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Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Symantec Web Application Firewall 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
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Cloudflare Web Application ...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (7th)
Symantec Web Application Fi...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (44th)
 

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.
SachidDoshi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer1231533 - PeerSpot reviewer
An excellent up-to-date data repository handling external threats successfully
We have multiple applications that we wanted to ensure were protected and we chose Symantec for that. I'm the head of IT infrastructure and we are partners with Symantec.  Symantec has specifically helped connect external users to our internal network. It has also enabled us to ensure that those…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"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."
"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."
"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."
"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."
"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."
"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
"The product has a valuable security control functionality."
"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"It is configurable via API."
"The solution has an up-to-date data repository to deal with external threats."
"The setup was straightforward."
"The interface is user-friendly."
 

Cons

"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."
"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."
"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."
"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"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."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"The reporting could be more granular."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."
"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."
"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."
"I'm not convinced that it's necessary the best solution going forward in the future."
"Sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."
"It would be an improvement if the management dashboards were not reliant upon Java."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"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."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The price is reasonable."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The solution is expensive."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"It is not too pricey."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
23%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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...
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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Cloudflare WAF
Symantec WAF, Blue Coat Protecting Web Applications
 

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.
crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
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Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.