We performed a comparison between F5 Advanced WAF and Microsoft Azure Application Gateway based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, F5 Advanced WAF seems to be the superior solution. Our reviewers find that the questions concerning Microsoft Azure Application Gateway’s stability and scalability make it a riskier investment than F5 Advanced WAF.
"The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its grand unity of the implementation, where you have the freedom to configure based on how it affects your use case or your organization. With the default setting of implicit deny, you can gradually start defining and deploying the tool to align with your environment, whether it is outdated, recent, or futuristic. This allows you to customize the solution to protect you from threat actors. You have the ability to define what the advanced threat act should do - whether it should alert, deny, or both - and it will deliver based on your configuration. Unlike other online solutions, F5 Advanced WAF provides flexibility to deliver to your unique environment the way you want."
"F5 technical support is excellent. They are experts who always provide the right solution, and they understand the problem. Their response and resolution times are good."
"This solution inspects your traffic and based on that, automatically create distinct qualities for you, so you can add this to the policy already created. That's what I like most."
"The product has valuable features for load balancing, monitoring tools, and HPXpress services."
"It's scalable and very easy to manage."
"My favorite feature of F5 is the ability to play around with the ciphers. I also like the ability to have an immediate display of the support IDs when a real blockage occurs. The protection offered is great."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its ability to have a pool of resources that can distribute your traffic, and that is a plus for me. My company tried to look into a competitor, Imperva, but it was lacking that capability, so F5 Advanced WAF outperforms Imperva."
"It is also quite intuitive and user-friendly. They have several webinars that are actually like labs. You can use these webinars to learn about how to use all features of the product."
"I rate Microsoft Azure Application Gateway's scalability a ten out of ten. My company has more than 1000 users who use it daily."
"The security feature in all the layers of the application is the most valuable."
"Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the performance side of things, which is why we use it."
"We use the product in front-end and back-end applications to do the load balancing smartly."
"The pricing is quite good."
"I like the tool's stability and performance."
"It has a filter available, although we are not currently using it because it is not part of our requirements. But it is a good option and when it becomes part of our requirements we will definitely use it."
"The simplicity of the solution and its ability to integrate easily with others are its most valuable aspects."
"The pricing could be more flexible."
"We usually use a third-party tool for logging and reporting. It would be nice if we could do that right on this solution. They have one, but it's not very stable. Logging and reporting effectively would be a big enhancement."
"The solution's dashboard could be improved. When you're moving from policy to policy, the logs and the integration of the logs in other systems aren't straightforward."
"One thing that can be improved, is to increase the quantity over predefine policy."
"I would say their graphical interface, the GUI. I don't like the GUI as much as before."
"While F5 Advanced WAF does limit the number of partners in certain regions to ensure successful business transactions, they could also benefit from expanding their partnerships and making it easier for more people to learn about and become experts in F5 Advanced WAF. By doing so, they could increase the reach and exposure of their solution, similar to how Cisco has become widely recognized in the security industry."
"Its price should be better. It is expensive."
"The BIG-IQ is supposed to centralize the management for all of the boxes but it's not very effective."
"We have encountered some issues with automatic redirection and cancellation, leading to 502 and 504 gateway errors. So, I experienced some trouble with containers."
"The solution doesn’t support wildcard-based and regular expression-based rules."
"Application Gateway’s limitation is that the private and the public endpoint cannot use the same port."
"Needs easier integration with the existing SIAM."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway could improve by allowing features to use more third-party tools."
"The product could be easier to use and implement."
"It is a bit tricky to configure. You've got to have a very specific format to configure it. They should make it a little bit easier to configure. Mapping the certificates into it isn't easy, and it could be better. Currently, you've to write a bit of automation to pull certificates directly to HTTPS."
"The solution has many limitations. You cannot upgrade the VPN to the application gateway. So I started with version one, which has limited capabilities, and they provided version two. And unfortunately, I cannot upgrade from v one to v two like other services. So I have to decommission the version one and create a new one with version two. Also the version one was complex with the certificates uploading the SQL certificates."
More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Pricing and Cost Advice →
F5 Advanced WAF is ranked 2nd in Web Application Firewall (WAF) with 55 reviews while Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is ranked 3rd in Web Application Firewall (WAF) with 40 reviews. F5 Advanced WAF is rated 8.6, while Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is rated 7.2. The top reviewer of F5 Advanced WAF writes "Flexible configuration, reliable, and highly professional support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway writes "High stability with built-in rules that reduce alerts and are easy to configure". F5 Advanced WAF is most compared with Fortinet FortiWeb, AWS WAF, Imperva Web Application Firewall, F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, whereas Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is most compared with AWS WAF, Citrix NetScaler, Azure Front Door, Cloudflare Web Application Firewall and HAProxy. See our F5 Advanced WAF vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report.
See our list of best Web Application Firewall (WAF) vendors.
We monitor all Web Application Firewall (WAF) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
