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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler 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)
NetScaler
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st), Network Management Applications (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (10th)
 

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.
DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU - PeerSpot reviewer
A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking
Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."
"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 solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"The tool is user-friendly."
"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."
"The stability of the solution is good. I don't think we've experienced bugs, crashes, or glitches."
"Data leak prevention is very important and ensures protection against attacks."
"It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs in our environment."
"We use Barracuda to protect the application. That's the main feature we use it for."
"The most valuable features are the client VPN and content filtering."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward, especially if you enlist assistance."
"Our customers value the solution's simplicity."
"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 easy to configure."
"It is a complete solution for those looking for an all-in-one."
"Unified Gateway allows me to provide secure external access to applications for suppliers and customers while requiring Multi-Factor Authentication."
"Manageability and visibility are good."
"The load balancing feature and the fact that you can do context switching in the WAF are the most valuable. We majorly use it for load balancing, but we also use it for context switching in the WAF. It is also robust and very easy to work with and manage."
"The GSLB feature allows us to move services between data centers. We can do this in either a planned or unplanned manner. We have experienced service provider outages at our primary data center and GSLB will kick in to automatically modify DNS records to point to a secondary data center (active/passive). We also make use of GeoIP information to point clients to the closest data center for accessing applications."
"It allows students to access required software for their studies."
"NetScaler Gateway: Why? Availability/Security: We delivered more than 200 applications thru Xenapp. This feature give us the possibility to deliver the applications anywhere. Currently, 30% of access is made through our NetScaler Gateway (Internet connections)."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."
"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."
"There are some issues with the CDN services."
"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."
"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."
"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"Latencies are always a problem."
"The reporting aspect of the solution needs improvement. I don't find that it's very good. They could do some work on it to make it much better. It's not that the reporting isn't secure. It's just that I would prefer to store my reports for an extended period of time. Right now, that's not possible and I'd prefer it if that could change. I also would say that the reports themselves are expensive."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"As a service, Barracuda needs to host in Saudi Arabia, as they currently don't have this functionality."
"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."
"The incident reporting needs to be improved."
"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 solution could use more reports."
"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."
"Citrix ADM needs to improve on its additional features and reduce the communication ports."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The setup was not simple."
"Improvements are needed to address the issue of machines becoming unregistered, ensuring stability for end users. Troubleshooting with Citrix support can be challenging, so clearer diagnostics would be beneficial. As for global server load balancing, it works well on-premises, depending on user volume and service stability. Overall, it's satisfactory for us."
"When a new version comes out, sometimes, my existing configuration gets wiped out. They should work on this so that my existing configuration doesn't get impacted with an upgrade to a newer version. There could also reduce frequent firmware upgrade activities and have a stable version so that once we upgrade it, we don't have to upgrade it for two to three years."
"The configuration is complex, and only one or two people know how to assist when problems arise."
"I think there is always room for improvement in this type of solutions. For example, I think the GUI should be easy to understand."
"ADC from Citrix has added functionalities from other products and the usability is very difficult for someone who is used to a simpler user interface, it's a little bit of a mess to use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"We are using the free version."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"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."
"They only offer a yearly licensing plan."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The pricing is less compared to other web applications."
"The product pricing was competitive for the value it offers regarding security features."
"They have competitive pricing."
"Barracuda costs us $8,000 per year. Barracuda costs $20,000 for a full subscription, when you try to protect multi-site infrastructure, in different geographical zones and for different data centers. If you have only one site, Barracuda will be cheaper."
"You can do CapEx and then a yearly monthly fee, or you can do a subscription model, whether that's one month, month-to-month, or three-year subscription model."
"The pricing for Citrix Web App and API Protection is unreasonable. I don't know the exact price, but I heard it's tens of thousands and it's a bit too much for the small country I live in."
"For partners, NetScaler is not as expensive price-wise versus F5."
"The licensing costs for this solution vary depending on which model is being used."
"There isn't much of a difference between the cost of Citrix and that of other similar solutions."
"For the specific use case that my customers primarily engage with, I would give the pricing a rating of seven out of ten."
"It's not for startups or SOHO."
"It is an enterprise solution. Thus, its costs are reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
 

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 Citrix ADC?
The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?
After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...
What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?
Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall
 

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
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
823,795 professionals have used our research since 2012.