F5 Silverline Managed Services vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 Silverline Managed Services
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
20th
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection (11th)
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
24th
Average Rating
7.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the market share of F5 Silverline Managed Services is 1.3% and it increased by 33.6% compared to the previous year. The market share of The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is 0.9% and it increased by 86.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Unique Categories:
Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection
1.9%
No other categories found
 

Featured Reviews

BK
Sep 17, 2020
It is flexible and lets you easily apply policies, but it needs to support more PoPs
F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, being a new product in the market or comparatively related to a new product, currently supports less number of PoPs. They should introduce more PoPs. The current number of PoPs that they have is around 10 or 12, which is still relatively less as compared to 2,400 plus PoPs that Akamai offers. The user latency or the number of hops a user needs before reaching the actual web application is less in Akamai because it has its internal fabric to route the traffic. They need to spin up more data to increase its traffic handling capability. They can also include the bot detection capability, though it is a pretty advanced functionality. If they could include DataDome like functionality, that is, bot prediction, then F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall will be top-notch in the market.
VK
May 6, 2024
Offers Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) and provides enhanced dashboards, making it easy to identify and allow or deny traffic based on the signals it provides
The initial setup was super easy. The migration was super easy. The only part we were missing was China cache. Other than that, it has everything Akamai was providing: image optimization, CDN, WAF, and all the other security aspects. The China cache was the one thing we were missing in Fastly, so we had to do it differently. Deployment was a few weeks for the migration. If you're starting a brand new site, it's straightforward; maybe in a week or two, you can be up and running. But if it's a migration from a different CDN, it would probably take four to six weeks. We wanted to know the caching rules and how teams were doing things differently, so we had each member from the team gather inputs. Then we migrated and started writing the VCL code. It's very little maintenance. But with every draft, you need to periodically check the dashboard for anomalies and take action. Once a month or once a quarter, you need to do that exercise. Moreover, there are a couple of integrations with other observability tools like Datadog and Slack. It's easy to enable access with SSL, Okta, and Flash teams.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are the configuration and configuring the process."
"F5 technical support is really good."
"Its flexibility is the most valuable because it is a managed service. The good part is that you don't need to set it up. It just needs DNS routing, which is the easiest thing. Our client had Akamai for certain websites because they were using CDN features. They had NetScaler on the internal zone, F5 AWAFs on the data centers, and no WAF at all in the cloud. One of the main activities of the project was to move all these policies into a single WAF so that we could control and use that as a choke point. That exercise itself was very easy because it was a managed service and F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall does that for you. That's the best thing about F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall. It is easy to apply policies on-premises. If you have AWAF on-premises and you want to replicate some policies on F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, other than the policies that it applies by itself, it is easy because you have a team that supports it. F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall works perfectly fine. It pretty much does everything that an Advanced WAF on-premises should do."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Silverline Managed Services is its cloud-native functionality and the high level of protection it provides."
"Most vendors fulfill the requirements for standard DDoS protection, but F5 Silverline Managed Services has a better understanding of defending web applications like HTTP and can mitigate more bot activity than any other vendor."
"It's a good front end for public infrastructure"
"The most important feature is that they have seven firewall protection, to protect our web servers."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily."
"When configuring a web application firewall using Signal Sciences, we configure a rule whereby no one except a few people can access the application."
"Fastly (Signal Sciences) integrates and tags the intermittent traffic based on patterns. It generates signals and provides them in a dashboard where we can view them and decide whether to allow or deny traffic. It's a more advanced and easy-to-navigate dashboard."
 

Cons

"F5 Silverline Managed Services can improve by adding features that Palo Alto has."
"We need to have support for cloud protection, which is not offered by this solution."
"There is room for improvement in the stability of the solution."
"There is a lot of room for improvement with their tech support. I am not sure F5 Silverline Managed Services can be classified as having tech support."
"The product could be improved on the global load and the integration with the other solution like Cisco and Dell. As a representor of the operation, we prefer to have one platform which can accommodate all type of integration. We are also looking for more improvements in the security policy configuration."
"F5 Silverline Managed Services can improve by reducing the price."
"I just hope the price can be cheaper."
"F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, being a new product in the market or comparatively related to a new product, currently supports less number of PoPs. They should introduce more PoPs. The current number of PoPs that they have is around 10 or 12, which is still relatively less as compared to 2,400 plus PoPs that Akamai offers. The user latency or the number of hops a user needs before reaching the actual web application is less in Akamai because it has its internal fabric to route the traffic. They need to spin up more data to increase its traffic handling capability. They can also include the bot detection capability, though it is a pretty advanced functionality. If they could include DataDome like functionality, that is, bot prediction, then F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall will be top-notch in the market."
"Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic."
"The areas that could be improved in Signal Sciences include the effectiveness of rules, as many didn't function optimally and required custom rule-writing to address bypasses for WAF."
"Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be reduced."
"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be better, they are not very flexible. The price of the solution is based on the requirements of the enterprise."
"F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall works based on your bandwidth. They look at the clean bandwidth and do the pricing. 20% of a total pipe would be a clean bandwidth. The list price or a non-negotiated price for F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall would be around $2,200 per application per year for everything that you need. When you get into an enterprise kind of a setup, they negotiate this to the last bit. I would easily take 20% on that, which would be the cost, but it should cover all your Advance WAF features, bot protection, tech campaign, etc. It is built as a package and gives you most of the capability. You don't get the mobile SDK, which is an additional license. Mobile SDK is required only if you're buying or if you have a mobile application, and you are going to instrument F5 or Imperva into your mobile appliance. This anyways would be an additional module. It doesn't come within the WAF, but it is a WAF feature."
"The product’s pricing is reasonable."
"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."
"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."
"The product has an affordable cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
9%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What do you like most about Signal Sciences?
The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily.
What needs improvement with Signal Sciences?
Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai.
 

Also Known As

F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, F5 Silverline DDoS Protection
Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) and other solutions. Updated: June 2024.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.