We performed a comparison between F5 Advanced WAF and Fortinet FortiWeb based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: F5 Advanced WAF has an edge over Fortinet FortiWeb in this comparison. According to reviews, it has more advanced features than Fortinet FortiWeb. In addition, it received better marks in the ROI category.
"It's a fairly easy-to-use and user-friendly tool. My administrators and team also like its ability to customize the rules per the requirements."
"This solution inspects your traffic and based on that, automatically create distinct qualities for you, so you can add this to the policy already created. That's what I like most."
"It protects and mitigates damage in the network."
"The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the balancer and you can change policies very easily."
"Customers find the load balancer feature as the most valuable."
"The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the security features and the protection."
"The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the easy identification of events and customization. We can pinpoint our settings."
"F5 Advanced WAF helps our engineers to learn the complete configuration, including fundamental and advanced policies."
"The solution has a very simple deployment."
"All the features that FortiGate contains are very suitable for our business. We work with other products in Fortinet, FortiWeb, FortiSandbox, FortiMail, and FortiCache. We use all UTM features like self-encryption, encryption, all UTM features."
"The support services, performance, and pricing are all valuable features. The performance is excellent."
"The WAF profiles has been effective at mitigating web-based threats."
"It's the extra security that is the most valuable feature. You have insight into your traffic. There are some great insights into what utilities hackers are trying to exploit. It blocks a lot of stuff from the internet."
"Also, if you serve files or you accept files with your server, Fortiweb has built-in antivirus. The Fortinet product family also provides good IP intelligence (botnet C&C, etc.)."
"It is easy to install and to maintain."
"Banks have to be compliant with PCI and other things, and FortiWeb is absolutely amazing in terms of providing these reports. Otherwise, they will have to spend a lot of time on them."
"People who want to work with the device have to be pro in Linux"
"F5 Advanced WAF could improve the reporting. It's a bit difficult to populate, them. If you're not so familiar with the functions, such as where to find the logs and other settings."
"It should be a little bit easy to deploy in terms of the overall deployment session. One of our customers is a bit unhappy about the reporting options. Currently, it automatically deletes event logs after some limit if a customer doesn't have any external Syslog server. It is a problem for those customers who want to review event logs after a week or so because they won't get proper reports or event logs. They should increase the duration to at least a month or two for storing the data on the device. F5 is not a leader in Gartner Quadrant, which affects us when we go and pitch this solution. Customers normally go and take a look at such annual reports, and because F5 is currently not there as a leader, the customers ask about it even though we are saying it is good in all things. F5 is not known for something totally different or unique. They were a major player in ADP, and they are just rebranding themselves into security. They should improve or increase their marketing as a security company now. They have already started to do that, but they should do it more so that when it comes to security, customers can easily remember F5. At the moment, if we say F5, load balancing comes to mind. With rebranding and marketing, all customers should get the idea that F5 is now mainly focusing on the security part of it, and it is a security company instead of load balancing. This is the first solution that should come to a customer's mind for a web application firewall."
"Compatibility with multiple cloud environments needs improvement. Both stability and scalability need to be improved."
"I would like for there to be a cloud-based solution, this would also help to improve scalability."
"F5 Advanced WAF could improve on its funding for WAF features. There is a need to be more advanced WAF features."
"They should work on the virtualization of NGINX."
"There is a gap in report management."
"It may be better if it were easier to create roles."
"Their documentation is fairly complete, but it's sometimes a little bit difficult to search for exactly what you're looking for to resolve an issue. There have been times when we've gone to try to search for areas that we needed to get information on, and it has not always been extremely clear exactly how a particular thing needs to be set up."
"They could improve their support a little bit for faster response time."
"The reporting could be optimized."
"I know that we have run into some issues with an SSL certificate and how it functions. Sometimes this breaks connectivity or just limits certain websites that are whitelisted."
"The GUI could be better. It's limited."
"The Layer 7 DDoS attacks need improvement, it could be better."
"The initial setup is complex."
F5 Advanced WAF is ranked 2nd in Web Application Firewall (WAF) with 55 reviews while Fortinet FortiWeb is ranked 4th in Web Application Firewall (WAF) with 83 reviews. F5 Advanced WAF is rated 8.6, while Fortinet FortiWeb is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of F5 Advanced WAF writes "Flexible configuration, reliable, and highly professional support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Fortinet FortiWeb writes "Cost-effective, easy to configure, and works very well as a single solution for multiple environments". F5 Advanced WAF is most compared with Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, AWS WAF, Imperva Web Application Firewall, F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, whereas Fortinet FortiWeb is most compared with Fortinet FortiADC, AWS WAF, Azure Web Application Firewall, Imperva Web Application Firewall and Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. See our F5 Advanced WAF vs. Fortinet FortiWeb report.
See our list of best Web Application Firewall (WAF) vendors.
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.
