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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs NGINX App Protect comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)
Barracuda Web Application F...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (17th)
NGINX App Protect
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (15th), Container Security (27th), API Security (7th)
 

Featured Reviews

HA
Owner at Hga consulting
Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility
I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.
Shahzad Abid - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Information Technology at College of Physicians & Surgeons Pakistan
Has protected our legacy applications effectively but has required constant manual filtering due to false positives
I assess the effectiveness of the machine learning-driven threat detection in Barracuda Web Application Firewall as sometimes behaving abnormally, often showing me false positive attacks, so I have to fix these attacks from time to time. From a stability point of view, I would definitely rate Barracuda Web Application Firewall a seven out of ten. There is definitely some room for improvement; nothing is perfect in the world. I am not satisfied with the technical support from Barracuda. I am somewhat disappointed with the technical support that I have received so far. Whenever I generate a ticket for my problem, it goes to the Indian support team, and they all the time start with the most junior team member, consuming all my precious time. At the end, I have to close that ticket without any satisfactory solution. I have complained that they should shift my support to any other region because I don't need Indian support; they are simply pathetic and not up to mark. To improve Barracuda Web Application Firewall, customers should be given ongoing training opportunities regarding the product and its features. I am not familiar with many features that are available, only using those which are necessary for my applications. I believe Barracuda must provide clearer product information or training sessions to make it more user-friendly, as sometimes its interface can be rigid and lacking in helpful resources or user tutorials about its features. For it to get closer to a ten, I think advanced reporting is missing because, as I mentioned earlier, there are many false positive events being recorded. Often, when I analyze these attacks, they turn out to be genuine customers or users interacting with my product, but Barracuda tags them as attackers. Reducing false positives must be a priority.
JP
Project Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Blocking IPs and detecting bots enhances security for medical websites
I was researching products like NGINX App Protect and F5 Advanced WAF for long-term options. I have some use for such a solution, but probably not before next year Detecting bots and blocking IPs have proven effective for securing applications. We were able to block groups of IP addresses that…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."
"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"Since implementing Barracuda, I sleep smoothly knowing I have protection."
"The most valuable feature is the rule set."
"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."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Web Application Firewall include advanced bot protection, DDoS protection, and addressing the top ten vulnerabilities."
"One of the strongest points is its robust issue discovery capabilities. Barracuda invests significant efforts in identifying and resolving issues. They have multiple products that work in tandem to perform these checks, which is beneficial because it automates security updates. This is the primary reason I recommend it to my customers."
"It is stable and the performance is good."
"Setup of this solution is straightforward. It's a stable and scalable solution, with good performance and fast technical support."
"The customer service and support are exceptional, and I would give them a ten out of ten."
"WAF is useful to track mitigation, inclusion, prevention, and the parametric firewall."
"It has the best documentation features."
"We were looking for a product that is capable of complete automation and a container based solution. It's working."
"It is a stable solution."
"Overall, I rate NGINX App Protect between eight and nine."
"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is the reverse proxy."
"The tool is not complex and is very user-friendly."
"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."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"Technical support is lacking."
"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"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."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"Latencies are always a problem."
"The usability of the interface could be improved."
"In the Barracuda Web Application Firewall, there should be more affordable options for WAF as a service."
"Barracuda Web Application Firewall’s scalability needs improvement."
"There are false positives that I am receiving when compared to other WAFs. The issues with false positives affect client transactions, leading to complaints about blocked transactions."
"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."
"There are some vulnerabilities that are reported across the tools offered by Barracuda for some devices, which need to be taken care of from an improvement perspective."
"The GUI needs to be improved because it sometimes hangs and needs to be restarted."
"They should improve their features, so they easily compare to the competition."
"Its technical support could be better."
"It doesn't have more advanced features like no false-positive security, which you can configure in Advanced WAF."
"Right now, the tool doesn't provide an option revolving around update feeds, specifically the signature update option in the UI."
"The solution needs to be improved in the e-commerce portal."
"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."
"It would be better if it were easier to implement and if there was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service, to avoid disruptions after implementation."
"The dashboard could provide a more comprehensive view of the status of the connections."
"They could provide a better user interface."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 price is reasonable."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"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."
"Our licensing fees are paid annually and the cost is between €600 and €800 (approximately $665.00 to $885.00 USD)."
"The product is expensive."
"They only offer a yearly licensing plan."
"The product is inexpensive."
"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 pricing is reasonable."
"The Barracuda Web Application Firewall is quite expensive."
"The licensing fees for this solution are pretty expensive for what it does, but there is no alternative."
"There is a license needed to use NGINX App Protect."
"The product's price is high."
"NGINX App Protect is expensive."
"Our licensing costs are about $40,000 a year."
"NGINX is not expensive."
"The price of NGINX App Protect is not much different from the products that fall under the leader category of Gartner Magic Quadrant."
"There is a monthly or annual subscription to use NGINX App Protect. There are not any additional costs to the subscription."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise11
 

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 am not using the API protection feature right now because I don't host any APIs through Barracuda Web Application F...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
At the time I was acquiring Barracuda Web Application Firewall, I found it costly compared to other products. To over...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?
I don't know the pricing yet because in my other project, I was not part of the buying side and I was just starting t...
What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?
It would be better if it were easier to implement and if there was more information from F5 regarding hardware requir...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
NGINX WAF, NGINX 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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. NGINX App Protect and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.