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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs Imperva DDoS comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Barracuda Web Application F...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (17th)
Imperva DDoS
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
CDN (7th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (23rd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (9th)
 

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.
Carlo Bertini - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
DerrickAkankwasa - PeerSpot reviewer
Provide DDoS protection and better security at effective rate
It is expanding its number of data centers for scrubbing traffic. Currently, there is only one POP for cleaning in South Africa. They might add another POP in North Africa, possibly in Nigeria or Egypt. Latency concerns customers, especially in regions like East and West Africa, where traffic has to travel to South Africa before returning. Increasing the number of POPs across the continent would help address these latency issues and improve overall service. While the platform is already quite strong, there’s always room for improvement, especially in keeping up with emerging trends and new types of attacks. Enhancing security capabilities could be beneficial. Integrating more advanced AI features could significantly improve its effectiveness and help customers leverage these tools more effectively. It would be great to see more focus on AI integration to handle and analyze data more efficiently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."
"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"The solution offers multiple security features. There are machine learning features and great URL encryption. It also offers multi-protocol support against DDoS attacks."
"It's very simple and predictable, because Barracuda provides a vision of the current state of your application. It gives you an understanding of what is happening on your site and any attempts against you at your source. This is the main value that Web Application Firewall provides our company. These aspects are also the main reason for this documentation process."
"The solution is user-friendly and easy to set up."
"What I like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall is its availability. I also like that it's an easy-to-use solution."
"Even when we were upgrading to a new OS, we didn't have any difficulties with the product. The stability is good."
"This product gives us visibility into what is going on in two servers, including connections and sessions, real-time alerts, very good reporting, and KPIs. It makes managing security of a critical server very easy, with a friendly GUI."
"It is stable and the performance is good."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Integration with IBM AS/400 and Db2 is okay."
"Its unique interface for managing security performance and ease of use are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The most valuable features are DDoS protection."
"We have peace of mind that nobody will use malware on us or try to hack our website."
"Real-time monitoring is also a great tool, as you may watch several parameters in real time."
"Imperva DDoS helps us automate production. The client had specific requirements for a cloud project in the financial sector."
"An improvement has been to our website: It increases the speed of our response, the capacity of the site, and optimizes the bandwidth.​"
"Incapsula takes care of the CDN infrastructure and bandwidth volume, providing several enterprise "load balancing" features."
 

Cons

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"DNS Management."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."
"I faced an issue when Barracuda decided not to support Azure Stack Hub anymore, which was a significant issue as we had many customers using it on that platform."
"It is not stable nor mature."
"In the Barracuda Web Application Firewall, there should be more affordable options for WAF as a service."
"As most people are aware, the implementation is not easy."
"The incident reporting needs to be improved."
"If you know nothing about networks, then you can't set it up."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"The usability of the interface could be improved."
"Imperva DDoS does not provide version control."
"It needs to be improved every time there are new attacks."
"Imperva now offers add-ons to add functionality, but I would like to see these included in the product, even if it would cost more."
"We would like them to hire people in Sweden because it's quite hard when people are sitting in the UK or Belgium because some of the customers really want them to be local."
"Incapsula services also provides load balancing services for their service IP address environment. So far, with monitoring their services, the IP address was only changed once."
"The weakest point of Imperva is their first level of support, which should be improved. They should also improve the access and security logs viewing directly on the portal. I would like to see better access and security logs through the portal and not only through a SIM solution. Currently, if you want to explore your access and security logs from Imperva, you need a SIM tool or a SIM infrastructure on your side to do it. You can't do it manually or directly through the portal, which is a big problem for us. I had a call yesterday with Imperva for the roadmap, and I just told them this. They agreed that this is an improvement point from their side."
"The rules surrounding the making of web applications could be improved."
"The salespeople tend to exaggerate its capabilities, which can cost you money if you don't verify the information."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"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."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"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."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The price is reasonable."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"While I would have to check on the price of the solution, I feel it to be okay and it matches the market price."
"For small companies, the price is very expensive because the WAF is an enterprise-level application, not intended for smaller businesses. In my opinion, the price is right for enterprise-level use."
"The product is expensive."
"The price of the solution is a little expensive. There is a license for this solution and it can be purchased every one, two, or five years."
"The price is reasonable, more so than other products."
"Our licensing fees are paid annually and the cost is between €600 and €800 (approximately $665.00 to $885.00 USD)."
"The price of this solution is okay."
"They only offer a yearly licensing plan."
"The solution's price is high for small companies."
"The data packages are higher than our needs so we end up paying for data that we don't use."
"It is not expensive compared to the other similar solutions in this category."
"It is a very expensive solution. The price is very high. A lot of customers tell us that they would love to use Imperva more. I have some customers who have 50 websites, but they have only 10 websites on Imperva because of the price. They would love to have all their websites running through Imperva, but they can't. They have to choose the more critical websites to protect because the price is very high. It is a very good product, but it is too expensive. If you buy a plan for 20 megabytes and you don't consume all of your 20 megabytes, it is okay, but if you consume more, you are charged for the superior traffic."
"There is a license or subscription renewal that our customers pay."
"The cost is somewhere around $10,000 a site. For every site, you pay individually. For every DNS entry, you have you pay."
"The license is on a yearly basis."
"Pricing could be more competitive."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
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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
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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 Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
I'm using Barracuda as a web application firewall for any application. It is too smart and user-friendly, making it e...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
On a scale, pricing is nine out of ten. It's a reasonable price for this product.
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.
Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva DDoS and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.