Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs HAProxy comparison

Barracuda Web Application F...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Barracuda Web Application Firewall and HAProxy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, F5 and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF).

To learn more, read our detailed Web Application Firewall (WAF) Report (Updated: October 2024).

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

October 2024

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Helped 814,649 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Barracuda Web Application F...

Average Rating

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF) (15th)

HAProxy

Average Rating

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (4th), Service Mesh (5th)

Mindshare comparison

Barracuda Web Application Firewall and HAProxy aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Barracuda Web Application Firewall is designed for Web Application Firewall (WAF) and holds a mindshare of 2.0%, down 2.2% compared to last year.
HAProxy, on the other hand, focuses on Application Delivery Controllers (ADC), holds 12.9% mindshare, down 13.3% since last year.

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Carlo Bertini

It consultant and Project Manager/ CTO technology officer at Cabar at Cabar SRL

Sep 8, 2023

Provides strong issue discovery capabilities; enhance the security parameters of web applications and suitable for medium to large enterprises

The Barracuda support depends. Sometimes, they solve the issue promptly, but normally, they are not so fast and are not entirely focused on the problem. For example, sometimes I write many requests on the tickets, asking for one, two, three, or four steps and asking for one to three resolutions. Often, they respond with only one or two. So, I need to push again and again. In other cases, I ask questions and get positive feedback immediately, depending on who the technician is. Barracuda has engineers in the USA, UK, and other countries, so it depends on the technician's location and expertise. So, I am not completely satisfied, but sometimes it is okay, and sometimes it is not okay. So, depending on the region and depending on the person who actually receives these tickets, the technical support could be more knowledgeable. So they may need some training or education for the entire staff to respond immediately without any delays. Often, it happens that they respond because they need to, not because they understand the technology I'm using. So they respond just because it's required by the service level agreement, which specifies a response time within four hours. But this is just a response, not a resolution of the case. Sometimes, the response is within the agreed time, but the solution takes much longer.

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Mehdi El Filahi

Co-Founder at tenekit

Apr 17, 2024

Useful for for small and quick load-balancing tasks

What I like best about the product is its simplicity and speed. When you need to set up a load balancer quickly, HAProxy offers options like sticky sessions and round-robin. It's also fast to configure, including adding SSL for security. While it may have fewer options than other solutions like F5, HAProxy gets the job done for basic load-balancing tasks. The reliability features of HAProxy were particularly useful in a scenario where I needed to test load balancing between two Tomcats. Since these domains were inaccessible, I set up a third Docker with HAProxy, which had access to the Tomcat domains. I then configured HAProxy to handle the load balancing. This setup allowed the client to interact with HAProxy. The solution's integration with other elements is easy.

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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 multiple security features. There are machine learning features and great URL encryption. It also offers multi-protocol support against DDoS attacks."

"The updating and signature features are my primary use case for the solution. These features are beneficial to my organization."

"What I like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall is its availability. I also like that it's an easy-to-use solution."

"We use Barracuda to protect the application. That's the main feature we use it for."

"The stability of the product is good. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"You don't need help from Barracuda to help with the deployment. The deployment is easy."

"We only need one subscription to be protected against both active DDoS and offline DDoS attacks."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the simplicity of configuration."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall pros

"The solution is effective in managing our traffic."

"The anti-DDOS PacketShield filtering solution (embedded in the physical appliances) as well as the BGP route injection are great features and heavily used."

"The ease of use of the configuration, and great documentation, are the most valuable features for us."

"The feature that I have found the most valuable is that it works for my use case of application load balancing. I'm using it for PeerSense, and it's easy enough for PeerSense."

"I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good."

"Software defined load balancing allows us to dynamically adjust and codify routing decisions. This speeds up development."

"Performance configuration options with threads, processes, and core stickiness are very valuable."

"It is stable. Period. Will not fail unless you do something wrong."

More HAProxy pros

Cons

"The incident reporting needs to be improved."

"It is not stable nor mature."

"I have found F5 more stable than Barracuda Web Application Firewall. They should improve the stability."

"They should improve their features, so they easily compare to the competition."

"They could improve their performance, support, and their upgrades. Their updates used to be good. Their improvements were right on the money but nowadays, the updates are minor."

"The documentation is lacking. It's not like what you'd get if you were using Juniper or Cisco. They need to expand on it and make it more useful."

"The platform's pricing needs improvement."

"Sometimes when we put it in action, we have some blogs that appear as false positives. I think that it's improving. Barracuda should minimize false positives."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall cons

"Documentation could be improved."

"I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit"

"The reconfigurability in terms of the tooling could be improved and maybe an editor plugin can be added."

"The visibility could be improved."

"Pricing, monitoring, and reports can be improved."

"It needs proper HTTP/2 support."

"The configuration should be more friendly, perhaps with a Web interface. For example, I work with the ClusterControl product for Severalnines, and we have a Web interface to deploy the HAProxy load-balancer."

"While troubleshooting, we are having some difficulties. There are no issues when it is running; it is stable and very good; however, if there is a troubleshooting issue or an incident occurs, we will have issues because this is open-source."

More HAProxy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While I would have to check on the price of the solution, I feel it to be okay and it matches the market price."

"The Barracuda Web Application Firewall is quite expensive."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"Our licensing fees are paid annually and the cost is between €600 and €800 (approximately $665.00 to $885.00 USD)."

"The product is inexpensive."

"They have competitive pricing."

"The product pricing was competitive for the value it offers regarding security features."

"The price is reasonable, more so than other products."

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."

"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."

"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."

"The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."

"The price is well worth it. HAProxy Enterprise Edition paid for itself within months, simply due to the resiliency it brings. It was a bit more expensive than we were originally interested in paying, but we are thankful we chose to go with HAProxy."

"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."

"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."

"HAProxy is free open-source software."

More HAProxy 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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814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Educational Organization

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall?

It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs in our environment.

What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?

I use the solution in my company to protect our website.

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

Cost is a bit on the higher side. Big companies can afford it.

Do you recommend HAProxy?

I do recommend HAProxy for more simple applications or for companies with a low budget, since HAProxy is a free, open-source product. HAProxy is also a good choice for someone looking for a stable ...

What do you like most about HAProxy?

The solution is effective in managing our traffic.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HAProxy?

HAProxy is an open-source solution.

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Comparisons

Compared 22% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 16% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

NetScaler vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

Reblaze - part of Link11 vs Barracuda Web Application Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

More Barracuda Web Application Firewall Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs HAProxy

Compared 16% of the time

NGINX Plus vs HAProxy

Compared 14% of the time

NetScaler vs HAProxy

Compared 12% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

Istio vs HAProxy

Compared 10% of the time

More HAProxy Competitors

Product Reports

Barracuda Web Application Firewall

November 2024

Barracuda Web Application Firewall report

Download Barracuda Web Application Firewall product report

Download HAProxy product report

October 2024

Also Known As

No data available

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

Learn More

Barracuda Networks

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Overview

Barracuda Web Application Firewall is a game-changing cloud-connected security solution that enables organizations to safeguard both their applications and their data from an ever-growing array of advanced cyber threats. It offers protection from cyber attacks that target not only data and applications stored on the cloud but also those that are housed on web servers. 43% of the time a breach takes place via a compromised application. Barracuda Web Application Firewall prevents these types of breaches from occurring.

Barracuda Web Application Firewall denies hackers the ability to penetrate your system by using a number of techniques to keep your organization safely insulated. The first method of protection consists of two parts. The first part involves a thorough scanning of all inbound web traffic. This solution monitors everything that comes into the system. It employs IP reputation intelligence, which filters all incoming data. If the source of the data has a bad reputation, it is blocked by the firewall. Administrators now have a way of locking out many common threats that could otherwise compromise sensitive networks. These scans can also allow administrators to protect their systems from within as DLP (Data Loss Prevention) protocols. If any sensitive data attempts to leave, administrators will automatically be alerted and the data will be blocked from exiting.

Barracuda Web Application Firewall can also be set up to apply the AAA (Authentication, Authorization & Accounting) framework to an organization’s network. If an intruder manages to get past the authentication stage, the authorization protocols kick in. After the authorization stage comes accounting, which works by tracking and logging users’ activities so that administrators will be in a position to prevent long-term damage from being done. This three-step process can be implemented without requiring administrators to make changes to their applications.

Key Features

Some of Barracuda Web Application Firewall’s key features include:

The ability to employ adaptive profiling. Administrators will have an easier time enforcing security policies once this feature is enabled. It takes data from safe sources and builds profiles that can be used to create whitelisting protocols that prevent unsafe actions from occurring on the system.
The ability to assess threats in real time. Barracuda Web Application Firewall uses machine learning to detect new threats and attacks as they emerge.
The ability to manage the Barracuda Web Application Firewall system from a single interface. Administrators can manage their Barracuda Web Application Firewall configurations from one centralized location.

Reviews from Real Users

Barracuda Web Application Firewall stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. One of the main ones is the robustness of the solution. Users are given access to a vast variety of security features in a single product.

PeerSpot user Muhammed S., a Presales Solutions Architect at Hilal Computers, notes this when he writes, "The solution offers multiple security features. There are machine learning features and great URL encryption. It also offers multi-protocol support against DDoS attacks."

Other reviewers note that Barracuda Web Application Firewall is user-friendly, easy to set up, stable, and reliable.

HAProxy is considered by many in the industry to be one of the fastest and most popular and trusted software load balancer products in the marketplace today. Organizations are able to immediately deploy HAProxy solutions to enable websites and applications to optimize performance, security, and observability. HAProxy solutions are available to scale to any environment.

HAProxy is an open-source product and has a robust, active, reliable community. The solutions are continually tested and improved on by the community. HAProxy offers a dynamic design to support the most modern architectures, microservices, and deployment environments (appliances, containers, virtual, and cloud).

HAProxy utilizes a cloud-native protocol, which makes it a complete solution for cloud services such as Red Hat OpenShift, OVH, Rackspace, Digital Ocean, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and more. It also can be used as the reference load balancer in OpenStack.

HAProxy Products

HAProxy One: This is a next-gen end-to-end application delivery platform created to secure and streamline modern application architectures. It offers a complete suite of solutions, such as application delivery software, turnkey, and appliance services observed and administered through a central control plane. The product supplies application acceleration, CDN, DDoS, bot management, WAF capabilities, and load balancing.

HAProxy Fusion Control Plane: This product enables organizations to streamline workflows, arrange traffic routing and security protocols, enhance the speed of delivery, and scale out of the organization’s applications. HAProxy Fusion Control Plane offers an intuitive user interface to observe and control the complete product lineup and API for administering numerous fleets of HAProxy Enterprise servers, either in the cloud or on premises.

HAProxy Edge: This product offering is an application delivery network (ADN) that provides a broad array of turnkey application services with amazing scale and complete visibility. Services include application and content acceleration, advanced security, and load balancing.

HAProxy ALOHA Hardware or Virtual Load Balancer: This product is a virtual load balancer or plug-and-play hardware constructed upon HAProxy Enterprise that is designed to support proxying at Layer 4 and Layer 7. It has a user-friendly GUI, simple deployment, and no limit on backend servers, making it a complete product for organizations desiring a reliable system to provide high-end load distribution for critical services.

HAProxy Enterprise Kubernetes Ingress Controller: This product is designed to facilitate smooth traffic flow into a Kubernetes cluster. It is able to automatically discover anomalies and changes in an organization's Kubernetes infrastructure and provide precise distribution of traffic to healthy pods, with no downtime caused by poor pod health or scaling changes. The product comes with an embedded WAF to optimize the security of an organization’s applications running in Kubernetes.

HAProxy Enterprise: This product is the enterprise-class edition of HAProxy offering a dynamic and sturdy code base with next-generation features, an enterprise suite of add-ons, professional services, and trusted support.
- Cluster-wide tracking and rate limiting
- Advanced DDoS and bot management
- Web application firewall
- Reliable expert support
- High performance modules
- Device detection and geolocation
- Real-time dashboard

Reviews from Real Users

“Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind.” - Nathanel S., Platform Architect at SES

“I use HAProxy for individuals who can not buy low balancers. I built NFV in a box and send individuals a pathway into an HAProxy VM. The setup was not difficult; it usually takes a day to complete for a VPC. When it comes to pricing, HAProxy is free.” - Nasir O., Network & Cloud Architect at Koala Compute Inc.

Sample Customers

Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp