Akamai App and API Protector vs Imperva Web Application Firewall comparison

Akamai App and API Protector vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

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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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Bharat Chandra

Head of DevOpps at Indian express

Exceptional support, protects our sites, and provides visibility into traffic

We did a PoC of Akamai and Cloudflare. 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. Other things are good in Akamai. That is why we are using Akamai. Only the captcha part should be implemented.

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Abdullah Jin

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

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

"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."

"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"

"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."

"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."

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

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."

More Cloudflare pros

"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 dashboard is the most interesting feature of the Akamai portal where you can have a detailed analysis of all the attacks that are happening. You can drill down an issue and see exactly what is happening, who are the bad guys attacking your website, and how Akamai is protecting the website. That is the most valuable feature."

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

"The product has a good user interface."

"Everything will be handled by Akamai's system before it reaches our infrastructure."

"The support that we got from their technical team has been fantastic. I have never experienced this level of support from other CDN providers."

"The solution can scale extremely well."

"The most valuable feature is the custom rules feature. This is because many of our customers require a lot of custom rules. Because it's a very customized project for our customers, I think they have the best of everything already."

More Akamai App and API Protector pros

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

"The solution is stable."

"It has threat intelligence and we are using Incapsula. With threat intelligence, we can separate HTTP and HTTPS traffic. We can use Incapsula to send all the threat intelligence to the WAF."

"Imperva WAF's strongest features are the detection of web application threats and vulnerabilities in the source code."

"The valuable features of Imperva WAF include its effective security breach prevention through automatically updating rules."

"Data masking is the most valuable feature of this solution."

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

"I am impressed with the product's scalability, availability, easy management, and security. We were able to integrate the product with Azure and Sentinel."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pros

Cons

"The pricing could be improved."

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

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

"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."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."

More Cloudflare cons

"The pricing could be reduced a bit."

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

"It would be better if there weren't any issues with latency. We had latency issues, but I think they are all solved now."

"There are some issues with pushing configurations across a network. It still takes about 20 minutes and that means to retract it's another 20 minutes."

"The solution could offer even more integrations."

"The interface is a little bit clunky and can be improved."

"In terms of precedence of Akamai rules, the last one is implemented. That is the one that is operational. If two rules contradict, the last one is implemented. We had a clash, but it was really tough to find that out. I would like to have a rulebook because, in their architecture documentation, it is not mentioned anywhere that if two rules clash, the last one works, and if it does not work, then what to do. This is something we were debating today with their tech support. With AWS, we get documents for the issues so that they do not occur in the future. Akamai's support and knowledge base needs to be improved."

"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."

More Akamai App and API Protector cons

"It's a complicated tool to keep."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by adding more features to the dashboard. increasing the visibility of the real-time events, besides configuring the administration itself."

"Sometimes our web application firewall will slow down."

"I loved the approach of the cloud. The cloud has a lot of new features, like advanced web protection and DDoS protection. If those could also be on-boarded onto the on-prem versions, that would be ideal. They need to pay attention to both deployment options and not just favor one."

"I would like to improve the tool's turnaround time in terms of support."

"Some of the features should be included in the next release is a file integrating monitoring tool. This feature should be improved."

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

"It is complicated to integrate the solution's on-cloud version with other platforms."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"A free version of the solution is available."

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

"The price is reasonable."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

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

"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 solution is expensive."

"Cost depends on the volume of traffic."

"Price-wise, I would say Akamai's pricing is competitive."

"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."

"If you want quality, you have to pay the price. Its price is fair. Their account managers are also very helpful. They help you a lot with pricing even though they are working with Akamai."

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

"Its price is slightly high. Every company has a justification for the high price. Overall, it feels worth the money based on how the service has been structured, but we do negotiate it."

"Its price is at the medium level. It is not very high. It is also not very low. It serves the purpose."

More Akamai App and API Protector pricing and cost advice

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

"There are some licenses that you have to buy to use some features. Its price could be better. Price is always important because, at the end of the day, customers have a budget. If you can meet the budget, you can sell, and if you don't, you cannot sell."

"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."

"The tool is expensive."

"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."

"The solution's pricing is an issue."

"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."

"It is very costly, but the return on investment is very high. Its cost was around $70,000, and we got it back in just six months."

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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847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

19%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

25%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 Akamai Web Application Protector?

The product is user-friendly.

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 sl...

What needs improvement with Akamai Web Application Protector?

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

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

My recommendation is Imperva.

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 hav...

DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DDoS Protection Service 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 ...

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 11% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 11% of the time

AWS WAF vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 11% of the time

Prolexic vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 8% of the time

F5 Shape Security vs Akamai App and API Protector

Compared 5% of the time

More Akamai App and API Protector Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 16% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

More Imperva Web Application Firewall Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare

Download Cloudflare product report

Akamai App and API Protector

Download Akamai App and API Protector product report

Imperva Web Application Firewall

Download Imperva Web Application Firewall product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

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

No data available

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

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.

Akamai

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.

Imperva

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet

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

Akamai App and API Protector vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall