Azure Front Door vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) comparison

Azure Front Door vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

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Helped 801,394 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Azure Front Door

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

9th

Average Rating

8.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CDN (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (15th)

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

24th

Average Rating

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2024, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Azure Front Door is 4.9%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Renato Roque

Azure Cloud Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Nov 28, 2023

Seamless global application delivery with features like efficient load balancing, web application firewall and robust traffic routing capabilities

It serves as the primary means for our organization to make applications accessible securely over the internet. While we do have specific requirements for load balancing, our primary focus is leveraging it to securely and exclusively expose our applications to the internet We rely on external…

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reviewer2161107

Staff Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 6, 2024

Offers Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) and provides enhanced dashboards, making it easy to identify and allow or deny traffic based on the signals it provides

The initial setup was super easy. The migration was super easy. The only part we were missing was China cache. Other than that, it has everything Akamai was providing: image optimization, CDN, WAF, and all the other security aspects. The China cache was the one thing we were missing in Fastly, so we had to do it differently. Deployment was a few weeks for the migration. If you're starting a brand new site, it's straightforward; maybe in a week or two, you can be up and running. But if it's a migration from a different CDN, it would probably take four to six weeks. We wanted to know the caching rules and how teams were doing things differently, so we had each member from the team gather inputs. Then we migrated and started writing the VCL code. It's very little maintenance. But with every draft, you need to periodically check the dashboard for anomalies and take action. Once a month or once a quarter, you need to do that exercise. Moreover, there are a couple of integrations with other observability tools like Datadog and Slack. It's easy to enable access with SSL, Okta, and Flash teams.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Rules Engine is a valuable feature."

"The web application firewall is a great feature."

"The price is one of the most important aspects of the product. It's quite affordable."

"The most valuable feature is that I can have CDN and load-balancing capabilities in a single service instead of managing two separate tools."

"The solution is good."

"It inspects the traffic at the network level before it comes into Azure. We can do SSL offloading, and it can detect abnormalities before the traffic comes into the application. It can be used globally and is easy to set up. It is also quite stable and scalable."

"I particularly appreciate its load-balancing capabilities as it allows us to manage multiple instances and support a global presence effectively."

"The most valuable feature is that you can implement resources globally. It does not depend on location and ability or something like that. This is to connect clients around the world."

More Azure Front Door pros

"When configuring a web application firewall using Signal Sciences, we configure a rule whereby no one except a few people can access the application."

"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily."

"Fastly (Signal Sciences) integrates and tags the intermittent traffic based on patterns. It generates signals and provides them in a dashboard where we can view them and decide whether to allow or deny traffic. It's a more advanced and easy-to-navigate dashboard."

Cons

"This is a relatively expensive solution."

"There's a limitation on the amount of global rules we can add."

"The product's features are limited compared to Cloudflare. The tool also doesn't work well in a hybrid environment. I would like to see a way to add personalized APIs in the system."

"The user interface needs improvement as it is difficult to create the mapping to link the problem with your private address sources."

"We should be able to use Front Door defenders with multiple cloud vendors. Currently, they can be used only with the Azure cloud. Azure Front Door should also be able to do global load balancing and provide internal front door services. Microsoft should clearly define what Traffic Manager, Application Gateway, and Azure Front Door products do. These are similar products, and people get confused between these products."

"The product needs to improve its latency."

"There is room for improvement and they're working on it."

"In the tool, there needs to be a good amount of monitoring in the area of health probes to capture in front of what is happening."

More Azure Front Door cons

"Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai."

"The areas that could be improved in Signal Sciences include the effectiveness of rules, as many didn't function optimally and required custom rule-writing to address bypasses for WAF."

"Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The transition to the premium tier has led to increased costs, making it more expensive than the classic tier."

"It is on a pay-as-you-go basis."

"The pricing of the solution is good."

"Considering the standard licensing of the tool, even though we have not checked the billing as of now, it might not be very costly."

"The solution is a bit expensive."

"The product is expensive."

"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."

"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."

"The product has an affordable cost."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.

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801,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

25%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?

We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides excellent support. Azure Front Door can quickly detect abnormalities before the...

What do you like most about Azure Front Door?

Rules Engine is a valuable feature.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Front Door?

The transition to the premium tier has led to increased costs, making it more expensive than the classic tier. However, we acknowledge that this pricing reflects additional features and capabilities.

What do you like most about Signal Sciences?

The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Signal Sciences?

The pricing is 50% less than Akamai.

What needs improvement with Signal Sciences?

Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai.

Amazon CloudFront vs Azure Front Door

Comparisons

Compared 20% of the time

Cloudflare vs Azure Front Door

Compared 17% of the time

AWS Global Accelerator vs Azure Front Door

Compared 12% of the time

Akamai vs Azure Front Door

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Azure Front Door

Compared 6% of the time

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Cloudflare vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 27% of the time

AWS WAF vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 23% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)

Compared 11% of the time

More The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) Competitors

Product Reports

Azure Front Door

Download Azure Front Door product report

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Download The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) product report

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) report

Also Known As

Azure Front-Door

Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP

Learn More

Microsoft

Video not available

Fastly

Overview

Azure Front Door is employed for securing external traffic, global load balancing, integrating web application firewalls, enabling disaster recovery, and enhancing application accessibility.

Organizations leverage Azure Front Door to support data publishing, act as a CDN, and ensure low latency for global users. Clients use it to protect numerous internet-accessible applications, integrate with DNS, and implement custom routes. Favored for caching web content and securely, efficiently distributing traffic to backend services, Azure Front Door offers SSL offloading, traffic inspection, and global scalability. Users value its affordability, ease of implementation, and web application firewall. Azure Front Door provides rich security features, traffic management, and URL rewriting. Load-balancing capabilities enhance performance with additional content security policies and bot protection. Integrations, including with GitOps, along with combined CDN and load-balancing, are also highlighted.

What are the most important features?

SSL Offloading: Reduces the burden on backend services
Traffic Inspection: Enhances security by inspecting incoming traffic
Global Scalability: Ensures performance for users worldwide
Web Application Firewall: Provides in-depth security features
Load Balancing: Distributes traffic to improve performance
URL Rewriting: Customizes URL paths for better navigation
Bot Protection: Shields applications from automated threats
Integrations: Supports technologies like GitOps
Combined CDN and Load-Balancing: Streamlines content delivery and traffic management

What are the benefits or ROI of using this service?

Affordability: Provides cost-effective solutions for web traffic management
Ease of Implementation: Streamlines setup processes for quick deployment
Enhanced Security: Offers robust protection for web applications
Improved Performance: Optimizes traffic distribution and latency
Scalability: Supports growing application demands with global reach

Azure Front Door finds usage across multiple industries due to its versatile applications. E-commerce companies benefit from improved global accessibility and speed, while financial institutions leverage its security features for protecting sensitive data. Media and entertainment sectors use its CDN capabilities for seamless content delivery, and healthcare providers rely on its compliance and protection standards for patient data security.

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) provides web application and API protection, RASP, rate limiting, bot protection and DDoS purpose built to eliminate the challenges of legacy WAF.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus

Azure Front Door vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)