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Airlock vs NetScaler comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Airlock
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
9.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (21st)
NetScaler
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st), Network Management Applications (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (12th)
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
Tiodor Jovovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides endless features and can be adapted to every single application that exists in the world
WAF is the most beneficial feature for security posture. Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product. The level of detail of the configuration is the most significant aspect. We can adapt it to every single application that exists in the world. The product helps with the compliance processes.
VivekKumar10 - PeerSpot reviewer
Good stability and offers various valuable features like WAF
Pricing is one area for improvement. It's on the higher side because NetScaler is a premium product used for over 70% of internet traffic worldwide. However, price is not the only concern. Manageability and adaptability can also be challenging for end customers, who may require the assistance of experts like us to deploy and manage the product effectively. Although this is good for us as partners, it can limit the product's appeal to customers who prioritize ease of use. Moreover, having some GUI-based tools for log management and troubleshooting would be helpful and make it easier for customers to manage and troubleshoot their databases. For the future release of Citrix NetScaler, I would like to see better pricing, as well as improved manageability and log management features. Another thing is if a problem occurs, we have to rely on the central support system. We need to collect the log and send it back to support for analysis, and then Citrix support will provide the solution. It would be much easier to troubleshoot if something is handy, such as a web portal or a common platform where customers can upload logs and resolve some of the issues automatically.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."
"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."
"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product."
"The analytics are a great feature."
"Scalability is great. One of the best features of NetScaler is that it can scale out."
"The advantage of Citrix Web App and API Protection is just its graphic user interface for beginners. The solution is nothing special, but we have to use it for the corporation. Another advantage of Citrix Web App and API Protection is that we have our copy to test things and get the know-how of it."
"What I like most about Citrix NetScaler is its stability, and I didn't see a lot of issues with it."
"This solution allows the user to easily scale out application delivery, and provides secure remote access."
"Helped us a lot with load balancing."
"My customers have told me that the performance of this solution is good."
"The solution is easy to work with and manage."
 

Cons

"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."
"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."
"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."
"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."
"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"The tool must be simplified."
"The interface needs to be improved because the competition is coming up with ones that are more eye-catching, straightforward, and sophisticated."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The product provides some templates to integrate with applications like MS Exchange, MS SharePoint, SAP Enterprise Portal, and others. However, the last update for these templates was 2013 (lots of applications are running on versions newer then 2013)."
"There are certain features that are very useful and Citrix makes you pay a bit more for them."
"The vendor provides frequent patches, however, the security of the website has room for improvement."
"There are some features which are missing.​"
"The customization has always been a key area where some improvements are required. In the beginning, everything was for customizing the outer shell of it. You had to use the command-based utility and you had to do a lot of manual work. They have improved it a little bit and now there are some GUI-based functionalities that can be used. However, more can be done that doesn't require a lot of intervention. Right now there are some features, there are some customizations that can be done, but it's still very tedious, very cumbersome, a lot of work. So that could be simplified."
"Currently, it is not easy to use the configuration capabilities of the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"We are using the free version."
"The price is reasonable."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The tool is cheap."
"The solution's pricing is very high compared to its competitors."
"When compared to other solutions, the cost is high."
"Costly product and complicated licensing."
"Regarding pricing, while it's expensive, I can't comment on the exact ROI without a budget analysis. However, in terms of service quality, it's worth the price."
"The solution is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"The licenses for this product are payable as a yearly subscription, and carry a high price-point. The subscription scheme is quite complicated, and costs will increase with each additional feature that is required, outside of the basic setup."
"It is true that it is a bit pricey compared to newer technologies coming to the market. For example, A10 is a load balancer that does everything that Citrix can and it does a lot more than what NetScaler does when it comes to the security space, and their prices are so cheap. Every box comes with its own license and support built into it. When you compare that with NetScaler, you have to buy licenses separately, you have to buy a support agreement that is going to be separate. A small NetScaler, even if it is a VPX which is a virtual server, could cost you close to $150,000 to $200,000 dollars. So the pricing is really high."
"I give the price of the solution a seven out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
10%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What do you like most about Airlock?
Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Airlock?
The tool is cheap. We are protecting very sensitive portals. We didn't have a single incident for the last 15 years.
What needs improvement with Airlock?
The tool must be simplified. However, if it is simplified, it will lose its competitive edge. The solution requires a...
What do you like most about Citrix ADC?
The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?
After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...
What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?
Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Airlock Suite
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Raiffeisen, SGKB, Generali, Visana
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), F5, Microsoft and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: March 2025.
848,253 professionals have used our research since 2012.