Azure Web Application Firewall vs NGINX App Protect comparison

Microsoft and F5 are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Microsoft is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.4, while F5 is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.8. Additionally, 91% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of F5 users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Azure Web Application Firewall and NGINX App Protect based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Web Application Firewall vs. NGINX App Protect Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Web Application Firewall vs. NGINX App Protect

December 2024

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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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Tomaz Sobczak

Security System Engineer at Ascomp S.A.

Signature-based detection, DOS protection, and bot protection

NGINX App Protect is easier to automate and configure, or manage from an API. This is good for securing applications. However, it's not suitable for more complex tasks. NGINX App Protect positively impacted performance changes. There's a cache or it works like a proxy, so it can speed up applications. It can also offload some functions from servers, which NGINX can handle faster.

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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

"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."

"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."

"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."

"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"

"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."

"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."

"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."

"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."

More Cloudflare pros

"The most valuable feature of Azure Web Application Firewall is its ability to filter requests and block false positives by using custom rules and the OWASP rule set."

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

"The integration it has with GitHub is great."

"It has been a stable product in my experience."

"Azure WAF is extremely stable."

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

"The solution has good dashboards."

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

More Azure Web Application Firewall pros

"The policies are flexible based on the technologies you use."

"It's very easy to deploy."

"There's a cache, or it works like a proxy, so it can speed up applications."

"The tool's most valuable feature is the OWASP certification. Additionally, the tool's ability to enforce strong passwords and OTP within minutes is impressive. With its analytics and recommendations, it is a very good solution."

"We were looking for a product that is capable of complete automation and a container based solution. It's working."

"It is a very good tool for load balancing."

"NGINX App Protect's best features are auto-learning, which creates a profile of applications that are deployed, bot protection, and force protection, which lets you configure your brute force policy and alert for and prevent brute force attacks."

"The tool is not complex and is very user-friendly."

More NGINX App Protect pros

Cons

"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."

"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."

"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."

"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

"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."

"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."

"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."

More Cloudflare cons

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

"The knowledge base could be improved."

"The documentation needs to be improved."

"The support for proxy forwarding could improve."

"We would like to see additional site services using AI to provide information about blocking requests and offer analytics on the origin of calls."

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

"There is a need to be able to configure the solution more."

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

More Azure Web Application Firewall cons

"It doesn't have more advanced features like no false-positive security, which you can configure in Advanced WAF."

"The product's user interface is an area with shortcomings as it can be quite confusing for users, making it an area where improvements are required."

"I encountered issues with NGINX App Protect while trying to upgrade custom rules."

"The product's price is high, making it an area of concern where improvements are required. The tool's licensing model is also not good."

"The integration of NGINX App Protect could improve."

"Right now, the tool doesn't provide an option revolving around update feeds, specifically the signature update option in the UI."

"Currently, the policies have to be handled manually, and you have to create from scratch, which can be a bit time-consuming, in a large environment."

"As far as scalability, it takes a long time for deployment."

More NGINX App Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."

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

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

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

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

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

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

"The pricing is reasonable because NGINX operates on an instance basis."

"The price of NGINX App Protect is approximately $3,000 annually. All of our licenses are observed by a managed service partner."

"There is a monthly or annual subscription to use NGINX App Protect. There are not any additional costs to the subscription."

"The licensing fees for this solution are pretty expensive for what it does, but there is no alternative."

"There are no additional fees."

"NGINX App Protect is expensive."

"There are not any additional costs we had to pay to use NGINX App Protect."

"The product's price is high."

More NGINX App Protect pricing and cost advice

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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823,795 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Healthcare Company

Energy/Utilities Company

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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

What do you like most about NGINX App Protect?

It's very easy to deploy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?

The product's price is high.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?

The product's price is high, making it an area of concern where improvements are required. The tool's licensing model...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 48% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% 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 12% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Azure Web Application Firewall

Compared 4% of the time

More Azure Web Application Firewall Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 22% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 16% of the time

AWS WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 11% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 10% of the time

Haltdos Enterprise WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 3% of the time

More NGINX App Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

December 2024

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

November 2024

Download Azure Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect

November 2024

Download NGINX App Protect product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall

Learn More

Cloudflare

Microsoft

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

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.

NGINX App Protect application security solution combines the efficacy of advanced F5 web application firewall (WAF) technology with the agility and performance of NGINX Plus. The solution runs natively on NGINX Plus and addresses some of the most difficult challenges facing modern DevOps environments:

Integrating security controls directly into the development automation pipeline
Applying and managing security for modern and distributed application environments such as containers and microservices
Providing the right level of security controls without impacting release and go-to-market velocity
Complying with security and regulatory requirements

NGINX App Protect offers:

Expanded security beyond basic signatures to ensure adequate controls
F5 app‑security technology for efficacy superior to ModSecurity and other WAFs
Confidently run in “blocking” mode in production with proven F5 expertise
High‑confidence signatures for extremely low false positives
Increases visibility, integrating with third‑party analytics solutions
Integrates security and WAF natively into the CI/CD pipeline
Deploys as a lightweight software package that is agnostic of underlying infrastructure
Facilitates declarative policies for “security as code” and integration with DevOps tools
Decreases developer burden and provides feedback loop for quick security remediation
Accelerates time to market and reduces costs with DevSecOps‑automated security

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

Buyer's Guide

Azure Web Application Firewall vs. NGINX App Protect

December 2024

Free Report: Azure Web Application Firewall vs. NGINX App Protect

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We monitor all Web Application Firewall (WAF) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.