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Imperva Application Security Platform vs Qualys VMDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.3
Users report Imperva's significant ROI, citing cost recovery, DDoS protection, reduced cloud bills, and improved efficiency and compliance.
Sentiment score
7.0
Qualys VMDR enhances ROI by streamlining management, improving compliance, reducing vulnerabilities, saving time, and minimizing breaches effectively.
They know how much money they are losing while the system is down, so by increasing the possibility of not having a down website or web application, return on investment can be calculated easily.
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
We saw a return on investment through significant savings in time, money, and resources.
System Admin at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Imperva's customer service is praised for expertise but criticized for inconsistency, with recent improvements noted by some users.
Sentiment score
6.6
Qualys VMDR support is responsive and helpful, but users note occasional delays and suggest better response time and depth.
I would rate the technical support of Imperva DDoS as ten.
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
We usually get on calls with tech support, and they are very helpful.
Works at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
The response time takes a while.
Security Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
The technical support provided by Qualys is pretty good.
System Admin at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Imperva Application Security Platform offers strong scalability and reliability, though costs and on-premises flexibility may present challenges.
Sentiment score
7.9
Qualys VMDR is highly scalable, supporting numerous assets efficiently with customizable management and seamless cloud-based architecture.
99% of customers are using the cloud version of Imperva DDoS protection, so they just purchase the new license and scale as needed.
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Scalability depends on the license and the number of assets being monitored.
System Admin at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Qualys VMDR can handle scalability, although increasing the inventory can raise the licensing costs.
Information Security Analyst at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Qualys VMDR's scalability is good, and the customer support is good.
Cyber Security Solution Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Users find Imperva Application Security Platform reliable and stable, rating its stability highly despite occasional minor issues.
Sentiment score
7.9
Qualys VMDR is highly stable, reliable, and effective, with minimal downtime and challenges mostly due to user-side issues.
The stability of Imperva DDoS is very good, as it seems they have a lot of servers around the world.
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Qualys VMDR is stable.
Cyber Security Solution Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Imperva needs UI improvements, competitive pricing, better integration, real-time analytics, and enhanced support for efficiency and transparency.
Qualys VMDR needs improved support, efficient reporting, UI, asset notifications, reduced tool dependency, better pricing, and comprehensive resources.
Maybe Imperva DDoS could use endpoints to get information about the attacks before they commence from the endpoint level or establish cooperation with endpoint vendors to share this information.
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
It does not automate patching unless the patch management module is purchased separately.
System Admin at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
If AI features were integrated, it could enhance the capabilities significantly.
Information Security Analyst at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
One area where Qualys VMDR can be improved is the missing feature for deploying agents for over 1,000 assets, as we need to do it manually.
Cyber Security Solution Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
 

Setup Cost

The Imperva platform's pricing is competitive with advanced features, ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 annually and no setup costs.
Qualys VMDR pricing is high for small businesses but offers flexibility, discounts, and comprehensive features for larger enterprises.
I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap and ten is very expensive.
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
I would rate the pricing between seven to eight out of ten.
System Admin at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
I have a notion that Qualys might be more expensive than Rapid7.
Information Security Analyst at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Qualys offers better pricing and is feature-packed compared to other tools.
Works at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
 

Valuable Features

Imperva's platform offers robust security features, user-friendly integration, real-time analytics, and scalability for diverse enterprise protection needs.
Qualys VMDR offers user-friendly management, real-time insights, and powerful integrations, significantly improving vulnerability prioritization and remediation efficiency.
I have utilized Imperva's Intelligent Traffic Filtering feature. This feature helps me understand how the attack is progressing and what is happening inside the requests to our website.
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
The prioritization of vulnerabilities has improved our remediation efforts by around thirty to thirty-five percent.
Works at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
It impacts my workflow overall, with the patch management features as it has the missing patches listed in detail, making it easier to get a comprehensive report and providing some dashboards that offer visual representation.
JMS, RPSG Ventures Limited at RP Sanjiv Goenka Group
Qualys VMDR's continuous monitoring capabilities help us respond to emergent threats by enabling my team to reach out to the security engineers whenever there is any detection of a vulnerability, informing them about it, and creating an incident.
Soc Lead & Edr Administration at Persistent Systems
 

Categories and Ranking

Imperva Application Securit...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
133
Ranking in other categories
CDN (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (1st), API Security (2nd)
Qualys VMDR
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (3rd), Vulnerability Management (3rd), Configuration Management Databases (2nd), Container Security (9th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Imperva Application Security Platform is designed for Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection and holds a mindshare of 7.8%, down 8.3% compared to last year.
Qualys VMDR, on the other hand, focuses on Vulnerability Management, holds 5.0% mindshare, down 9.3% since last year.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform7.8%
Cloudflare16.7%
Arbor DDoS9.8%
Other65.7%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Qualys VMDR5.0%
Wiz7.5%
Tenable Nessus5.2%
Other82.3%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1247523 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Solution ensures website availability and proactive threat mitigation
Over the seven years, the most valuable features of Imperva DDoS that I have found are related to DDoS attacks, which are a group of attacks, and not all of them can be resolved on the endpoint level before the website. Using the web firewall before the website is a common use case to protect against malicious requests to the website. I have utilized Imperva's Intelligent Traffic Filtering feature. This feature helps me understand how the attack is progressing and what is happening inside the requests to our website. It allows me to granularly grant or deny access to certain parts of our website. This helps when we know our customers and the types of requests that can be sent from them, enabling us to block some malicious requests. Imperva DDoS has User Behavior Analytics and Threat Intelligence on its board, and this helps us to be protected proactively. Imperva DDoS connects to its database of threats, storing whole information about attacks all over the world in one simple engine. Everyone can use this feature, which can connect to this engine and get information about what is going on at the world level. That is the way to be protected at the company's level. The integration capabilities of Imperva DDoS are very easy and simple. We can run it in 2 hours.
Vaibhav Ghule - PeerSpot reviewer
Soc Lead & Edr Administration at Persistent Systems
Continuous risk-based monitoring has strengthened incident response and vulnerability prioritization
I haven't explored Qualys VMDR's vulnerability lifecycle automation yet. One of my analysts mentioned that queries lack grouping operators in Qualys VMDR. From my experience, I would appreciate improvements in the query options in Qualys VMDR, specifically in the query-building process where I would need more features and operators. Additionally, we have been facing issues with Qualys on the cloud level. We cannot download the configuration profile from the cloud agent, and it is showing a pending action for download. During 2025, we noticed outages of Qualys a couple of times. I want to mention that there is an issue with receiving timely RCA deliveries. While this is not necessarily about the tool, it relates to support. The support has not been very responsive, and we are receiving RCAs a little delayed whenever we raise support cases or communicate with the TAMs. Additionally, the UI has a slight latency, which I and my team have experienced. They have also reported this latency issue when navigating through different pages.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.
880,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Expert with 51-200 employees
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business83
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise61
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise70
 

Questions from the Community

Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot management.
What do you like most about Imperva Incapsula?
We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provided. I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap a...
What do you like most about Qualys VMDR?
I like that we have many scanners and channels that don't overload. It helps us scan and track easily. Also, the tagging system is good for tagging. We can still use QualysAgent task ID tools even ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys VMDR?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that we can consider both time and money saved.
What needs improvement with Qualys VMDR?
One area where Qualys VMDR can be improved is the missing feature for deploying agents for over 1,000 assets, as we need to do it manually. Qualys doesn't have its own tool to deploy the agents all...
 

Also Known As

Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
Qualys VM, QualysGuard VM, Qualys Asset Inventory, Qualys Container Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Agrokor Group, American Specialty Health, American State Bank, Arval, Life:), Axway, Bank of the West, Blueport Commerce, BSkyB, Brinks, CaixaBank, Cartagena, Catholic Health System, CEC Bank, Cegedim, CIGNA, Clickability, Colby-Sawyer College, Commercial Bank of Dubai, University of Utah, eBay Inc., ING Singapore, National Theatre, OTP Bank, Sodexo, WebEx
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Radware, NETSCOUT and others in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection. Updated: January 2026.
880,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.