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F5 Advanced WAF vs Microsoft Azure 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.6
Cloudflare WAF offers quick ROI, crucial protection for e-commerce, saves bandwidth, and balances cost with valuable free features.
Sentiment score
7.6
F5 Advanced WAF boosts ROI by enhancing security, reducing overhead, and protecting assets in sectors like finance and banking.
Sentiment score
6.1
Microsoft Azure is favored for reducing costs, offering flexible scalability, and enhancing service reliability while shifting expenses to operational.
My experience with the pricing or licensing of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is that many features can be accessed for free, so the pricing is definitely reasonable.
Owner at Hga consulting
Time savings in daily operations come from the automatic learning and signature update reducing the need for constant manual rule management, allowing the security and network teams to spend significantly less time handling false positive application-related escalations.
Cyber Security Consultant at ProTechmanize
Subscription models offer clearer ROI due to a more competitive pricing scheme.
Global Channel Alliances Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The amount of attacks it protects against is immense, more than F5 Advanced WAF itself costs.
Security Solutions Architect at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
The value for money is good, and Microsoft Azure has positively impacted our operational costs.
IT Support Specialist at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi
When we use Microsoft Azure, it provides enhanced security from our perspective, though I am not certain about the financial return on investment or benefits for our users as I do not have that information.
Head Of Security Management at Ipko Telecommunications
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
Cloudflare WAF support is mixed; responsive for some, but Indian customers face call availability and administrative issues.
Sentiment score
6.9
F5 Advanced WAF's support is professional and helpful, though response times vary based on service level and issue priority.
Sentiment score
6.5
Microsoft Azure's support is responsive and knowledgeable, but speed and accessibility vary with the service level purchased.
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to contact them.
Owner at Hga consulting
The technical support of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between five and seven at maximum.
IT Manager at Amla Commerce
Both response time and availability need to be improved.
Project Manager at IBM
F5 Advanced WAF provides the insights and notifications I need in terms of reporting and alerting.
Cybersecurity Team Leader at EMAK For Computer Manufacturing (ECM)
If there is a bug, the support is usually understanding and resolves issues.
CEO at CyberApp
Microsoft needs to engage L3 and L2 in support when specified in service tickets.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
We eventually get the resolution we seek.
Freelancer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would rate their technical support a ten because we have various support channels available.
Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall offers impressive scalability and automated management, but additional features may incur costs for smaller organizations.
Sentiment score
7.5
F5 Advanced WAF is adaptable, scalable, and supports diverse business needs with robust load balancing and cloud capabilities.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Azure is highly rated for its scalable resource management, suitable for businesses of all sizes and workloads.
The scalability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between 8 to 9, as it depends upon the use cases and what exactly the client needs.
IT Manager at Amla Commerce
I can run it in HA mode or even divide the traffic volume to the number of instances that I have based on their resource sizing.
Security Solutions Architect at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Microsoft Azure is not just one product; it is a platform with multiple products within Microsoft Azure, and I would say it is scalable and would rate it a nine.
Director at Apeiros Solutions
The scalability of Microsoft Azure is excellent for growth and adaptation, depending on company requirements.
Head Of Security Management at Ipko Telecommunications
It has different kinds of designs that allow for management and deployment in multi-zones, offering both scalable and non-scalable options.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is praised for stability, high performance, effective protection, daily use, and minimal downtime.
Sentiment score
8.4
F5 Advanced WAF is praised for its stability and reliability, handling substantial workloads effectively with minimal bugs.
Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Azure is generally stable with high uptime, though users note occasional issues and some prefer AWS for reliability.
The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10.
IT Manager at Amla Commerce
F5 Advanced WAF has been very reliable and consistent for us; in our on-premise enterprise setup, it has been stable and predictable in day-to-day operations without any unexpected crashes or WAF-related downtime in production.
Cyber Security Consultant at ProTechmanize
F5 Advanced WAF is pretty stable.
Security Solutions Architect at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
We noticed a few critical servers went down due to a Microsoft Azure-end hardware issue.
Senior Associate at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We are now migrating clients without the zoning into mandatory multi-zone deployments, so if one zone goes down, their application and database remain live.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
Microsoft Azure is quite stable, but recent outages and security issues have slightly decreased my confidence.
Works at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudflare WAF needs feature enhancements, better usability, improved support, advanced DDoS protection, and solutions for latency and alerts.
F5 Advanced WAF needs a user-friendly interface, better integration, competitive pricing, and improved automation, scalability, and documentation.
Azure users seek a user-friendly interface, better pricing, enhanced support, compatibility improvements, and additional customization with security enhancements.
The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available.
Network Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
I think they're doing a good job with DNS and as support for any domains that I create or that my clients create, it's mandatory for me to ensure they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider.
Owner at Hga consulting
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.
CTO at PlayNirvana
Deployment training for F5 Advanced WAF is lacking and restricts growth by being inaccessible and costly for partners.
Global Channel Alliances Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Overall, these are not blockers, merely enhancement opportunities, and once tuned, F5 Advanced WAF is very stable and reliable; improving usability, reporting, and onboarding would make it even more effective for larger environments.
Cyber Security Consultant at ProTechmanize
There is excellent clarity in the LTM and the WAF.
Project Manager at IBM
Recent outages and security issues are also a concern, causing a decrease in confidence, especially when partnering with third-party companies.
Works at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
The administrative side is suitable for technical people, but our finance and HR super users find it less user-friendly, as they prefer drag-and-drop features to build their own solutions without contacting IT.
IT Support Specialist at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi
There is still room for improvement in terms of pricing.
Director at Apeiros Solutions
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall offers affordable, flexible pricing with no upfront costs, noted for competitiveness and included support services.
F5 Advanced WAF's high cost is justified by its robust features, appealing to enterprises needing comprehensive protection.
Microsoft Azure's competitive pricing and flexible options attract users, despite concerns about long-term cost predictability and specific charges.
Licensing is capacity-driven, so you need careful planning based on traffic volume and use cases, and adding features such as Bot Protection impacts costs; once licensing is clear and sized correctly, there are no surprises.
Cyber Security Consultant at ProTechmanize
Subscription models have competitive pricing, while perpetual licenses involve an upfront higher cost.
Global Channel Alliances Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The price is affordable and satisfactory.
CEO at CyberApp
Microsoft solutions might be cheaper than some services like AWS, but some solutions may be more expensive depending on the services compared.
Works at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
Copilot is expensive based on recent pricing for our POC.
IT Support Specialist at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi
They have discounts and also provide promotions for a three-year reservation which comes with significant discounts on the infrastructure part.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall provides comprehensive security features, easy setup, scalability, and competitive pricing with praised performance and stability.
F5 Advanced WAF excels in detection, customization, and reporting, providing comprehensive web application security and user-friendly operation.
Microsoft Azure excels in scalability, integration, security, and cost-effectiveness, enhancing development and operational efficiency with robust support.
The custom rules and the geo-redundant geographical rule feature, which allows me to implement geographical rules for customers, add significant value.
Network Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
The best features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall are multiple, including the WAF, rate limiter, and bot attack protection.
IT Manager at Amla Commerce
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools add a layer that we're able to visualize and see before it actually hits the local firewall.
Owner at Hga consulting
The Advanced Attack Signature database is very strong and regularly updated, effectively blocking SQL injections, cross-site scripting, command injections, and file inclusion attacks while allowing selective enabling or disabling of signatures to avoid blocking genuine traffic.
Cyber Security Consultant at ProTechmanize
F5 Advanced WAF offers the best features that are capable of stopping any type of attack, and it is a really reliable and stable product that you can rely on to stop any type of attack.
Cybersecurity Team Leader at EMAK For Computer Manufacturing (ECM)
The perpetual license, despite an initial higher cost, lacks transparency regarding support expiration.
Global Channel Alliances Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Power BI, another feature of Azure, is extremely elegant and has robust features that support forecasting using R and Python.
Works at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees
If Microsoft gives a report, such as a server performance report in a detailed way, which shows what is consuming more CPU, memory, and disk IO, and network utilization during a particular time, it would be helpful to visualize that information.
Senior Associate at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
What is very interesting in terms of scalability is the automatic possibilities to provision some new machines to be able to absorb the number of users we have in the system.
Technical Director / Market Evangelist at CAST Software
 

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) (7th)
F5 Advanced WAF
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
73
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (2nd)
Microsoft Azure
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
323
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (1st), PaaS Clouds (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
F5 Advanced WAF7.5%
Fortinet FortiWeb7.8%
Imperva Application Security Platform7.8%
Other76.9%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure10.2%
Amazon AWS17.1%
Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)9.8%
Other62.9%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Q&A Highlights

reviewer1433010 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Sep 08, 2021
 

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.
Kallamuddin Ansari - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Consultant at ProTechmanize
Application security has protected critical banking services while policy learning minimizes false blocks
F5 Advanced WAF performs well overall, but I have noticed some points that could enhance the solution. Initially, policy tuning could be simpler, as while the learning engine is powerful, initial tuning still requires experienced engineers, which can be challenging for new teams due to the complexity of options and parameters. A more guided and simple tuning workflow would help reduce the learning curve. Additionally, tighter native integration with SIEM or SOAR tools would simplify correlation and investigations for security teams, although log exports are available. Overall, these are not blockers, merely enhancement opportunities, and once tuned, F5 Advanced WAF is very stable and reliable; improving usability, reporting, and onboarding would make it even more effective for larger environments.
Syed Abid  - PeerSpot reviewer
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
Versatile integrations and reliable customer satisfaction elevate cloud service experience
For Microsoft Azure improvement, they need to enhance their support system. The first level of support should be improved in terms of quality and response time. They need more technical support at the first level, as there are currently only one or two technical people among five to ten staff members at this level. They should ensure that the first level support is more technical because we normally provide services to technical users ourselves. When an issue arises, it usually escalates to the second or third level. When facing first level support, they may have limited knowledge and only collect screenshots to forward to their seniors. They should ensure that the first level support is aligned with L2 and L3 to better assist us, especially since we mention in the ticket that our issues are related to specific problems and require that sort of support.
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
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Answers from the Community

reviewer1433010 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Sep 8, 2021
Sep 8, 2021
Yes, it is definitely supported on most cloud platforms. You can find all needed info regarding Azure cloud on this link: https://azuremarketplace.micro
2 out of 3 answers
GS
Security Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Oct 31, 2020
Yes, it is definitely supported on most cloud platforms. You can find all needed info regarding Azure cloud on this link: https://azuremarketplace.micro
MO
Group Head, Enterprise Systems at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Dec 4, 2020
Sure. It's available on the Azure Marketplace
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
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 Business26
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business140
Midsize Enterprise53
Large Enterprise150
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't really use the rule-based logic feature or utilize the WAF's ability to scale as a cloud-based service. I don...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I'm using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall on all my domains and any client domains I have; I set them up with a C...
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 pricing for F5 Advanced WAF is a bit higher, but not that high. I would say for a good amount of revenue-generati...
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?
On the features I wish existed, Big-IP Advanced WAF is primarily an on-premises solution and in that solution, there ...
Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to ...
Which is better - SAP Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure?
One of the best features of SAP Cloud Platform is that it is web-based and you can log in from anywhere in the world....
How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?
I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, F5, Imperva and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: February 2026.
882,637 professionals have used our research since 2012.