F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Fortinet FortiWeb comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th)
 

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the market share of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is 13.1% and it decreased by 20.4% compared to the previous year. The market share of Fortinet FortiWeb is 4.7% and it increased by 17.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
Unique Categories:
No other categories found
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
9.8%
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Abdul Rahman - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 3, 2023
Reliable and has good customization features
The primary use case of this solution is for reverse processing applications and services.  Our organization greatly benefited from having a reliable and always-accessible F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). The customization options have especially come in handy, and we can modify, insert or…
Blair Griffith-Barwell - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 17, 2023
It comes with several preconfigured rule sets and templates that make deploying new applications easier
One area that needs improvement is using IP addresses within templates. If you allow an IP address to access an application, you should be able to leave a description of that. For example, we allow clients to access these services, and some are restricted to the IP address. When you add an IP, there's no way within the product to say what the IP address is. We need to maintain a separate external list because we need to remove any IP address associated with a client if they stop using our services. In many other products, you can create an object specifying that this IP address is for a client of this name or this service. You don't have this ability within FortiWeb. Another area for improvement is logging. When troubleshooting, the logs sometimes take a while to update. We've had people report that some things aren't logged if they're successful. It's a bit hit-and-miss. For example, sometimes people access one of our services, and it's successful, but we don't see that in the logs.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Bandwidth optimization and capacity awareness of the bandwidth are valuable features. Its video streaming capabilities are also very useful."
"The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP LTM is it helps our delivery team to make policies and rules for application."
"iRules are very valuable. In addition to that, the way profiles are depicted by the LTM is also very good."
"It is very intuitive, easy to deploy, and manage."
"The value and impact of using F5 BIG-IP LTM for application delivery control in our organization are significant."
"It integrates with AWS WAF, which makes it easy to deploy without changes to your infrastructure."
"The main reason that we suggest this product to our clients is the great integration with other security tools, such as IBM Guardium."
"The solution is robust and reliable."
"FortiWeb is easy to operate with a reasonably high level of protection. FortiWeb provides multiple deployment options with a physical or virtual (FortiWeb-VM) appliance, and acts either as a reverse/transparent proxy or out-of-band. It is also available on AWS and Azure."
"What we like about Fortinet FortiWeb is it has all the features. We use all of them, so we have to turn on all the options."
"The GUI is user-friendly."
"Some of the threat detection analytics and the filtering capabilities they give us for filtering a certain type of information that we don't want coming into the site are its valuable features. The analytics are pretty good in terms of being able to see what threats have been detected and mitigated, where they're coming from, and things like that."
"The deployment was very easy."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Fail-Open."
"When it comes to blocking unknown threats and attacks, I would give it the highest score possible. We first started using AWS and its Web Application Firewalls. That was okay, but it was quite a manual process to keep it up to date, whereas Fortinet is always up to date, and the default rules or the modules that you can turn on are very easy to use."
"The solution has a good sandbox feature."
 

Cons

"The SharePoint SSO part has some room for improvement."
"We would like to see load balancing between the cloud and the on-premise, a straightforward deployment feature."
"The product is expensive."
"The ASM administration is quite complex. The topic itself is pretty complex, so it is not easy to provide a nice, clean interface. There are a lot of references and dependencies in-between the different subareas."
"I'm not very sure about the security with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). We have our own private data center, but we are going to migrate our private data center into the Azure cloud environment. Security will then be a major concern when we migrate our own whole infrastructure to the public cloud."
"F5 has another solution to load balance servers on the cloud, which they got after the purchase of NGINX. It is deployed as Kubernetes or something like that, but the problem now is that they have two solutions for two situations. They should make F5 deployable on the cloud."
"There are some aspects of F5 BIG-IP that could be improved, the main one being virtual machine support. We have seen that even with the virtual editions, there are some things that we would like to do that are currently not possible with virtual machines."
"BIG-IP LTM's sandboxing integration could be improved."
"We want to see more detailed logging, such as audit logging, as this would significantly enhance the solution's reporting. We currently get some information from logs, but more would be better."
"The GUI could be better. It's limited."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The false positives are annoying.​"
"I would like to see the Application Delivery Control (ADC) and Web Application Firewall (WAF) combined in one device."
"New releases and old releases have some bugs, some features do not work as good as we want but every new release the Fortinet team fixes up problems."
"FortiGate could be improved on the security end because we've had some incidents with the customer. Otherwise, there is no problem."
"​Their support needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to using open-source products, the prices are not cheap."
"It was probably a one-time purchase and then you have maintenance, but I don't have the details on that. We bought what they called the Best bundle at the time, which pretty much included all of the modules. There was probably no additional cost afterward."
"It is cheaper than the average on the market."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was very simple. The main reason that we went this way was the simplicity of buying it there. It is maintained and upgraded for us, and this makes it easy to stay current."
"Take a look at the modules that you are going to use. Look into the best bundles for them."
"You can buy it on a yearly basis, or you can go for a subscription. For on-premise boxes, it is just the RMA."
"This product is costly from a licensing perspective considering its competitors."
"The price is high."
"All our Fortinet pricing is bundled together for different products, like FortiGate, FortiAnalyzer, and FortiWeb. FortiWeb, by itself, is probably around $2,500 to $3,500."
"Its subscription prices are cheaper, and it is not very expensive. From a price perspective, Fortinet is a very well-known security vendor. Subscriptions are very simple. They have a couple of licenses on an appliance, and that's it. The cost is not that big. One license is 40K, which they give with all the products. Another one includes the subscriptions for threat prevention, IPS, sandboxing, etc, which is more than enough."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb depends from customer to customer because some customers are considering using other solutions, such as Imperva. The price of Fortinet FortiWeb sits well for the middle-sized customers that we deal with."
"The price is competitive."
"Previously, for each project, the cost was $800 to $1,000 per application. Now, it's $100 to $120. For some of the applications, there is a 90% reduction, and for some of the applications, there is a 50% reduction. We're paying only $500 to $600."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb is expensive in our Ethiopian currency."
"The cost isn't expensive."
"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
38%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP?
The support from F5 BIG-IP LTM is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 BIG-IP?
There are a few licensing options available for F5 BIG-IP LTM. You can have a perpetual license which is a lifetime license. You then only need to renew the support, if you choose to open a ticket ...
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?
The pricing must be more flexible. We get billed for firewalls based on the usage. It will be helpful if the solution provides such flexibility.
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiWeb?
The WAF profiles has been effective at mitigating web-based threats.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb?
The pricing is in the middle. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten. It feels like a justified cost for the features, but it might get more expensive in the future. Also, keep in mind that Che...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?
I'd like more customization. I'm not sure if everyone would agree, as it might add complexity. But for advanced users, it would be really useful to have access and the ability to manipulate packets...
 

Also Known As

F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. Fortinet FortiWeb and other solutions. Updated: April 2023.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.