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Azure DDoS Protection 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Cloudflare enhances performance, reduces operational costs, and boosts revenue, with reported benefits of $903,000 over three years.
Sentiment score
7.2
Azure DDoS Protection offers cost-effective security for enterprises, simplifying management and providing ROI, though costs vary by business size.
Sentiment score
6.3
Companies value Imperva DDoS for compliance and cost savings, estimating ROI between 45% to 90% by mitigating DDoS risks.
You would only lose money if you had an attack and you need to calculate the cost against the risks.
WordPress security can be tricky, and that's where Cloudflare can be absolutely helpful for small businesses.
We have had ROI with the tool's use since it never gave us downtime and made us lose millions.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Cloudflare's service is praised for responsiveness, but some users face delays, often relying on extensive documentation for solutions.
Sentiment score
6.8
Azure DDoS Protection's support is well-regarded, with educational clients valuing communication; experiences vary by service agreements.
Sentiment score
7.1
Imperva DDoS offers professional customer service with some delays; enterprise support is effective, technical support sometimes needs escalation.
This would help us address issues promptly, especially during unforeseen events like DDoS attacks.
We'd like a dedicated account manager.
You can get a support engineer with the best qualifications.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Cloudflare's scalable architecture is praised for efficient traffic handling, seamless expansion, and meeting diverse enterprise needs globally.
Sentiment score
6.9
Azure DDoS Protection is highly rated for security and scalability, especially valued by larger enterprises over smaller organizations.
Sentiment score
7.9
Imperva DDoS offers highly scalable, adaptable solutions with seamless expansion, efficiently handling large attacks, though scaling costs may be high.
I would rate the solution's scalability a ten out of ten since I didn't encounter any issues with it.
I rate its scalability a ten out of ten because I had no issues with it.
I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Users praise Cloudflare for improved reliability, effective DDoS protection, and excellent DNS services despite initial configuration needs.
Sentiment score
7.6
Azure DDoS Protection is praised for stability and reliability, though configuration issues and downtimes are occasionally noted.
Sentiment score
7.7
Imperva DDoS is highly reliable with consistent uptime, minor issues, and positive user sentiment regarding its stability.
For DDoS protection, I would not recommend Cloudflare.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudflare users seek better analytics, integration, support, pricing clarity, and enhanced features like caching and multi-user access.
Azure DDoS Protection users face GUI changes, complex setup, reduced capacity, false positives, and need better reporting and services.
Imperva DDoS requires improvements in customer support, pricing, interface design, security features, latency management, and enhanced documentation.
There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
Compared to other vendors and Cloudflare, there will be more downtime.
I have noticed some false positives with the Web Application Firewall yet not with DDoS Protection.
I suggest adding more services and additional services, which would be beneficial.
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare offers flexible pricing plans from free to $1,500 monthly, ideal for businesses of different sizes and traffic needs.
Azure DDoS Protection offers a free trial, competitive pricing, and inclusive safeguards, optimizing costs for enterprises.
Imperva DDoS offers competitive pricing with flexible options, but can be costly compared to Cloudflare or Akamai.
That's where Cloudflare shines for smaller businesses – it's ten times cheaper than Akamai.
I find it to be cheap.
It is cheaper than other options.
If used with Front Door or Web Application Firewall, DDoS Protection is included without additional cost.
Compared to competitors, it is good.
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare enhances performance and security with CDN, caching, DDoS protection, easy DNS management, analytics, and intuitive interface.
Azure DDoS Protection offers seamless integration, AI capabilities, scalability, and effective security for DNS and web applications with flexible pricing.
Imperva DDoS provides robust, easy-to-use protection against attacks with advanced security measures and real-time traffic analysis.
Our scenario consisted of two web servers in different allocations to control access demands, and the load balancer did the job as expected, bringing security and stability to access points.
For me, the valuable feature is DDoS protection.
The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.
The ability to do research and development quickly without waiting for infrastructure is a plus.
The integration of various tools with Azure Firewall, like DDoS Protection, Web Application Firewall, and Azure Front Door, is quite effective.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Azure DDoS Protection
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (24th)
Imperva DDoS
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
CDN (7th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 18.9%, down from 19.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure DDoS Protection is 4.1%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva DDoS is 7.0%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

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.
Venkat Raju Mallipudi - PeerSpot reviewer
Acts as an additional layer of protection, provides endpoint security but not very easy to configure
It's not very easy to configure, in my view. We have to do some work behind the scenes. It's not very simple. We have to do it very carefully, and we need to monitor this enablement as well. But apart from that, I didn't see any kind of challenges. So, in my opinion, configuration is the main trouble for them. It is something that can be done to be better. Not just configuration. You need an expert who knows the ins and outs of these security solutions. In my experience, people struggle with configuration. While configuring, we get this error, we get that error, and then we try to fix those issues. I have seen those. It's not straightforward.
Syed Ubaid Ali Jafri - PeerSpot reviewer
I like the content monitoring feature which I haven't seen in other WAF solutions.
They could improve by minimizing false positive results. Although this occurs less with Imperva, we would like to see some further improvements. We have been using this product for last 1 years, it's result is very impressive. But due to the excessive load on the Web site where thousands of requests‎ are generated from legitimate users, however the request in which any sequential or specialised characters are requested would be directly blocked by impreva . Currently imperva blocks the special character request generated from the user, as I conduct a test where I am parsing the encoded html values of the same special characters to the input field, imperva bypasses these encoded values for example : ' i.e. %27 or / i.e %2F, the WAF bypasses these encoded characters. I hope that this device should have a capability to detect the pattern which is associated with Xss or Xsrf, rather then by not blocking the request which contains any special characters.
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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
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

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 Azure DDoS Protection?
Azure DDoS Protection offers superior protection against denial-of-service attacks.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure DDoS Protection?
Compared to competitors, it is good. The pricing is mostly okay.
What needs improvement with Azure DDoS Protection?
I suggest adding more services and additional services, which would be beneficial.
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 is rated a ten on a scale where ten is very expensive. The solution is only cloud-based and does not prov...
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
Pricing can be improved, as it is quite expensive. Additionally, support response times for emails can sometimes be d...
 

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.
Information Not Available
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure DDoS Protection vs. Imperva DDoS and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
839,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.