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Akamai vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

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
Ranking in CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (2nd), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th)
Akamai
Ranking in CDN
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in CDN
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
147
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (1st), API Security (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 15.8%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 12.0%, down from 16.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 7.5%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare15.8%
Imperva Application Security Platform7.5%
Akamai12.0%
Other64.7%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.
JV
Sr. Strategic Accounts Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Improved security and faster operations with a seamless integration
They are one of the top solution vendors in the market. Premium though, but they're the best. We've worked closely with digital-native customers, not so much from the media segment. Fintechs, financial organizations, banking segment, manufacturing, these are the ones we have worked with. Not much on media because most of the media houses are already covered by Akamai. 95% of media houses are already covered by Akamai. It gives a seamless view of how your infrastructure is, from an attack perspective, from a threat perspective, how your assets are behaving. It gives a very comprehensive view. It depends on the customer's environment. Wherever the customer wants, but mostly it is on the private cloud or public cloud because it's a cloud-based SaaS solution that Akamai has to offer. Implementation is feasible anywhere. The solution is aimed at Enterprise customers because it is on a premium side. On a scale of 1-10, this solution rates at 9.5.
reviewer2818155 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Application protection has improved and reporting and dashboards still need refinement
I believe Imperva Application Security Platform should have a more interactive wizard. While the dashboard is good, it could be more eye-catching. Based on my perspective, I recommend modifying the dashboards, especially the main dashboard where I can see the traffic hit count, alerts, and other latest information. In terms of reporting, I find it challenging to create reports; in my earlier days, it was difficult. Over time, I have learned how to create reports, but it should be easier to do so. I have used other tools such as firewalls or SolarWinds, where creating a report is straightforward and does not take much time, unlike in Imperva, where I have to add many elements. Modifications in the integration aspects would also be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very user-friendly."
"From a technical point of view, Cloudflare is the best CDN."
"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"Stability is great; I love their mechanisms, I love their GUI, I love their front end, I love their behind the scenes, algorithms and everything, it all makes sense."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
"I have not had a DDOS attack since, or at least not become unavailable due to DDOS which means my ROI is pretty good."
"Our primary use case for this solution is data transfer, and we deploy the solution on private cloud."
"As of now, the best thing about Akamai is WAF, and though CDN is a good feature, it comes in second place when compared to WAF. I am very impressed with the WAF offered by Akamai."
"The most valuable feature of Akamai is its ease of use and simple integration. Additionally, the solution has new aspects added to it regularly."
"The stability and efficiency of Akamai have enhanced our network's performance significantly."
"Akamai support is excellent because they have great debugging tools, and they are highly competent, with proactive and responsive engineers whenever we have issues, so everything is pretty smooth."
"The support from Akamai is fantastic, as they have one of the best supports available and you have assigned engineers targeting specific issues, making the use of the support services very easy."
"Akamai's scalability is good."
"All the policies of the CDNs are very beneficial."
"It's very pretty easy to onboard the URL."
"I love the solution's capabilities and the ease of the installation."
"Imperva Application Security Platform has positively impacted my organization by providing strong protection for web applications, as many big companies in the UK use Imperva WAF as an essential protection layer, illustrating its effectiveness."
"Well, just by using the security rules to block all secured areas by IP minimized the chance of sensitive data leaking outside."
"I suggest others looking into using Imperva Application Security Platform consider it as the best solution."
"Imperva Incapsula has many valuable features. One, it protects the top 10 OWAS vulnerability, the open web application software platform, this is standard. Secondly, it protects against broken authentication. As well, it has remote execution of code."
"The dynamic profiling of websites is the solution's most valuable feature. The security is also good."
"Imperva is a Gartner leader, so its scalability, performance, and features are excellent."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."
"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."
"Technical support is lacking."
"Several features that I think is essential is not available in the free and business package."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"Yes, there were a few times when some of their CDN nodes would fail, creating serious speed issues with the site without any warning or notification from their side."
"Flexible SSL is nothing more than an illusion of security that you're presenting to your visitors."
"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."
"On the commercials and pricing based on the region, they might have to work a bit because sometimes we lose on commercials."
"Caching strategy is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution where improvements are required."
"The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist."
"The fact that it is an expensive product is its only shortcoming."
"The solution could offer more integrations."
"Akamai could improve by providing its own cloud services. We have to use third-party cloud services at this time, such as Amazon AWS. The offering becomes a lot easier for an SMB if everything was in one single platform to be used for the services."
"Akamai could improve by having a more robust and responsive support team."
"It would be better if we could be notified about specific attacks."
"I would say that technical support is average."
"Management of policies and rules can be complicated and the physical setup of the product has implications on HA."
"Analytics in the area of risk need to be improved to supply more information to the users for creating better environments."
"There is nothing specific where the application firewall is falling short."
"I think the pricing needs some tweaks."
"It would be useful if the solution used more intelligence in attack protection."
"Imperva DDoS does not provide version control."
"The log analytics interface within Incapsula isn't really good. For example, if you have to get all logs from there, it's a very cumbersome process."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"Price-wise, I find Akamai's pricing model's inclination to be more towards the expensive side of the spectrum, though I can't say that it is a very expensive product."
"Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"The pricing of Akamai is moderate, in my opinion. My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to Akamai. There are no additional costs besides the licensing costs for the solution."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."
"It is not expensive compared to the other similar solutions in this category."
"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."
"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 pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."
"We have an issue with Imperva Incapsula in the Iraqi market because of the high price."
"The solution's pricing is an issue."
"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."
"The solution's price is high for small companies."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business88
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise70
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare?
The tool's pricing is moderate. I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expens...
What needs improvement with Akamai?
Other solutions are probably easier to set up, but you have more capability in Akamai. It would be beneficial if they...
What is your primary use case for Akamai?
We are using many of the solutions from Akamai, with the WAF in front of it and distribution to multiple targets wher...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai?
The pricing is good, with no complaints about costs, which is essential when deciding to have Akamai in your network.
Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot mana...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provi...
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators o...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
 

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.
Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Capital One, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Disney, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Home Depot, HP, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, LinkedIn, McDonald's, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Oracle, PayPal, Pinterest, Qualcomm, Rakuten, SAP, Spotify, Tesla, Toyota, Visa, Walmart, WeWork
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai vs. Imperva Application Security Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,942 professionals have used our research since 2012.