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F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs Zscaler Internet Access comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

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

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (4th), Web Content Filtering (3rd), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (8th), ZTNA as a Service (11th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th)
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Man...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
17th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (8th), SSL VPN (5th), Remote Access (10th), Access Management (10th)
Zscaler Internet Access
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.0%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is 1.1%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zscaler Internet Access is 15.6%, down from 17.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured
Ashish Kumar Rai - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers remote access control, good GUI and easy to configure
I'd suggest improved documentation integration directly within the GUI. Right now, finding comprehensive documentation often requires going to external websites like the community portal. In the APM interface itself, they could add direct hyperlinks to relevant online documentation. This would provide easy access to admin guides and other resources when working within the GUI.
ShanavasVK - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps maintain a consistent posture of internet security while getting rid of VPN and hovering into zero trust
There could be a better way for the tool to categorize the traffic. For example, the tool does exceptions and everything overall. If I want to give guest access or provide access to guest users or any other internet access and if it does not go through the SSL inspection because, in our company, we can't have the root certificate on a device that we don't manage, which can be called out as an exception or an exclusion, but that doesn't provide a proper reflection of the picture of what is happening in the environment. There are granularities bringing it down. The tool I used or still have is Zscaler Cloud Connector to protect the cloud environment, which can have a bit more user-friendly installation and setup, and it would help a lot. The deployment process of Zscaler Cloud Connector needs to be more user-friendly. Improvements are required in the exception category. For example, suppose I report on a monthly basis what the breaches and traffic violating the SSL inspection area are coming from. In that case, I may find that half of them may be coming through some guest network, meaning the tool doesn't differentiate between the guest or normal networks or the corporate networks. Having options to differentiate different networks would be ideal so that it can show a true picture of things to users, as half of the things in the tool are not in our control and are not of our concern.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"iboss is pretty scalable. They provide good support. The case managers you work with to coordinate what you need are pretty good."
"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device."
"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."
"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device. It operates on the network side and is not device-based. This feature was one of the main reasons why we stayed with them for so long."
"First of all, the security policies are essential. I do not have to rely solely on Active Directory for our users."
"The iboss system is highly reliable. The false positive rates are small compared to some other systems we've experienced through other partner agencies who use competing solutions."
"Our customers have never complained about the stability"
"The portal access was very good."
"The product allows us to create customized portals for your users."
"I recommend F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) to others due to its reliability, and it is perceived as critical to security infrastructure."
"The tool is reliable and easy to configure."
"The performance of the solution is valuable."
"Our organization is small - a college with about 3,500 students. We use F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager to protect our site, especially from the Iranian attacks we faced last year. We restrict access to only inside the country."
"On a scale from one to ten for stability, I would rate F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) a ten."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"The most valuable feature of Zscaler Internet Access is that it is a consolidated solution, it comes with many features, such as DLP."
"Zscaler Internet Access protects using data loss prevention. If you have a CASB exposing your cloud out into the network, then Zscaler Internet Access will go ahead and control that unknown cloud application in the CASB, protecting it. There is also data detection with exact data match. This improves the data coming into your cloud so you are protecting it."
"There is no lag in service when accessing the internet."
"The solution’s customer service is good."
"SSL inspection is a valuable feature."
"The best thing about Zscaler Internet Access is the website filtering. In the UAE it's quite an important feature because most of the malware comes through the SQL injection and through downloads from websites. Zscaler helps protect against that."
"One feature that is valuable to me from an implementation point of view is that it's very easy to implement."
 

Cons

"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."
"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"The reporting feature needs improvement. It doesn't give you the expected results. It is quite difficult to get the specific reports needed, and it is not as intuitive as the rest of the platform."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"We do not have knowledgeable support teams locally."
"The initial setup was complex."
"The solution’s GUI looks very old."
"Cloud services are something that F5 Access Policy Manager could do better"
"I'd suggest improved documentation integration directly within the GUI. Right now, finding comprehensive documentation often requires going to external websites like the community portal."
"F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager has room for improvement in integration with other products."
"I have had a lot of issues in the past few months with the agents, which was disappointing."
"The solution is quite costly."
"If they can also integrate with the multi-factor authentication to prompt users to do another, second-factor authentication, that would be ideal."
"Do not expect to pay for the service and start using it, like Gmail. Zscaler requires a proper implementation to be done to make it successful."
"The price of the solution could be improved."
"Zscaler Internet Access needs to integrate more ISPs. It is good to have more than three ISPs."
"The tool should improve the predefined dictionaries."
"Zscaler needs to add client-to-client communication. It's always client-to-server communication. The cloud and branch connectors could be improved because we're still dependent on traditional firewalls. They should eliminate this. They should also provide WAN devices should to compete with the SD-WAN solutions also."
"The solution is expensive. They recently revised the pricing and packaging. Some of our existing customers have been asking for alternate solutions for a lower price."
"One feature I am missing is the ability to connect automatically to internal monitoring systems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"Recently, they have simplified the licensing"
"The product is very expensive."
"The tool is a little bit expensive."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"We pay around 6,500 INR per user per year, which is very expensive. I would rate Zscaler's pricing one out of five."
"It is a few pounds per user per month."
"Because it's a cloud solution, we pay on a yearly basis. It is affordable and includes tech support and all features."
"It is quite expensive. It does its job, but it is quite expensive for what we need."
"The pricing for Zscaler Internet Access could be made cheaper."
"​Be aware that you will need to invest some time and money to adapt your environment for Zscaler (traffic redirection, software deployment, authentication, etc).​"
"Licenses are available on a per-host basis. Some features like sandboxing require an additional fee, but most standard features are included in the license."
"The price is competitive. It's not cheap and it's not expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
10%
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
I have the same complaint about them that I have about other software companies. Sometimes when you call in support, ...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We are a PreK-12 public school district, and we use iboss to filter internet content for our students at home and sta...
What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
In my opinion, the GUI is perfect with the configuration options provided. F5 BIG-IP has given customization options ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
F5 products are more expensive than other solutions but are valued for their quality and reliability, akin to purchas...
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM ( /categories/application-performance-monitoring-apm-and-observability )) does n...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Zscaler?
Cisco Umbrella and Zscaler Internet Access are two broad-spectrum Internet security solutions that I have tried. Zs...
Which is better, Zscaler internet access or Netsckope CASB?
We researched Netskope but ultimately chose Zscaler. Netskope is a cloud access security broker that helps identify ...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
F5 Access Policy Manager
ZIA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Ulster-Greene ARC, BanRegio, HDFC, Ralcorp Holdings Inc., British American Tobacco, Med America Billing Services Inc., Lanco Group, Aquafil, Telefonica, Swisscom, Brigade Group
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs. Zscaler Internet Access and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.