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F5 Advanced WAF vs FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) 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
7.1
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
F5 Advanced WAF
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (2nd)
FortiWeb Web Application Fi...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (16th)
 

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.
Richard Polyak - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy event identification, highly stable, and customizable
Generally, F5 Advanced WAF initial setup is straightforward. However, our environment was more complex and it took us a little more time to customize the solution to where we needed it to be. Additionally, the customization didn't rectify everything. We had to do customization to a certain event to prevent attacks that it wasn't catching, but that might not necessarily be the solutions' fault. It could be more of our setup than the solution's fault and not being able to run the latest version or the newer version could be more of a limitation on our ability to put it in the right place. The whole implementation to have the solution run at the level we wanted it to take approximately five months. Our company's environment is one that we can't put a canned solution in front of. Our environment, cannot have a canned solution that might fit everybody else because of how customized this environment is. It does need a lot of tuning to meet our environment's requirements. I rate the initial setup of F5 Advanced WAF a three out of five.
IgnitiusMolepo - PeerSpot reviewer
Protects internal applications and prevents target attacks
The tool secures our critical applications, especially the mobile money application, which is often targeted by attacks. The solution provides rapid protection and has proven reliable against various threats. It blocks malicious traffic, including dormant and DDoS attacks, and offers integrated Web Application Firewall features to safeguard against compromises. You can set it up for customer-facing web applications because customers don't necessarily know all the IP addresses. It uses a source-based approach where any source accessing the application is defined by its IP. When accessing the application, it checks if they are using HTTP or HTTPS and blocks them if necessary. The tool's performance and security reporting capabilities contribute positively to IT security management. Consolidating management within the solution makes it easier for IT to handle the solutions. All functionalities managed on a single box reduce the number of boxes needed for management.

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 solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"The UI is good."
"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is that it is secure."
"The product has valuable features for load balancing, monitoring tools, and HPXpress services."
"The AOF solution provides numerous security features."
"It protects and mitigates damage in the network."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its extensive set of capabilities for application protection, including DDoS prevention, and its ability to work with Pentesters and external scanners to observe user activity and eliminate false positives."
"F5 Advanced WAF secures our connectivity and combines both the main functions of WAF (balancing and web application security)."
"This solution is an enterprise-class firewall that provides both load-balancing and security."
"The solution isn't too expensive. The license allows you to license what you need and leave out what you don't need."
"The solution's technical support is good."
"FortiWeb Web Application Firewall blocks attacks from application layers and provides protection."
"The solution is transparent and smooth."
"The machine learning feature reduces the false positives."
"The fact that I can log into the platform and see everybody, see logs, authentication failure, and see everything on one platform, is the most valuable feature."
"The tool secures our critical applications, especially the mobile money application, which is often targeted by attacks. The solution provides rapid protection and has proven reliable against various threats."
"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtration, web filter, application filter, and IPS."
"FortiWeb identified potential DDoS attacks and suspicious domain activity, showcasing the value of its machine-learning capabilities."
 

Cons

"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"The pricing could be improved."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"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."
"There should be more ability to rate limit certain scenarios. The majority of the time, it is either on or off. For certain types of use cases, there should be the ability to rate limit, not just enable or disable."
"The reporting could be clearer and embedded to include our movement data."
"The BIG-IQ is supposed to centralize the management for all of the boxes but it's not very effective."
"The overall price of F5 Advanced WAF could improve."
"I would like to see the API Protection improved."
"Users would like to have an additional IP intelligence license to handle this within WAF itself without needing to engage with the SOC team."
"You have to buy another module with an extra license, to have the authentication feature."
"It's sometimes difficult to customize APIs with F5 Advanced WAF."
"FortiWeb Web Application Firewall needs to improve its performance."
"FortiWeb WAF's tuning causes trouble. It's complicated. The solution needs to improve the signature feature as well."
"The documentation is poor."
"There is room for improvement in the support. The response time could be faster. Plus, they ask for a lot of information. It is not easy to get support."
"The technical support team is bad."
"There is room for improvement in pricing, and actually, the price is a bit higher because on the same terms I purchased, the support subscription is so high."
"I don't see any issues with the tool apart from the pricing aspect of the product. The price of the product is an area where improvements are required."
"The product lacks features offered by enterprise-level firewall tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The price is reasonable."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"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."
"The price of the solution is 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."
"After buying the program, you just pay for the support every year."
"F5 bundles up services and the bundle is what you pay for rather than individual components."
"F5 Advanced WAF pricing structure should be adjusted to meet the need of small to medium-sized companies."
"F5 Advanced WAF's pricing is high."
"I would rate the pricing as seven out of ten"
"A yearly license for F5 Advanced WAF is expensive."
"There are different licenses available to use F5 Advanced WAF, such as BT, ASM, and LPM."
"It's more expensive than other solutions and depending on the modules, there can be additional fees."
"FortiWeb Web Application Firewall is not expensive."
"FortiWeb WAF is priced well for customers compared to other vendors' solutions."
"The licensing cost of the product is pretty high compared to other OEMs in the market."
"This product offers two pricing options: a standard package and an advanced package."
"The tool is really expensive."
"It is a cost-effective product. If you need an extra module in the product, there will be an extra cost in addition to the licensing fee."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"I would rate the pricing a four out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

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 F5 Advanced WAF?
It's a fairly easy-to-use and user-friendly tool. My administrators and team also like its ability to customize the r...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced WAF?
The setup cost is normal, yet not the best in terms of the commercial aspect. Other competitors like Fortinet are che...
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?
One improvement for AOF could be focusing on enhancing its AI engine to make it more mature.
What do you like most about FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtration, web filter, application filter, and IPS.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
FortiWeb uses a subscription-based license, but there is also an option for a perpetual license. It's not the cheapes...
What needs improvement with FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
For users not familiar with Fortinet, it could be beneficial to provide more user-friendly analytics and reporting. T...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
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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.
MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
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Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Advanced WAF vs. FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
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