F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Imperva Web Application Firewall 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)
Imperva Web Application Fir...
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (6th)
 

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 Imperva Web Application Firewall is 3.2% and it increased by 47.1% 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)
7.0%
 

Featured Reviews

KO
Jun 20, 2022
Reasonably priced, performs well, with responsive, and helpful technical support
It depends on the use case. However, if you are not interested in the application side, F5 would be useful. If you just want a load balancer that balances multiple servers, that's all you need. Not basic, but basic to intermediate material. F5 takes first place with no one even close to matching it. However, if you want to go deeper and more advanced, you should look into NGINX or any other vendor that has more options or more features. As a network engineer, I am totally happy with the product. I would rate F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) a nine out of ten.
HV
Feb 28, 2024
Stops bot attacks completely and has easy deployment
We were facing issues related to web servers and OWASP Top 10. We had bots rather than human traffic. We went with Imperva for a single-stack solution. We have bot protection, DDoS protection, web application firewall, and database security from Imperva. It is one of the best solutions that I have worked with. After deploying it, bot attacks have completely stopped. When it comes to OWASP Top 10, it responds very clearly when we do testing, so we are not facing any threats. Compliance is also very good. So, overall, it is very good for security and compliance. Imperva is known in the market for customization and deployments according to the use cases of the customers. You can deploy it the way you want. You can deploy it in the inline mode, reverse proxy mode, or transfer and bridge mode. You can deploy it according to the environment or infra of the company. In terms of integration, with one click of a button, you can integrate it with your SIEM solution. You have preconfigured SIEM codes. You just need to run that code in the SIEM application, and that is it. You will start getting the logs. It is pretty easy. For certain web servers, I have it on-prem, and for certain web servers, I have it on the cloud. A basic use case of the customers is that they want a single dashboard for the cloud WAF or on-prem WAF. There is a solution called attack analytics in Imperva. It integrates with on-prem and the cloud, so in a single dashboard, you can see what is happening in your on-prem as well as cloud setup. It is very easy. When it comes to reporting, you can take reports anywhere anytime and you can take logs anywhere anytime. Someone who does not know about cybersecurity can understand the logs. Logs are in English instead of the raw format. Anybody who knows English can understand them. Reporting is very easy. These reports can also be used for audit and compliance. We use SIEM solutions. We use Splunk, and we use Elastic. We use Datadog and Securonix. I integrated Imperva with Elastic and Splunk. We have a pre-written code. We just have to download that code and run the code in the SIEM solution server. After that, the logs start showing. It is that easy. Integration is that easy. I have also done integration with multifactor authentication, security key, HSM, etc. I have worked with RSA and YubiKey. Both of them were very easy. The integration happened with the click of a button. The integration is seamless and is working perfectly. Our clients are happy. We are happy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It integrates with AWS WAF, which makes it easy to deploy without changes to your infrastructure."
"I like that F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is a product that comes with valuable features, but what stands out from all features is load balancing."
"In my team, we work in a very agile environment and the solutions from BIG-IP, including BIG-IP WAF, suit us well when developing and serving our applications."
"The most valuable feature is the F5 LTM (Local Traffic Manager). This is the part of the product most organisations will be using most. It provides the core functionality to be able to load balance services and the means and the intelligence to be able to load balance based on advanced logic, e.g., TCL scripting."
"We like is how they integrate nicely with the Oracle PeopleSoft application."
"The feature I find the most valuable is the support infrastructure."
"The product is very stable. We put a decent amount of stress on it given our load."
"NetFlow balancing and traffic balancing are good features."
"Learning mode and custom policies are helpful features."
"I am impressed with the product's scalability, availability, easy management, and security. We were able to integrate the product with Azure and Sentinel."
"The solution integrates seamlessly with other tools and has a good alert mechanism."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is stable."
"The most valuable feature of Imperva, in addition to its strong knowledge base, is its effective protection for web applications."
"Compared to other web application firewalls in the market, Imperva does things in the most accurate way."
"Imperva monitors all traffic, even customer access, to the web application. Then, Imperva uses features like signatures to identify attacks like cross-site scripting or SQL injection."
"The solution is stable."
 

Cons

"Technical support could be faster. It's something I'd like to see them work on in the future."
"The cost of the solution is pretty high. It would be ideal if it was more reasonable."
"The solution's initial setup process was quite complex. I"
"There are not very many areas for improvement, but the price is high."
"The web interface could be better."
"Technical support is somewhat slow and could be improved."
"Native support for containers should be added to future releases, as this is the future of load balancing."
"F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is expensive. Pricing needs to be improved."
"Their portal is very limited and needs improvement."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The support for the on-premises version needs improvement."
"One potential improvement for Imperva is enhancing its alert system."
"I would like to improve the tool's turnaround time in terms of support."
"Sometimes, support tickets don't get addressed quickly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is high."
"The solution is more expensive than one of its competitors."
"They are expensive."
"I found F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) an expensive product. The costs would depend on the appliance and infrastructure size. However, my company didn't have to pay extra to use additional features."
"The only area that has room for improvement would be pricing, so its competitors do not have a say."
"It could be priced a little less, especially on the virtual side. It gets a bit expensive, but you get what you pay."
"The solution is quite expensive if we compare it with the competition."
"If you are planning to use security features, better to go for strong hardware and the best bundle license, which is great for web security."
"The tool is expensive."
"The price is high compared to other solutions like FortiWeb."
"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall's pricing is expensive."
"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."
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
 

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.
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 DefensePro 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...
 

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.
BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: September 2020.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.