

F5 Advanced WAF and Link11 compete in the web application firewall category. Based on features, Link11 appears stronger in automated monitoring and region-specific threat management, while F5 Advanced WAF offers versatile and detailed threat detection. In areas of improvement, Link11 focuses on simplifying rule creation, while F5 Advanced WAF has complexities in integration and pricing.
Features: F5 Advanced WAF features robust network detection intelligence, behavior analysis, and advanced threat signatures, known for its stability and flexible security configurations. It also provides comprehensive attack signatures. Link11 emphasizes real-time monitoring, botnet defense, and API security, excelling in geographic threat management and region-specific traffic defenses.
Room for Improvement: F5 Advanced WAF users report complexity in its user interface and reporting system, integration challenges, pricing, and CPU intensity, requiring advanced knowledge for optimal deployment. Link11 should focus on enhancing rule creation simplicity and strengthening its threat intelligence database.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: F5 Advanced WAF supports hybrid and on-premises deployment, with strong but sometimes slow customer support. Link11 offers a flexible, cloud-centric deployment and receives praise for direct and international support access.
Pricing and ROI: F5 Advanced WAF is seen as a premium solution with significant ROI justified by comprehensive security in enterprise-grade settings. It involves higher upfront and ongoing costs. Link11 offers predictable costs with flexible, negotiated pricing scenarios, a cost-effective option for early-stage investments or scalable needs.
A large volume of malicious traffic was blocked at the WAF layer, preventing issues from reaching the backend servers, which reduced emergency troubleshooting and application team involvement, ultimately lowering operational stress and incident cost savings without requiring additional security tools.
Subscription models offer clearer ROI due to a more competitive pricing scheme.
F5 Advanced WAF protects our organization and provides security, achieving a return on investment.
F5 Advanced WAF provides the insights and notifications I need in terms of reporting and alerting.
Both response time and availability need to be improved.
If there is a bug, the support is usually understanding and resolves issues.
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.
Deployment training for F5 Advanced WAF is lacking and restricts growth by being inaccessible and costly for partners.
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.
Whenever something goes wrong or we have to whitelist anything, it clearly indicates where to go and where I have to make modifications.
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.
Subscription models have competitive pricing, while perpetual licenses involve an upfront higher cost.
The price is affordable and satisfactory.
After implementing F5 Advanced WAF, we saw a significant reduction in web-based attacks such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and automated malicious traffic, allowing us to block real threats before they reached the backend server.
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.
The perpetual license, despite an initial higher cost, lacks transparency regarding support expiration.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| F5 Advanced WAF | 7.8% |
| Link11 | 1.0% |
| Other | 91.2% |

| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 25 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 15 |
| Large Enterprise | 31 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 5 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 3 |
| Large Enterprise | 2 |
F5 Advanced WAF is a web application security solution for financial and government sectors, e-commerce, and public-facing websites. It offers protection against various attacks, including botnets, web scraping, and foreign entities. The solution can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and is often used with other security tools. Its most valuable features include DDoS and DNS attack protection, SSL uploading, anomaly detection, and the ability to input custom rules.
F5 Advanced WAF has helped organizations to expose more services to the public while providing an extra layer of protection, preventing revenue loss, and securing connectivity.
Link11, headquartered in Germany, offers cloud-based IT security services designed to prevent business disruptions, enhancing cyber resilience for IT networks and critical applications globally. Their services benefit industries across Europe, North America, and Asia with comprehensive protection.
Link11 provides a range of security and performance solutions, including Network Security, Web Application & API Protection, and Application Performance solutions. Their offerings encompass Network DDoS protection and an all-in-one WAAP solution, featuring Web Application Firewall, Web DDoS Protection, Bot Management, API Protection, and Secure CDN & DNS. A high-performance global network, monitored 24/7 by the Link11 Security Operations Center, ensures robust defense mechanisms.
What are the key features of Link11?Link11 is suited for industries wanting to protect web applications against Layer 7 DDoS attacks, cross-site scripting, SQL injection, and phishing attempts. Deployed on cloud models, Link11 integrates as a fundamental security layer, offering effective bot management and securing websites with multiple technologies.
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