NetScaler vs Symantec Web Application Firewall comparison

NetScaler and Broadcom are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. NetScaler is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.2, while Broadcom is ranked #44. Additionally, 91% of NetScaler users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

NetScaler and Symantec Web Application Firewall are competing products in web application security. Customers generally prefer NetScaler for pricing and support, while Symantec is recognized for its robust security features and effectiveness.

Features: NetScaler offers load balancing, comprehensive traffic management, and application delivery. Symantec Web Application Firewall provides advanced threat protection, deep integration capabilities, and superior security performance.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetScaler is known for its flexible deployment models and reliable support, which simplify implementation and management. Symantec requires more specialized setup but provides strong support and guidance after deployment.

Pricing and ROI: NetScaler has competitive setup costs and a quicker return on investment due to its wide range of functionalities and cost-effective performance. Symantec may have higher initial costs but provides long-term value with its extensive security features.

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

Buyer's Guide

NetScaler vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall

April 2025

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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

Cloudflare

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

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.

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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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reviewer1231533

Head IT Infrastructure (DGM-IT) at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

An excellent up-to-date data repository handling external threats successfully

We have multiple applications that we wanted to ensure were protected and we chose Symantec for that. I'm the head of IT infrastructure and we are partners with Symantec. Symantec has specifically helped connect external users to our internal network. It has also enabled us to ensure that those…

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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

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

"The UI is good."

"The most valuable feature is its usability."

"Cloudflare has many features."

"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."

"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."

"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."

More Cloudflare pros

"Content Redirection and SSO integration with Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop. The GUI was wonderful."

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

"This solution increases the backend network service performance, which is one of the things that we like the most."

"The load balancing and VPN features are most valuable. AAA authentication is also valuable."

"We use the solution's IP Reputation and bot protection features."

"The most valuable feature of Citrix ADC is its ease of use."

"We like the periodic upgrades and backups, also made via ADMs, and it makes our environment much more robust and reliable."

"It allows students to access required software for their studies."

More NetScaler pros

"The solution has an up-to-date data repository to deal with external threats."

"The setup was straightforward."

"The interface is user-friendly."

Cons

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."

"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."

"Latencies are always a problem."

"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."

"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."

"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."

More Cloudflare cons

"Security could be improved because then I can get rid of my Cisco firewalls. If they improve the security then I could run my security, my proxy, my firewalling and my SDN solution on one device instead of having to have multiple devices."

"The tool's pricing is a pain point since we have many cheaper alternatives."

"Citrix Web App and API Protection could improve in the area of licensing"

"Scripting and writing expressions need to be improved by putting logic behind the rules and improve policies involving some of the scripting part, which is a tedious task to do."

"I will try to migrate all the tools to the cloud because there is more lab and more VPN scalability available in the cloud. It is not available on-premises."

"The tool needs to add a feature where we can access the network policy access manager."

"Citrix ADC can be really complex. It isn't very simple like some other appliances that I've worked with. You need a lot of skill and experience to manage it. I'm not talking about a year or two. You need at least four years to understand it very well. It is not that easy to learn. They should make it a lot simpler for users to understand the management of it. They can also provide some additional training. The material they have on the site is not sufficient enough for you to understand how to manage it. Their training is expensive, and not everyone has the funds and experience for it. Citrix isn't very popular around these parts of the world. So, it can use some more marketing, sales, enlightenment, and advertisement. These could bring more market for them. Basically, there are just a few companies that really go for Citrix. Most of the companies go for VMware because they marketed themselves more than Citrix. There isn't much difference between Citrix and VMware. VMware is a little more robust than Citrix. Citrix has focused more on desktops rather than server virtualization, and that's the advantage VMware has over Citrix. Citrix also needs to educate and inform users about the infrastructure that is supported with a version. Currently, if the customers don't look at the datasheet, they might miss this important information."

"Some features of Citrix ADM are available on the cloud, which could really be helpful if they were available on an on-premise version."

More NetScaler cons

"It would be an improvement if the management dashboards were not reliant upon Java."

"I'm not convinced that it's necessary the best solution going forward in the future."

"Sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"We are using the free version."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"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 give the price a five out of ten."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The solution is expensive compared to one of its competitors."

"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."

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

"It's an expensive product but it works well."

"The licensing costs for this solution vary depending on which model is being used."

"When compared to other solutions, the cost is high."

"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."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

16%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

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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...

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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.

See all answers

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 ente...

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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...

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What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...

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Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs NetScaler

Compared 7% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

May 2025

Symantec Web Application Firewall report

Download Symantec Web Application Firewall product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

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

Symantec WAF, Blue Coat Protecting Web Applications

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“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.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

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.

NetScaler

The Symantec Web Application Firewall (WAF) enables you to secure and accelerate your web applications.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

NetScaler vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall

April 2025

Free Report: NetScaler vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall

Find out what your peers are saying about NetScaler vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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We monitor all Web Application Firewall (WAF) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.