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Exinda vs Symantec Proxy comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Web Application ...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th)
Exinda
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (5th)
Symantec Proxy
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

WAN Optimization Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Exinda6.4%
Steelhead14.7%
Cato SASE Cloud Platform14.4%
Other64.5%
WAN Optimization
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Symantec Proxy1.7%
Zscaler Internet Access10.3%
Cisco Umbrella10.2%
Other77.8%
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
MJ
Senior Engineer, Team Lead, Network Operations at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Allows us to have better control over our network by shaping traffic more gently
There might be room for improvement in the speed and throughput of some of their devices. They're getting a bit slow on some of the bigger devices. It would be helpful if there were some sort of an ISP model. Also, while I don't think it would be possible for them to do, it would be better if they had the Citrix support and the visualization to visualize your network. Besides that, it fits its purpose as a shaper and accelerator. Some people would say things like, "Add a firewall to it," but I disagree. I think a firewall's a firewall, and Exinda's a shaper and accelerator.
Ganesh Basappa - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Granular control for web traffic with enhanced content inspection, but support needs improvement
There are many use cases in terms of content inspection, such as having granular control for file type extensions when trying to download file types by default. It depends on the requirements, and based on that, we customize policies. We have deployed it in an Azure infrastructure, and we have…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."
"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."
"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"The impact of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's integration with existing web technologies on our site's performance and security measures is quite great, actually."
"Cloudflare has positively impacted my organization by making it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple clients; I can easily go in and access their accounts, make changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."
"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."
"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to create policies where we can tailor them to the customer. It enables us to prioritize apps and users for bandwidth."
"The benefit that we have seen is that if we turn it off, people notice that the applications are running slowly."
"Compared to some of the stuff that I've used a decade ago, the Exinda solution is night and day."
"Customer Service: Top notchTechnical Support: Top notch"
"Getting Exinda was a life saver for our voice traffic"
"It has the ability to prioritize, providing an automatic optimization. I can put it in a hierarchy and know that certain devices will be prioritized over others. It is able to identify the traffic. It can pick out whether if its a Zoom meeting (or something like that), then it's able to put that somewhere in the hierarchy based on the traffic type."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to create policies where we can tailor them to the customer; it enables us to prioritize apps and users for bandwidth."
"One of the great things for us is that the solution works, and it works whether you're looking at it or not."
"This is a stable and robust solution with many features."
"The most valuable features are content inspection, caching, SSL encryption, decryption, WAN optimization, and more."
"The Symantec antivirus suite and the proxy component are the most valuable feature, and that's probably why management decided to purchase the solution."
"The product is very good, and the URL filtering database is great."
"The most valuable feature is the caching."
"The developer's assistance is valuable, enabling seamless integration which allows for a comprehensive view of categories, even if not certified by the link."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the URL database, malicious URLs, policies, and policy creation."
"The product is very good, and the URL filtering database is great."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."
"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"Its stability could be better."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."
"The updating of applications that the system knows about could be a little quicker. For example, Zoom had been out for a while, but it took a while for it to show up as an application that Exinda could natively handle. We had to write some things in order to handle Zoom, initially."
"A lot of working with this solution is really intuitive. I have picked it up mostly on my own. I'm sure that there are some things that maybe I hadn't thought of or really hadn't considered, and I think it would be good just to promote some day courses. I don't really see a whole lot that comes out for Exinda as far as training or informational sessions through our normal resellers. It would be cool to know more about the solution by utilizing educational resources or even have Exinda promoted a bit better."
"GFI's technical support for this solution could be better. It's hard to find information about Exinda, directly."
"The areas for improvement would be around the support service that GFI provides."
"Fundamentally sound with WAN acceleration, but needs to expand the range of accelerated applications."
"It should improve the quality of service."
"In terms of improvement, one thing that has always frustrated me about it is that when you look at real-time monitoring, you can only filter it by IP address. You can't filter it by anything else. It would be good if we could filter by VLAN."
"One of the concerns that we've had with Exinda is the fact that ever since GFI took over Exinda, they haven't really put in much time into actually developing the product."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"The initial setup can be somewhat complex, and deploying the system can take some time."
"The solution is quite complex."
"The initial setup is actually quite complex to install because our users don't have admin rights on the boxes and there's no remote install option by an administrator."
"There are performance issues with all of the proxies. In the middle of the project, it will cause some delay."
"Pricing is difficult to specify as Broadcom sells platforms that include multiple products, making it hard to determine the exact cost for the proxy component. Forcepoint sold only proxies, which was easier to measure."
"AI features could potentially improve the proxy by helping build rules more efficiently, suggesting unused rules, and enhancing preference setting."
"Marketing needs improvement in Symantec Proxy, as it needs to catch up in sales here in the Asia Pacific region. Symantec Proxy licensing renewal also needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"It is priced well for the market, for what it needs to do."
"The pricing and licensing are pretty fair and really competitive. There are other SD-WAN solutions that are pretty costly because they build in a service where they'll manage it for you, which is really great. I don't know if Exinda has that option as well. However, we are a small shop and cost-conscious. For things like this, we are accustomed to self-managing and this solution suits us just fine. For a tool that gives you, like the graphs and reporting, it has a fair price point."
"Our cost was based on a three-year upfront CapEx contract."
"Licensing is based on a subscription."
"The price is too expensive compared with that of another solution."
"The product is highly priced. There are no additional costs apart from the standard licenses."
"Symantec Proxy has different expiry dates and renewal dates, which is a problem, so Broadcom should improve the licensing renewal process for the solution."
"There is a different department that looks into the licensing part."
"It's expensive. Clients often go to other products."
"The price of the solution is reasonable compared to others on the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Proxy?
Pricing is difficult to specify as Broadcom sells platforms that include multiple products, making it hard to determi...
What needs improvement with Symantec Proxy?
AI features could potentially improve the proxy by helping build rules more efficiently, suggesting unused rules, and...
What is your primary use case for Symantec Proxy?
I use Symantec Proxy for surfing the internet from internal to external networks. My endpoints do not have direct acc...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
Blue Coat Encrypted Traffic Management, ProxySG Appliance
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
UMass Dartmouth, MLB Network, R&R Ice Cream, Savills, Manhattan School of Music, Blum Shapiro, Cincinnati Public Schools, City of Richmond, Genting Casinos, The Salvation Army, VoIP Unlimited, Frontier Silicon, Lakeshore Toltest, CTI Foods
Jefferies
Find out what your peers are saying about Riverbed, Cato Networks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in WAN Optimization. Updated: May 2026.
894,998 professionals have used our research since 2012.