Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler comparison

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler

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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

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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SachidDoshi

Senior Enterprise Security Architect at HGS - Hinduja Global Solutions

Offers a huge signature repository and is superiorly effective in mitigating DDoS attacks

The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced, which presently stands at two or three months. The product has a custom rule set that users can modify and manifest as needed. The vendor can probably shorten the learning curve using cutting-edge technologies like AI. The solution provider can also work around the web applications and identify the toolset that needs to be implemented to deploy the solution in less time. The vendor has launched a SASE product that can function with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall, but many improvements are needed in terms of features, such as the web filtering feature, and CASB has not yet been added.

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DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

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.

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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

"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"

"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. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."

"The tool is user-friendly."

"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."

"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."

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

"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."

More Cloudflare pros

"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."

"The initial setup process is simple."

"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."

"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."

"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."

"There is a huge signature repository"

"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."

"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"Load balancing, cache redirection, content switching, all connected with traffic management."

"It is a stable solution. It crashed only once, four years ago...There is a return on investment using the solution."

"It has helped us to increase the resiliency of the application and the performance."

"We use the solution's IP Reputation and bot protection features."

"From a security standpoint, It is a comprehensive solution in a single box."

"The MAS integration for HDX Insight has provided teams with significant visibility into network performance of the user's connection."

"It's very easy to configure."

"One of its most valuable features is fundamental load balancing, supporting both basic load balancing and database teams."

More NetScaler pros

Cons

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

"The pricing could be improved."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."

"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."

"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."

"Latencies are always a problem."

More Cloudflare cons

"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."

"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."

"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."

"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."

"The learning curve was steep initially."

"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."

"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"If one device or switch fails, the failover to another device is not seamless which is painful."

"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the user interface because sometimes it can be complicated."

"It was challenging explaining to customers that it's no longer NetScaler but ADC, and now it's not just ADC but also the rebranding from NetScaler."

"The solution could be more secure."

"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."

"Getting to use some of the advanced tools, even with the assistance of Citrix support, can be challenging."

"Citrix ADC can be really complex. It isn't very simple like some other appliances that I've worked with. You need a lot of skill and experience to manage it. I'm not talking about a year or two. You need at least four years to understand it very well. It is not that easy to learn. They should make it a lot simpler for users to understand the management of it. They can also provide some additional training. The material they have on the site is not sufficient enough for you to understand how to manage it. Their training is expensive, and not everyone has the funds and experience for it. Citrix isn't very popular around these parts of the world. So, it can use some more marketing, sales, enlightenment, and advertisement. These could bring more market for them. Basically, there are just a few companies that really go for Citrix. Most of the companies go for VMware because they marketed themselves more than Citrix. There isn't much difference between Citrix and VMware. VMware is a little more robust than Citrix. Citrix has focused more on desktops rather than server virtualization, and that's the advantage VMware has over Citrix. Citrix also needs to educate and inform users about the infrastructure that is supported with a version. Currently, if the customers don't look at the datasheet, they might miss this important information."

"Currently, it is not easy to use the configuration capabilities of the product."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

"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."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

"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."

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

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."

"It is not too pricey."

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."

"The solution is expensive."

"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"It is true that it is a bit pricey compared to newer technologies coming to the market. For example, A10 is a load balancer that does everything that Citrix can and it does a lot more than what NetScaler does when it comes to the security space, and their prices are so cheap. Every box comes with its own license and support built into it. When you compare that with NetScaler, you have to buy licenses separately, you have to buy a support agreement that is going to be separate. A small NetScaler, even if it is a VPX which is a virtual server, could cost you close to $150,000 to $200,000 dollars. So the pricing is really high."

"We are quite happy with price. It's not too high."

"This product is more expensive than some of the competitors."

"It is an enterprise solution. Thus, its costs are reasonable."

"You get the value for your money. There aren't any hidden fees."

"The solution is undoubtedly very good, but it is expensive."

"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."

"I do not have any experience with the pricing of the product."

More NetScaler 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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842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

15%

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

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 Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The product has a valuable security control functionality.

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

Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before.

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available. This improvement wo...

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...

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 19% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 14% of the time

AWS WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 13% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 9% of the time

Barracuda WAF-as-a-Service vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 12% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 10% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare

Download Cloudflare product report

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

NetScaler

Download NetScaler product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Cloudflare WAF

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

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

Cloudflare

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.

Cloudflare

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

NetScaler

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler