Exinda vs Symantec Proxy comparison

The compared GFI and Broadcom solutions aren't in the same category. GFI is ranked #5 in WO , and holds a 5.7% mindshare in the category. Broadcom is ranked #12 in WSG , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of GFI users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Exinda and Symantec Proxy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Riverbed, Cato Networks, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in WAN Optimization.

To learn more, read our detailed WAN Optimization Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

WAN Optimization

April 2026

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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 Web Application ...

Mindshare comparison

WAN Optimization Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Exinda	5.7%
Cato SASE Cloud Platform	16.4%
Aryaka Unified SASE Platform	14.7%
Other	63.2%

WAN Optimization

Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Symantec Proxy	1.8%
Cisco Umbrella	10.9%
Zscaler Internet Access	10.9%
Other	76.4%

Secure Web Gateways (SWG)

Featured Reviews

Dean Barisic

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.

Read full review

Marek Jaworski

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.

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Ganesh Basappa

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…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."

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

"This solution does a good job of preventing web application attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting attacks."

"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."

"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."

"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."

"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."

"This is a good product; it's reliable and scales well."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"A customer can either buy 50 Mb with us or 50 Mb with somebody else, but they'll get a 70 Mb feel with us because we can shape it a little bit better."

"You can use Exinda as a network orchestrator so you can be sure that the throughput is managed well and everything gets what it needs."

"The most valuable features are the shaper, accelerator, and the reporting... it will shape the traffic better than, for example, a Cisco, because it's more gentle on the shaping side of things. Suppose you were selling a 20-meg link. Because you can shape to the nth degree of traffic, the 20-meg link feels like about a 30 to 40-meg link."

"Compared to some of the stuff that I've used a decade ago, the Exinda solution is night and day."

"Exinda can show you which product uses how much throughput and can help you manage it."

"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 provide very granular classes of service. That's important because it allows us to prioritize certain traffic types over others, to a very granular level."

"Getting Exinda was a life saver for our voice traffic"

More Exinda pros

"The content that we are getting is very good. Content caching is also supported."

"The content that we are getting is very good, and content caching is also supported."

"The solution is scalable."

"The CPL code is the best feature of the solution."

"It enables us to manage bandwidth for users based on their privilege levels. For example, if a user wants to use a certain application or resource, we can provide access based on their privileges."

"The proxy is valuable due to its reputation and categorization features for sites, which assist in blocking malicious sites."

"The tool's most valuable features are content-to-content filtration and SCCM protection."

"What I found most valuable in Symantec Proxy is that it doesn't have any limitations. It also has a simple configuration, with only one window pane, unlike Zscaler, which has multiple window panes. Deploying the agent is also more straightforward in Symantec Proxy."

More Symantec Proxy pros

Cons

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

"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."

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

"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."

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

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

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."

"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."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"What I don't like is the fact that I haven't purchased the overall management interface. That is the interface that allows you to manage multiple Exindas. Personally, I think Exinda should provide that for free. I think that if you buy more and more Exinda boxes, you shouldn't then have to incur a charge for the overall management software. While I can manage each Exinda separately, if they provided me with the overall management platform for free that would probably encourage me to buy more appliances."

"The areas for improvement would be around the support service that GFI provides."

"It should improve the quality of service."

"The stability was terrible in version 7.0 but it's been good since version 7.2."

"GFI's technical support for this solution could be better. It's hard to find information about Exinda, directly."

"Creating the custom application is a bit awkward. I kind of have to guess my way through it sometimes."

"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."

"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."

More Exinda cons

"Activating the SSL inspection is one of the challenges. We are currently moving to the O365 cloud, and one of the challenges is the performance when all of our users are connected to O365 by a proxy."

"The user interface could be improved, and the price could be lower as well."

"The solution is quite complex."

"The solution could improve by having better documentation."

"Prior to the Broadcom purchase, every appliance was application based, but now they have one ISG device and on top of it multiple applications are running. It has a single point of failure. If your device goes down, all of the applications would be down."

"Support response time and case resolution could be improved."

"Technical support is an area that requires some improvement."

"My experience was horrible using this solution. I would not advise anyone to use it, there are a lot of improvements needed."

More Symantec Proxy cons

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

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

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

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

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

"It is not too pricey."

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

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"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."

"It is priced well for the market, for what it needs to do."

"It's expensive. Clients often go to other products."

"The solution is very expensive."

"The product is highly priced. There are no additional costs apart from the standard licenses."

"There are no licensing fees required."

"There is a different department that looks into the licensing part."

"Licensing is based on a subscription."

"In terms of cost, it is expensive. Its pricing has been a challenge for us since its acquisition by Broadcom."

"The price is too expensive compared with that of another solution."

More Symantec Proxy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Construction Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

30%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	1
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	12

Questions from the Community

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

The price of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is reasonable.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

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What do you like most about Symantec Proxy?

We can address and rectify issues promptly, resulting in consistently positive outcomes.

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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...

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What needs improvement with Symantec Proxy?

AI features could potentially improve the proxy by helping build rules more efficiently, suggesting unused rules, and...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 7% of the time

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Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

Radware Cloud WAF Service vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Compared 5% of the time

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Steelhead vs Exinda

Compared 30% of the time

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform vs Exinda

Compared 29% of the time

Noction IRP vs Exinda

Compared 24% of the time

Sangfor WANO vs Exinda

Compared 16% of the time

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Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway vs Symantec Proxy

Compared 17% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Symantec Proxy

Compared 14% of the time

Cisco Web Security Appliance vs Symantec Proxy

Compared 10% of the time

McAfee Web Gateway Cloud Service vs Symantec Proxy

Compared 7% of the time

Aruba EdgeConnect SD-WAN Platform vs Symantec Proxy

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

April 2026

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

Exinda

April 2026

Download Exinda product report

Buyer's Guide

Symantec Proxy

March 2026

Download Symantec Proxy product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

No data available

Blue Coat Encrypted Traffic Management, ProxySG Appliance

Overview

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

Exinda is designed to help Network Managers solve pressing IT problems in today's complex network. Our award winning technology combines interactive analytics, an intelligent recommendation engine and powerful actions like shaping and optimization, all in one solution.

GFI

Symantec Proxy is designed to provide web security, web access control, and secure web gateway functionalities for organizations. It helps protect against web-based threats, enforce web usage policies, and provide secure access to internet resources.

Symantec Proxy Benefits:

Easy to use
Comprehensive security features
Ability to block malicious websites and applications
Efficient management of network traffic
Scalable and compatible with various operating systems and devices
Highly rated customer support and technical assistance

Symantec Proxy Features:

Web Filtering: Symantec Proxy offers web filtering capabilities to control and manage web access based on predefined categories or custom policies.
Malware Protection: The solution incorporates malware detection and prevention mechanisms to identify and block web-based threats, such as malware, viruses, and phishing attacks.
URL Filtering: Symantec Proxy uses URL filtering to categorize and assess the reputation of web domains and URLs in real-time.
SSL/TLS Inspection: The proxy solution supports SSL/TLS decryption and inspection to examine encrypted web traffic for potential threats or policy violations.
Data Loss Prevention (DLP): Symantec Proxy may include data loss prevention capabilities to prevent the unauthorized exfiltration of sensitive data through web channels.
User Authentication and Access Control: The solution supports user authentication and access control mechanisms to enforce user-based policies and provide secure internet access.
Reporting and Analytics: Symantec Proxy provides reporting and analytics capabilities to monitor web usage, user activities, security events, and compliance violations.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Symantec Proxy users.

PeerSpot user, Consultant at a financial services firm, says that Symantec Proxy "...enables us to manage bandwidth for users based on their privilege levels. For example, if a user wants to use a certain application or resource, we can provide access based on their privileges."

PeerSpot user, General Manager & founder at a engineering company, writes that Symantec Proxy has "A complex deployment, no proper user reporting, and a proxy component that works."

Muhammad Salahuddin, Unit Head - Network and Security Solutions at FPM Solutions, states that Symantec Proxy has "Good URL filtering but is expensive and doesn't have good technical support services."

Broadcom

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: April 2026.

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