Airlock vs NGINX App Protect comparison

Ergon Informatik and F5 are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Ergon Informatik is ranked #21 with an average rating of 10.0, while F5 is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.7. Additionally, 100% of Ergon Informatik users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of F5 users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Airlock and NGINX App Protect based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), F5, Microsoft and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF).

To learn more, read our detailed Web Application Firewall (WAF) Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

March 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

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.

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Tiodor Jovovic

Chief Business Officer at Sky Express

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.

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Saurav Kumar

Senior security architecture at National Payment Corporation Of India

Offers protection to users from external threats

NGINX App Protect secures our company's application, and it has helped me a lot, considering that we have critical infrastructure in India where we see how lots of attacks come onto our organization's servers. The tool offers protection against multiple threats present in India's IT ecosystem. The tool helps our company to make our payments secure, meaning it has the ability to provide a secure payment environment in India. Speaking about the improvements in our company's application performance since implementing NGINX App Protect, the gRPC support for the solution is very low. My company is not getting any proper documentation on how to deploy gRPC over NGINX App Protect. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. People can use the product as their company's base server, WAF, or for its proxy manager, depending on the business requirements. My company follows PCI DSS compliance because we operate in a payment-related industry. Right now, my company follows all the standards, so we comply with all the requirements and policies. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."

"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."

"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."

"It's very user-friendly."

"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."

"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."

More Cloudflare pros

"Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product."

"There's a cache, or it works like a proxy, so it can speed up applications."

"We were looking for a product that is capable of complete automation and a container based solution. It's working."

"The most valuable feature is that I can establish different services from the firewall."

"The most valuable feature is that there is a link in the system that will help to analyze the security of an application when something abnormal is found."

"It is a very good tool for load balancing."

"The tool's most valuable feature is the OWASP certification. Additionally, the tool's ability to enforce strong passwords and OTP within minutes is impressive. With its analytics and recommendations, it is a very good solution."

"I tested specific features and evaluated the solution against the Web Application Firewall. I conducted research to test different detection percentages. I did not use it directly for protection but for evaluation purposes."

"The tool is not complex and is very user-friendly."

More NGINX App Protect pros

Cons

"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."

"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."

"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."

"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."

"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

More Cloudflare cons

"The tool must be simplified."

"The solution needs to be improved in the e-commerce portal."

"The configuration needs to be more flexible because it is difficult to do things that are outside of the ordinary."

"Areas for improvement would be if NGINX could scan for vulnerabilities and learn and update the signatures of DoS attacks."

"The product's price is high, making it an area of concern where improvements are required. The tool's licensing model is also not good."

"I encountered issues with NGINX App Protect while trying to upgrade custom rules."

"Right now, the tool doesn't provide an option revolving around update feeds, specifically the signature update option in the UI."

"The dashboard could provide a more comprehensive view of the status of the connections."

"Currently, the policies have to be handled manually, and you have to create from scratch, which can be a bit time-consuming, in a large environment."

More NGINX App Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"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."

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"We don't have any issues with the price."

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The tool is cheap."

"There is a monthly or annual subscription to use NGINX App Protect. There are not any additional costs to the subscription."

"The product's price is high."

"NGINX App Protect is expensive."

"The licensing fees for this solution are pretty expensive for what it does, but there is no alternative."

"The pricing is reasonable because NGINX operates on an instance basis."

"The solution's price is reasonable."

"There are not any additional costs we had to pay to use NGINX App Protect."

"NGINX is not expensive."

More NGINX App Protect pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

18%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

15%

Government

10%

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

Retailer

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...

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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...

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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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Airlock?

Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product.

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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.

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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...

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What do you like most about NGINX App Protect?

It's very easy to deploy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?

I don't know the pricing yet because in my other project, I was not part of the buying side and I was just starting t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?

It would be better if it were easier to implement and if there was more information from F5 regarding hardware requir...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Airlock

Compared 37% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Airlock

Compared 23% of the time

AWS WAF vs Airlock

Compared 23% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Airlock

Compared 18% of the time

More Airlock Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 21% of the time

Azure Front Door vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 16% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 15% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 9% of the time

AWS WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 8% of the time

More NGINX App Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

April 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

March 2025

Download Airlock product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect

April 2025

Download NGINX App Protect product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Airlock Suite

NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

The problem of internet security is almost as old as the internet itself. But there is a reliable solution: Airlock Suite from Ergon. Airlock Suite is underpinned by superb Swiss engineering expertise, many years of experience and well thought-out concepts that master the most complex challenges. Airlock Suite deals with the issues of filtering and authentication in one complete and coordinated solution - setting new standards for usability and services.

Ergon Informatik

NGINX App Protect application security solution combines the efficacy of advanced F5 web application firewall (WAF) technology with the agility and performance of NGINX Plus. The solution runs natively on NGINX Plus and addresses some of the most difficult challenges facing modern DevOps environments:

Integrating security controls directly into the development automation pipeline
Applying and managing security for modern and distributed application environments such as containers and microservices
Providing the right level of security controls without impacting release and go-to-market velocity
Complying with security and regulatory requirements

NGINX App Protect offers:

Expanded security beyond basic signatures to ensure adequate controls
F5 app‑security technology for efficacy superior to ModSecurity and other WAFs
Confidently run in “blocking” mode in production with proven F5 expertise
High‑confidence signatures for extremely low false positives
Increases visibility, integrating with third‑party analytics solutions
Integrates security and WAF natively into the CI/CD pipeline
Deploys as a lightweight software package that is agnostic of underlying infrastructure
Facilitates declarative policies for “security as code” and integration with DevOps tools
Decreases developer burden and provides feedback loop for quick security remediation
Accelerates time to market and reduces costs with DevSecOps‑automated security

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

March 2025

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