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AWS WAF pros and cons

Vendor: Amazon Web Services (AWS)

4.0 out of 5

61 reviews
81% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

AWS WAF excels in blocking threats to external applications with a scalable, cloud-native design for seamless AWS integration. It offers fast deployment and protects against cyber attacks, including SQL injections and DDoS, with customizable rules. Users note the need for improved automation, a simpler pricing structure, enhanced security features, and AI integration. AWS WAF should expand third-party compatibility and improve managed rule sets for better protection.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

AWS WAF excels in blocking threats to external applications and offers an extra layer of security to web applications.

This service is scalable and cloud-native, enabling seamless integration with AWS services.

AWS WAF offers simplicity in setup and configuration, allowing for deployment in just a few minutes.

The tool's ability to filter and protect against various cyber attacks, including SQL injections and DDoS attacks, is highly valuable.

AWS WAF supports customization, allowing users to create specific rules for IP addresses, geographical locations, and HTTP headers.

CONS

Users emphasize the need for AWS WAF to enhance its automation capabilities, especially in rule management, to reduce manual efforts.

The current security features of AWS WAF may not be sufficient to combat evolving threats like DDoS and should be improved with more advanced capabilities.

There is feedback that AWS WAF's pricing structure is complex and could be more intuitive to better assist users in cost management.

AWS WAF should integrate AI or machine learning for real-time threat detection and proactive security measures.

There are calls for AWS WAF to expand compatibility with third-party services and improve managed rule sets to enhance its protective capabilities.

AWS WAF Pros review quotes

CL

Senior Information Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 11, 2019

The most valuable feature is the way it blocks threats to external applications.

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Founder at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Mar 11, 2019

It is a one-click WAF with no effort needed.

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Engineer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

Mar 11, 2019

It's simple, easy to use.

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Developer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Mar 11, 2019

The customized billing is the most valuable feature.

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Network Analyst

Mar 11, 2019

The most valuable feature is the security, making sure that files are protected, preventing unauthorized users from accessing the system.

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Advisory and IT Transformation Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Sep 5, 2019

The initial setup was very straightforward. Deployment took about ten minutes or less.

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ND

Head of Digital Product Office at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

Sep 8, 2019

The ability to take multiple data sets and match those data sets together is the solution's most valuable feature. The data lake that comes with it is very useful because that allows us to match data sets with different configurations that we wouldn't normally be able to match.

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Manager, IT Infrastructure & Information Security at flyadeal

Dec 9, 2019

The security firewall plus the features that protect against database injections or scripting,

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reviewer1275378

Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Feb 5, 2020

The most valuable feature is the scalability because it automatically scales up or scales down as per our requirements.

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IT Governance at PeerSpot

Mar 22, 2020

The most valuable aspect is that it protects our code. It's a bit difficult to overwrite code in our application. It also protects against threats.

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AWS WAF Cons review quotes

CL

Senior Information Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Mar 11, 2019

In a future release I would like to see automation. There's no interaction between the applications and that makes it tedious. We have to do the preparation all over again for each of our other applications.

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Founder at a consultancy with 1-10 employees

Mar 11, 2019

We need more support as we go global.

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Engineer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees

Mar 11, 2019

The user experience, the interface, is lacking. Sometimes it's hard to find certain areas that it has alerted on.

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Free Report: AWS WAF Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about AWS WAF. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.

879,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Developer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Mar 11, 2019

In a future release of this solution, I would like to see additional management features to make things simpler.

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Network Analyst

Mar 11, 2019

They have to do more to improve, to innovate more features. They need to increase the security. It has to be more active in detecting threats.

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Advisory and IT Transformation Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Sep 5, 2019

They should work to define more threats, add more security, and make it more compliant with more security companies.

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ND

Head of Digital Product Office at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

Sep 8, 2019

The solution is cloud-based, and therefore the billing model that comes with it could be more intuitive, in my opinion. It's very easy to not fully understand how you tag things for billing and then you can quite easily run up a high bill without realizing it. The solution needs to be more intuitive around the tagging system, which enables the billing. Right now, I have a cloud architect that does that on our behalf and it isn't something that a business user could use because it still requires quite a lot of technical knowledge to do effectively.

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Manager, IT Infrastructure & Information Security at flyadeal

Dec 9, 2019

For now, there is no feature to protect against attack of the bad bots

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reviewer1275378

Principal Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Feb 5, 2020

I would like to be able to view a graphical deployment map in the user interface that will give me an overview of the configuration and help to determine whether I have missed any steps.

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IT Governance at PeerSpot

Mar 22, 2020

It's a bit difficult to apply the right rules for the right security.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 61)

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Popular Comparisons

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Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs AWS WAF

Imperva Application Security Platform vs AWS WAF

Fortinet FortiWeb vs AWS WAF

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