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AWS Shield vs Imperva DDoS comparison

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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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
AWS Shield
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Imperva DDoS
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
CDN (6th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.6%, up from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Shield is 6.6%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva DDoS is 6.3%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Manikandan-R - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution provides essential protection with good support and a simple setup
I have noticed a pattern developing in approximately five minutes. If it were possible to provide these patterns with historical data spanning six months, three months, or two months directly from the console, it would be extremely beneficial. It would allow for easy inquiries and facilitate the retrieval of relevant parts without having to manually check logs or examine movements. Instead, if all historical data were available, I could consult six months' worth of identified patterns efficiently through AWS without relying on external sources. This solution is particularly suitable for startups or medium-sized startups. I would rate the overall solution eight out of ten.
DerrickAkankwasa - PeerSpot reviewer
Provide DDoS protection and better security at effective rate
It is expanding its number of data centers for scrubbing traffic. Currently, there is only one POP for cleaning in South Africa. They might add another POP in North Africa, possibly in Nigeria or Egypt. Latency concerns customers, especially in regions like East and West Africa, where traffic has to travel to South Africa before returning. Increasing the number of POPs across the continent would help address these latency issues and improve overall service. While the platform is already quite strong, there’s always room for improvement, especially in keeping up with emerging trends and new types of attacks. Enhancing security capabilities could be beneficial. Integrating more advanced AI features could significantly improve its effectiveness and help customers leverage these tools more effectively. It would be great to see more focus on AI integration to handle and analyze data more efficiently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."
"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."
"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."
"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."
"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."
"I am impressed with the product's multiple features like security."
"It is integrated with AWS. So, it gives you a good first step."
"The product is easy to use."
"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."
"The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature."
"The solution operates smoothly at its baseline level, and we do not encounter any issues at that level."
"On the real time, you can see live traffic, which is flowing into our website."
"On the activity log, I can see the exact details, the visit, and the threat."
"Its unique interface for managing security performance and ease of use are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The most valuable features are DDoS protection."
"DDoS protection and WAF are the most valuable features. It is easy to deploy a service. It is easy and quick to deploy to a new website."
"IncapRules is one of the most valuable features, as you can create your own security and access control rules on top of your security policy. Using IncapRules we were able to easily block Layer 7 DDoS attacks several times."
"There is no need to have an appliance in house for the services because it is on the cloud."
"The three-second service level agreement is already better than the competition."
 

Cons

"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."
"Support response time could be improved."
"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."
"Latencies are always a problem."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"The time taken to detect anomalies must be reduced."
"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a situation is normal or abnormal."
"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."
"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced."
"We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need."
"Analytics in the area of risk need to be improved to supply more information to the users for creating better environments."
"I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators of compromise."
"Users would benefit from better documentation. There is official documentation, but sometimes we need more detail. We have some use cases that are not so run of the mill. It would be great if there was a knowledge base that we could go to for more answers."
"The weakest point of Imperva is their first level of support, which should be improved. They should also improve the access and security logs viewing directly on the portal. I would like to see better access and security logs through the portal and not only through a SIM solution. Currently, if you want to explore your access and security logs from Imperva, you need a SIM tool or a SIM infrastructure on your side to do it. You can't do it manually or directly through the portal, which is a big problem for us. I had a call yesterday with Imperva for the roadmap, and I just told them this. They agreed that this is an improvement point from their side."
"The cost could be lower; our end clients need to have a high budget to purchase this solution."
"There’s nothing that’s missing in terms of features."
"The solution needs to improve Integration with third parties for their on-prem deployment models. The integration is not that good yet."
"The salespeople tend to exaggerate its capabilities, which can cost you money if you don't verify the information."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"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."
"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"We are using the free version."
"The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."
"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."
"The tool is cheap."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"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."
"Imperva charges us based on bandwidth, which is better than other vendors that charge us according to data transfer."
"We are satisfied with the pricing."
"The solution's price is high for small companies."
"For enterprise contracts you will be in touch with a dedicated account manager who will guide you regarding licensing."
"It is not expensive compared to the other similar solutions in this category."
"We have an issue with Imperva Incapsula in the Iraqi market because of the high price."
"​Although the pricing can be a little high, it is worth the protection and security that it offers.​"
"The cost is on par with other solutions such as Cloudflare and Akamai."
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

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 AWS Shield?
We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't de...
What needs improvement with AWS Shield?
Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a si...
What do you like most about Imperva Incapsula?
We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Imperva Incapsula
 

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.
netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Shield vs. Imperva DDoS and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.