Akamai App and API Protector vs Imperva Web Application Firewall comparison

Akamai and Imperva are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Akamai is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.7, while Imperva is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.8. Akamai holds a 4.0% mindshare in WAF, compared to Imperva’s 6.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Akamai users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Imperva users who would recommend it.

Akamai App and API Protector

Read 28 Akamai App and API Protector reviews

4,224 Views
3,066 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Imperva Web Application Fir...

Read 51 Imperva Web Application Firewall reviews

6,352 Views
5,077 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Akamai App and API Protector

Imperva Web Application Fir...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Akamai App and API Protector and Imperva Web Application Firewall based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Akamai App and API Protector vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Akamai App and API Protector vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Akamai App and API Protector

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

8th

Average Rating

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection (4th), Cloud and Data Center Security (10th)

Imperva Web Application Fir...

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

6th

Average Rating

8.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 4.0%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Web Application Firewall is 6.4%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Deepesh Singh

Senior Engineering Manager Cybersecurity at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 9, 2024

Bot Manager and different features to manage threats

As a product, it has good capabilities, including professional support. However, it's risky for us to rely on AI for real-time traffic management. We use in-house analytics but avoid automatic actions due to their high impact. For example, I live in a developing country. Everyone has different types of phones, apps, and everything else. So, if someone is using a legacy phone, that is still a use case here. If AI decides that this is an end-of-life phone or end-of-life Android operating system, it starts blocking that traffic. We may potentially lose millions or probably thousands and hundreds of thousands of hits per second. Everything is all about how well we serve payments because we're into payments. So, AI is used for analytics but not for real-time decisions. We can't afford to block traffic based on AI models due to the variety of devices and operating systems our users have.

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Abdullah Jin

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Sep 9, 2024

Offers bot protection and DDoS Protection and protects public-facing portals

Support is one thing I wish Imperva could improve. They follow the phone model and keep rotating you from one customer service person to another. The layer one support isn't very clear about the workings of the product. My feedback is primarily about Imperva Cloud, not on-premise. On-premise is a whole new story. Support is the issue for Imperva Cloud. It's also a bit pricey. It's a premium service and very expensive. The licensing model is not very straightforward. Every feature is priced separately, and to enjoy maximum protection, you'll have to spend a lot of money. The licensing model is a bit complex, and each feature is very pricey. For example, API security and web application protection are two separate license packages.

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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

"Adaptive stream delivery and WAF protection are valuable."

"The solution can scale extremely well."

"We are getting security for each and every API."

"It gives us a report of traffic. It gives us a report of the day-to-day URL traffic, and it also gives an individual report. If we reach out to Akamai, they give us the IPs as well."

"I like that the charges are all based on usage and labor costs. For the time that we spend onboarding almost 252020 FQDN, Akamai charges us only for the traffic usage, but it's only charging us for the labor costs for onboarding."

"The solution easily identifies, delays, or allows business traffic."

"Features like scalability and uptime are most effective."

"They have a fantastic tool for analyzing and viewing your traffic."

More Akamai App and API Protector pros

"Imperva is a Gartner leader, so its scalability, performance, and features are excellent."

"The solution is very scalable. It is one of the most important features. You can also expand resources and features as well."

"The most valuable features of Imperva Web Application Firewall are the monitoring of databases and the dashboards are easy to understand."

"It mitigates all of the availabilities of risks around web applications."

"The most valuable features of the Imperva Web Application Firewall are DDoS, malware, and the other malicious threat prevention it provides. Additionally, third-party integration is available. You can forward the log for further analysis."

"The most valuable feature of Imperva, in addition to its strong knowledge base, is its effective protection for web applications."

"Its inline transferring mode is the most valuable because it is 100% transparent. When you change the IP, there is no change on the network side. If you can't and want to try to reach an IP, you can reach the server IP. There are many other advanced security features in it. The smallest appliances of Imperva can handle the highest traffic at a customer site. For example, a smaller appliance from Imperva can provide you the same security as an F5 product."

"The compliance is the most valuable aspect."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pros

Cons

"One area where Akamai can improve is the captcha part. Cloudflare provides a captcha if there are a certain number of threats. For example, I can assign that if there are 10 requests within a second from a single IP, it should send a captcha to the user. The user should fill in the captcha, and only after that, the user should be able to access our website. This captcha feature should be built into Bot Manager. I love this captcha feature of Cloudflare."

"The performance of the cloud monitoring tool is low."

"It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console."

"It's fine for a simple tool, but as I recall, if you encounter a lot of bots, scrapers, and other things, you'll need this tool bot and this other thing they offer called Bot Manager."

"We are experimenting with EdgeWorkers to write our own code at the Edge level. It could grow to be much better."

"Support and the pricing need to improve."

"Could integrate more features for each security."

"The product should provide a secure NTP."

More Akamai App and API Protector cons

"I don't really use it and therefore can't speak to areas of improvement."

"The user interface could be better."

"Their portal is very limited and needs improvement."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is very expensive."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is a good system, but we found that the visibility of the diverse-path server, e.g. where the traffic is coming from, the different IPs, etc., needs improvement."

"There's always room for improvement. Occasionally, there might be false-positive alerts."

"Sometimes, support tickets don't get addressed quickly."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by providing better features, such as improved prevention of zero-day attacks. Additionally, it should include a VR meta-analysis."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price they are offering is quite reasonable for premium customers, but it's very expensive if you're a small and medium-sized enterprises."

"Cost depends on the volume of traffic."

"The product is expensive, but it is worth the money."

"There is no license at all for Akamai. They are going to charge us only for the usage."

"Akamai is very expensive."

"Based on the billing discussions in the DevOps team, Akamai's cost does not seem to be a major thing. However, LOE is an issue. When it comes to support, we know that even all the competitors do this. For a 30-minute issue, they give us a LOE of one or two hours. That is a basic practice, but that is something we worry about."

"The solution is expensive."

"It's more expensive than others, but the ROI is good for large-scale infrastructure."

More Akamai App and API Protector pricing and cost advice

"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."

"Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well."

"There are a couple of different licensing models."

"Make sure you understand the way that Imperva charges. It's very affordable. However, I would like to see a package with the Virtual Patching included. You get to do patching separately."

"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."

"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."

"It is a very affordable solution."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.

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815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Akamai Web Application Protector?

The product is user-friendly.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai Web Application Protector?

The price is higher than others. It could be about 80% to 70% more expensive than other tools. So, it’s not just a slight difference.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Akamai Web Application Protector?

It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console.

See all answers

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

My recommendation is Imperva.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DefensePro and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?

You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot of DDoS attacks that were well managed (even not seen by the customer) by Imperv...

See all answers

Comparisons

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 14% of the time

AWS WAF vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 12% of the time

Prolexic vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 7% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 7% of the time

More Akamai App and API Protector Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 17% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 17% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 15% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

More Imperva Web Application Firewall Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Akamai App and API Protector

November 2024

Download Akamai App and API Protector product report

Buyer's Guide

Imperva Web Application Firewall

November 2024

Download Imperva Web Application Firewall product report

Also Known As

Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender

No data available

Learn More

Akamai

Imperva

Overview

Akamai App and API Protector provides website security by preventing DDoS attacks, acting as an application firewall, managing content delivery, and monitoring APIs. It adapts to threat profiles and is used for fast media delivery and identifying malicious activities.

Akamai App and API Protector offers strong protection, adaptable security features, and efficient traffic management. Its WAF blocks IP addresses and country-specific threats while preventing SQL injections. Companies utilize it for scalable CDN services and comprehensive traffic analysis. Known for its cost-effectiveness and user-friendly dashboard, this protector stands out for its customizable rules and technical support. Users also highlight the ease of integration and detailed attack insights available through its advanced dashboard.

What are the key features of Akamai App and API Protector?

DDoS Protection: Strong defense against Distributed Denial of Service attacks.
Scalable CDN: Manages content delivery efficiently under high traffic loads.
WAF Capabilities: Blocks specific IPs and countries, prevents SQL injections.
Traffic Filtering: Analyzes and controls incoming requests to maintain security.
Adaptive Stream Delivery: Adjusts content delivery to meet bandwidth needs.

What benefits should users expect?

Cost-Effectiveness: Provides robust security tools at a competitive price.
Enhanced Security: Comprehensive protection against cyber threats.
Scalability: Easily handles increasing traffic and data loads.
Ease of Integration: Simple integration with existing systems.
Insightful Analytics: Offers data-driven insights into traffic and attack patterns.

In media, Akamai App and API Protector ensures smooth streaming by handling high bandwidth demands. E-commerce companies use it to guard against fraud and data breaches. Financial sectors rely on its ability to protect sensitive transactions. Implementations in healthcare focus on safeguarding patient data while maintaining compliance with regulations.

Imperva Web Application Firewall is a versatile solution that protects web applications and databases from various attacks, including DDoS, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection attacks. It offers data security, availability, and access control and can be deployed on-premises or on the cloud.

The solution has good security against web attacks and offers advanced bot protection, API security, and mitigation features. Imperva WAF is easy to configure and deploy; it has good customer service and an excellent user interface.

Sample Customers

Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet

BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens

Buyer's Guide

Akamai App and API Protector vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

October 2024

Free Report: Akamai App and API Protector vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai App and API Protector vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

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