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AWS WAF vs StackPath WAF comparison

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Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
AWS WAF
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (1st)
StackPath WAF
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (30th)
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Kavin Kalaiarasu - PeerSpot reviewer
AWS's cloud-native security simplifies rule enforcement but needs better DDoS integration
The dashboarding could be improved, and the default metrics provided by AWS WAF could be upgraded. The rate at which AWS updates their managed rule sets could be better. Features like bot protection or DDoS mitigation, available with other WAF vendors, do not come natively with AWS WAF. Instead, they are part of AWS Shield. Providing DDoS protection as part of their WAF solution would be beneficial.
FC
Stable product with an easy setup process
We use StackPath WAF to protect small websites for our customers The product’s most valuable is WAF. The authentication feature helps us protect WordPress sites. The product’s performance for caching feature needs improvement. It could provide high security to handle large traffic volumes for…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"Cloudflare has many features."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."
"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"The most valuable feature is the security, making sure that files are protected, preventing unauthorized users from accessing the system."
"It is Amazon. Everything is scalable. It is beyond what we need."
"One of the most valuable features of AWS WAF is its ability to filter web app traffic, allowing us to specify conditions such as IP addresses and HTTP headers."
"AWS WAF is something that someone from a cloud background or cloud security background leverages. If they want to natively use a solution in the cloud, AWS WAF comes in handy. It's very useful for that, and the way we can fine-tune the WAF rules is also nice."
"The ability to take multiple data sets and match those data sets together is the solution's most valuable feature. The data lake that comes with it is very useful because that allows us to match data sets with different configurations that we wouldn't normally be able to match."
"The access instruction feature is the most valuable. This is what we use the most."
"It is a one-click WAF with no effort needed."
"This product supplies options for web security for applications accessing sensitive information."
"The product’s most valuable is WAF. The authentication feature helps us protect WordPress sites."
 

Cons

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."
"The pricing could be improved."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"They have to do more to improve, to innovate more features. They need to increase the security. It has to be more active in detecting threats."
"The serverless product from AWS WAF could be improved. For example, they have only one serverless series, Lambda, but they should extend and improve it. Additionally, the firewall rules are not very easy to configure."
"I find the documentation somewhat complex to implement during the initial stages."
"There is room for improvement in pricing."
"The solution could be more reliable."
"The solution should identify why it blocks particular websites."
"Compatibility and integration functionalities, especially with services like Kafka for event-driven messaging, could be better."
"For now, there is no feature to protect against attack of the bad bots"
"The product’s performance for caching feature needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"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."
"The price is reasonable."
"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."
"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"AWS is not that costly by comparison. They are maybe close to $40 per month. I think it was between $29 or $39."
"It's cheap."
"It's an annual subscription."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven or eight out of ten."
"I would rate AWS WAF's pricing a seven out of ten."
"There are no separate licensing costs we pay for since it is included in the plan we purchase."
"The solution is affordable."
"The product is affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 are the limitations of AWS WAF vs alternative WAFs?
Hi Varun, I have had experienced with several WAF deployments and deep technical assessments of the following: 1. Im...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft...
What do you like most about AWS WAF?
The most valuable feature of AWS WAF is its highly configurable rules system.
What do you like most about StackPath WAF?
The product’s most valuable is WAF. The authentication feature helps us protect WordPress sites.
What needs improvement with StackPath WAF?
The product’s performance for caching feature needs improvement. It could provide high security to handle large traff...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
AWS Web Application Firewall
StackPath Web Application Firewall
 

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.
eVitamins, 9Splay, Senao International
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Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), F5, Microsoft and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: January 2025.
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