricing, educational institutes often receive better prices. In the context of virtualization, prices are i...
What needs improvement with Citrix Web App and API Protection?
The configuration is complex, and only one or two people know how to assist when problems arise. It would be benefici...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Pulse vWAF, Pulse Virtual Traffic Manager
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall, NetScaler VPX - Customer Licensed
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Gilt Groupe
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about F5, HAProxy, Radware and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC). Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.