Azure Web Application Firewall vs F5 Silverline Managed Services comparison

Microsoft and F5 are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Microsoft is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.5, while F5 is ranked #27 with an average rating of 7.3. Additionally, 92% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of F5 users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

F5 Silverline Managed Services and Azure Web Application Firewall compete in the web application security market. Based on data comparisons, Azure Web Application Firewall may have an edge due to its comprehensive feature set.

Features: F5 Silverline Managed Services provides robust DDoS protection, extensive reporting, and customizable security measures. Azure Web Application Firewall offers integrated threat intelligence, flexibility in traffic management, and compatibility with Azure services.

Room for Improvement: F5 Silverline could enhance its integration capabilities and flexibility in traffic management. It might also improve user interface intuitiveness and provide more seamless self-service setup options. Azure Web Application Firewall could benefit from reducing its upfront costs, enhancing support for external non-Azure environments, and simplifying configurations for non-experienced users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: F5 Silverline Managed Services is known for its fully managed service model, which simplifies deployment and ensures continuous support. Azure Web Application Firewall integrates seamlessly with the Azure ecosystem, although its self-service setup can be challenging without experienced personnel. Silverline's customer service is often praised for its responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: F5 Silverline Managed Services tends to present lower initial setup costs and delivers high ROI through its managed service offerings. Azure Web Application Firewall, while potentially more expensive upfront, provides long-term value with extensive integration capabilities and powerful features that enhance ROI over time. The primary pricing distinction is Silverline's affordability and Azure's investment in extensive features.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Web Application Firewall vs. F5 Silverline Managed Services Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Web Application Firewall vs. F5 Silverline Managed Services

January 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

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.

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Thomas Zebar

Azure Principal Architect at Cloud Computech Consultancy

Is priced well, is stable, and the initial setup is straightforward

I previously used Barracuda Web Application Firewall. I hope that Azure Web Application Firewall will look at other products and replicate some of their functionality. Azure WAF is doing great because it is designed to host web applications in Azure. However, it can be improved with other services. Barracuda is the most advanced firewall in the industry, so Azure WAF could pick some of its features and replicate them into its own application firewall. Barracuda WAF was deployed in parallel to the traffic. Azure WAF should not be deployed in the middle of the traffic. It should support both public and private points of presence. Additionally, like Barracuda, Azure WAF should have an inspection engine that covers not just Microsoft products, but also products from other manufacturers. This would be a great addition to the product and would increase its security functionality.

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DejanBlagojevic

Presales Engineer at Exclusive-networks

Mitigates more bot activity when defending web applications than any other vendor but comes at a price

F5 Silverline Managed Services is expensive. You do get world-class quality of mitigation, but I think it is still pricey. You can find similar services, potentially of slightly lower quality, from other vendors like Cloudflare or Akamai for about half the price. When you compare what you get for the money you spend at Cloudflare or Akamai, you do get less protection but you are not dishing out too much for it. On the other hand, at F5 Silverline Managed Services, you do get better protection but, but you are paying double for it. We have had mixed feedback from our clients about this. Most of them would rather pay less for a bit of a lower-quality defense than overshoot their budget. The most common piece of feedback we receive is that the difference in protection levels is not reflected in the price.

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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

"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

"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."

"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."

"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"

More Cloudflare pros

"The solution has good dashboards."

"The initial setup is easy and straightforward...Azure Web Application Firewall is a scalable product."

"It's great for protecting against DDoS attacks."

"The return on investment is good."

"The most valuable feature is that it allows us to publish our applications behind the firewall."

"Configuration is much easier than using different platforms."

"We have found the most valuable features to be the web application, minimal skills required for management, control through policies, and automation."

"Azure WAF is extremely stable."

More Azure Web Application Firewall pros

"The product’s UI is easy to understand."

"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 initial setup is straightforward."

"We have a lot of businesses that we put behind this solution, and it has really helped us in terms of monitoring the logs and incidents."

"The most valuable feature is flexibility."

"It's a good front end for public infrastructure"

"The most valuable features are the configuration and configuring the process."

"Its flexibility is the most valuable because it is a managed service. The good part is that you don't need to set it up. It just needs DNS routing, which is the easiest thing. Our client had Akamai for certain websites because they were using CDN features. They had NetScaler on the internal zone, F5 AWAFs on the data centers, and no WAF at all in the cloud. One of the main activities of the project was to move all these policies into a single WAF so that we could control and use that as a choke point. That exercise itself was very easy because it was a managed service and F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall does that for you. That's the best thing about F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall. It is easy to apply policies on-premises. If you have AWAF on-premises and you want to replicate some policies on F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, other than the policies that it applies by itself, it is easy because you have a team that supports it. F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall works perfectly fine. It pretty much does everything that an Advanced WAF on-premises should do."

More F5 Silverline Managed Services pros

Cons

"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."

"The solution could be more user-friendly."

"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."

"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."

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

"Technical support is lacking."

"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

More Cloudflare cons

"Azure WAF should not be deployed in the middle of the traffic."

"The knowledge base could be improved."

"The documentation needs to be improved."

"The support for proxy forwarding could improve."

"Upgrading the platform regularly is necessary for security, however, frequent updates every six months or year from Azure can be a maintenance overhead."

"I would say that Azure's customer service is not that good...I am not very happy with the support offered."

"In Brazil, we have some problems with the phone service that affect our connection with the cloud. However, it isn't common."

"From a reporting perspective, they could do more there."

More Azure Web Application Firewall cons

"There is room for improvement in the stability of the solution."

"The navigation is difficult to use."

"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."

"We need to have support for cloud protection, which is not offered by this solution."

"F5 Silverline Managed Services can improve by reducing the price."

"F5 Silverline Managed Services can improve by adding features that Palo Alto has."

"There is a lot of room for improvement with their tech support. I am not sure F5 Silverline Managed Services can be classified as having tech support."

"The price is high in comparison to other products."

More F5 Silverline Managed Services cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"We don't have any issues with the price."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"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."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"We have an enterprise agreement with Microsoft and the pricing is good."

"The price of the solution depends on your architecture and how you manage it. You can control the cost in Azure quite well. The costs do not directly correlate to expenses in the features we are using."

"The price is reasonable. It is approximately $2,000 US per month."

"Azure WAF has price advantages over other WAF solutions. The pricing model is flexible because you pay on a scale based on the level of protection you need."

"The price is for this solution is fair and there is a license needed."

"I give the pricing a nine out of ten."

"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be reduced."

"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 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 product’s pricing is reasonable."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

24%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

19%

Insurance Company

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

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...

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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...

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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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Azure Web Application Firewall?

The integration it has with GitHub is great.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Web Application Firewall?

The price is reasonable. It is approximately $2,000 US per month. This cost is one of the main reasons why we selecte...

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What needs improvement with Azure Web Application Firewall?

Microsoft is constantly working on improvements. We would like to see additional site services using AI to provide in...

See all answers

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 hav...

See all answers

What do you like most about F5 Silverline Managed Services?

The initial setup is straightforward.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Silverline Managed Services?

The product’s pricing is reasonable.

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 49% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

AWS WAF vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 43% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

More Azure Web Application Firewall Competitors

F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs F5 Silverline Managed Services

Compared 19% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs F5 Silverline Managed Services

Compared 12% of the time

AWS WAF vs F5 Silverline Managed Services

Compared 10% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs F5 Silverline Managed Services

Compared 10% of the time

More F5 Silverline Managed Services Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

February 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Azure Web Application Firewall

February 2025

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Buyer's Guide

F5 Silverline Managed Services

February 2025

Download F5 Silverline Managed Services product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, F5 Silverline DDoS Protection

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“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. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) provides centralized protection of your web applications from common exploits and vulnerabilities. Web applications are increasingly targeted by malicious attacks that exploit commonly known vulnerabilities. SQL injection and cross-site scripting are among the most common attacks.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

F5's Silverline Managed Services is a SaaS solution delivering DDoS protection, managed Web Application Firewall (WAF) services, and managed Shape Security Fraud and Anti-bot solutions.

Silverline services include 24x7 access to F5's Security Operations Center (SOC). F5's expert security professionals use F5 products with state-of-the-art security tools to ensure the best protection possible. As an add-on to Silverline DDoS or WAF services, Silverline Threat Intelligence integrates dynamic lists of threatening IP addresses to give context for policy decisions.

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

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office

Buyer's Guide

Azure Web Application Firewall vs. F5 Silverline Managed Services

January 2025

Free Report: Azure Web Application Firewall vs. F5 Silverline Managed Services

Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Web Application Firewall vs. F5 Silverline Managed Services and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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