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AWS Shield vs F5 Silverline Managed Services comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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

AWS Shield
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 Silverline Managed Services
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (17th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of AWS Shield is 2.9%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Silverline Managed Services is 2.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Silverline Managed Services2.7%
AWS Shield2.9%
Other94.4%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Pranav Telang - PeerSpot reviewer
DGM at Airtel Digital
Has enabled multi-layered threat mitigation but still lacks deeper visibility for advanced application attacks
AWS Shield has limited coverage as it only protects against common and high-volume network and transport layer attacks, such as SYN floods. It does not provide inherent protection against more sophisticated layer 7 attacks such as HTTP floods. In such cases, integration with WAF is necessary, which results in additional costs for customers. To protect layer 7, layer 4, and layer 3, customers must implement both solutions. The service also has difficulties with static detection thresholds, which may not be sensitive enough to detect smaller application-specific attacks. While AWS Shield is a key security service, AWS should enhance their expert support with 24/7 response for complex attacks, which is currently limited.
Mohan Janarthanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Cloud applications have gained stronger protection and real-time defense against web attacks
What really stands out for me in terms of advantages of F5 Silverline Managed Services is that in a single cloud platform, I can protect my web applications against attacks. I can also use my load balancer in F5 because they are providing and acting as a load balancer too, and they will support the volumetric and DDoS attacks and malicious attacks. Regarding the real-time threat intelligence feature, I do use this aspect in F5 Silverline Managed Services. It blocks malicious IPs or bad IPs for my server, protecting against my applications. For example, if someone is a bad actor trying to access via a malicious IP, I can block it because the threat intelligence has the capability to block the malicious IP. The adaptable and flexible security impacts threat response time positively. It is effective because it blocks my malicious traffic. Whenever I face issues related to that application, it automatically routes my traffic to act as a proxy and routes my traffic to their scrubbing center, especially in case of any volumetric attack.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is quite scalable, and we have not faced any issues with its scalability."
"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."
"The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature."
"I am impressed with the product's multiple features like security."
"The product is easy to use."
"I recommend AWS Shield because it has proven helpful in tracking DDoS attacks within both my past and present environments, and without AWS Shield, a business could face potential losses, as this tool helps in identifying and mitigating fake traffic that disrupts applications, ultimately supporting business continuity."
"We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, which is crucial for us. It's easy to use and set up and stops attacks on our servers. We haven't encountered any attack problems because the solution stops them in real-time. AWS Shield specifically focuses on defending against denial-of-service attacks, making it a great solution for that type of threat."
"If most of your internet presence from your application side is in AWS, AWS Shield is a great option."
"Overall, this is a good security solution, but there is no such thing as a perfect appliance in IT."
"The stability of the solution is very good."
"F5 technical support is really good; it is better than A10."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Silverline Managed Services is it becomes similar to a distributed architecture."
"If you are looking for web security and don't have any solution, just try it."
"Most vendors fulfill the requirements for standard DDoS protection, but F5 Silverline Managed Services has a better understanding of defending web applications like HTTP and can mitigate more bot activity than any other vendor."
"The product’s UI is easy to understand."
"The most important feature is that they have seven firewall protection, to protect our web servers."
 

Cons

"The management of it is a bit hard. If you don't engineer it on the front side, it is hard to go back in and change it. It could be improved in terms of architecture requirements and then ongoing support requirements as a secondary component to it. People tend to set up things like this, and they just expect it to work without the care and feeding that needs to go back into it either from an application team or a network environment team."
"We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need."
"The time taken to detect anomalies must be reduced."
"The product needs to improve its logs and reports to make it read better."
"The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements."
"The management of it is a bit hard. If you don't engineer it on the front side, it is hard to go back in and change it."
"The product is expensive."
"There is an area for improvement regarding health checks. AWS Shield does not come with its own health check functionality."
"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be better, they are not very flexible."
"F5 Silverline Managed Services could be improved with more intuitive dashboards, a self-service option for respondents, localized support, and better pricing since I think it is high."
"To make this solution much better, they must have a user-friendly configuration interface."
"In terms of the scalability, this part is always so confusing because they are checking for packet count. Also, after an attack, they said that the throughput must be from gigabits but then I check my bandwidth and it is already done in gigabits. So it is a little bit confusing."
"We have complaints about the reliability of this solution."
"You need to have Linux knowledge in order to use the shell."
"We need to have support for cloud protection, which is not offered by this solution."
"F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, being a new product in the market or comparatively related to a new product, currently supports less number of PoPs. They should introduce more PoPs. The current number of PoPs that they have is around 10 or 12, which is still relatively less as compared to 2,400 plus PoPs that Akamai offers. The user latency or the number of hops a user needs before reaching the actual web application is less in Akamai because it has its internal fabric to route the traffic. They need to spin up more data to increase its traffic handling capability. They can also include the bot detection capability, though it is a pretty advanced functionality. If they could include DataDome like functionality, that is, bot prediction, then F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall will be top-notch in the market."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's pricing is good."
"The tool is cheap."
"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."
"The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."
"It depends on your subscription level and the volume that you're spending with AWS. So, it is very relative to the consumption alignment in your subscription level. It is a well-constructed, scalable pricing option, but it is relative to how much you're spending on AWS. Because the more you spend, typically, the more you get off on services like this. I find it to be comparable to other solutions."
"F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall works based on your bandwidth. They look at the clean bandwidth and do the pricing. 20% of a total pipe would be a clean bandwidth. The list price or a non-negotiated price for F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall would be around $2,200 per application per year for everything that you need. When you get into an enterprise kind of a setup, they negotiate this to the last bit. I would easily take 20% on that, which would be the cost, but it should cover all your Advance WAF features, bot protection, tech campaign, etc. It is built as a package and gives you most of the capability. You don't get the mobile SDK, which is an additional license. Mobile SDK is required only if you're buying or if you have a mobile application, and you are going to instrument F5 or Imperva into your mobile appliance. This anyways would be an additional module. It doesn't come within the WAF, but it is a WAF feature."
"The product’s pricing is reasonable."
"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be better, they are not very flexible. The price of the solution is based on the requirements of the enterprise."
"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be reduced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
17%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Insurance Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Shield?
The pricing structure for AWS Shield is fair, yet it depends on the specific protections chosen. Enabling Shield Advanced on multiple services such as CloudFront, network load balancer, or Route 53...
What needs improvement with AWS Shield?
Services always benefit from improvements, including AWS Shield. With respect to the Web Application Firewall, current rule-based setups may not be adequately defined or classified. Enhancement of ...
What is your primary use case for AWS Shield?
What do you use it for? How do you use it?
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Silverline Managed Services?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is better than other solutions.
What needs improvement with F5 Silverline Managed Services?
I think the management portal and the visual dashboard of F5 Silverline Managed Services could use an update.
 

Also Known As

No data available
F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, F5 Silverline DDoS Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Shield vs. F5 Silverline Managed Services and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.