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F5 Shape Security vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 21, 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

F5 Shape Security
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Fraud Detection and Prevention (7th)
Imperva Application Securit...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
CDN (2nd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (1st), API Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. F5 Shape Security is designed for Fraud Detection and Prevention and holds a mindshare of 1.5%, down 1.5% compared to last year.
Imperva Application Security Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection, holds 8.5% mindshare, up 7.9% since last year.
Fraud Detection and Prevention Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
F5 Shape Security1.5%
ThreatMetrix6.4%
BioCatch4.0%
Other88.1%
Fraud Detection and Prevention
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform8.5%
Cloudflare16.2%
Arbor DDoS8.7%
Other66.6%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Nikolay Dimitrov - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Engineer at Paysafe / IBM
Easy to configure and blocks bot attacks for web users
The solution is deployed on the F5 cloud. The solution's real-time analytics help you see what has been blocked. It helps to see whether the attack category was an automation attack or a fake browser. F5 Shape Security has a normal dashboard. We are doing F5 Shape Security migrations for 30 customers. F5 Shape Security uses Javascript. For a lot of competitors, the Javascript can be reverse-engineered by attackers to bypass the protection. F5 Shape Security has machine learning authentication of the Java script. If you had hacked it, the encryption would have been changed. It's really hard for attackers to reverse engineer the F5 Shape Security JavaScript. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
reviewer1247523 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Solution ensures website availability and proactive threat mitigation
Over the seven years, the most valuable features of Imperva DDoS that I have found are related to DDoS attacks, which are a group of attacks, and not all of them can be resolved on the endpoint level before the website. Using the web firewall before the website is a common use case to protect against malicious requests to the website. I have utilized Imperva's Intelligent Traffic Filtering feature. This feature helps me understand how the attack is progressing and what is happening inside the requests to our website. It allows me to granularly grant or deny access to certain parts of our website. This helps when we know our customers and the types of requests that can be sent from them, enabling us to block some malicious requests. Imperva DDoS has User Behavior Analytics and Threat Intelligence on its board, and this helps us to be protected proactively. Imperva DDoS connects to its database of threats, storing whole information about attacks all over the world in one simple engine. Everyone can use this feature, which can connect to this engine and get information about what is going on at the world level. That is the way to be protected at the company's level. The integration capabilities of Imperva DDoS are very easy and simple. We can run it in 2 hours.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of configuration."
"F5 Shape Security's most valuable feature is performance."
"Real-time monitoring is also a great tool, as you may watch several parameters in real time."
"An improvement has been to our website: It increases the speed of our response, the capacity of the site, and optimizes the bandwidth.​"
"On the activity log, I can see the exact details, the visit, and the threat."
"The solution has been quite stable. I have not seen any bugs at all."
"Very scalable and very stable firewall for web applications, with a good interface in its cloud version. Mitigation is its most valuable feature. The technical support for this product is also good."
"Its inline transferring mode is the most valuable because it is 100% transparent. When you change the IP, there is no change on the network side. If you can't and want to try to reach an IP, you can reach the server IP. There are many other advanced security features in it. The smallest appliances of Imperva can handle the highest traffic at a customer site. For example, a smaller appliance from Imperva can provide you the same security as an F5 product."
"I have had a positive experience with Imperva Web Application Firewall's tech support so far. They are knowledgeable and respond on time."
"Imperva WAF's strongest features are the detection of web application threats and vulnerabilities in the source code."
 

Cons

"The tool's price is high."
"I want the solution's custom exclusion rules to be more granular."
"In the past, I have bugs on the WAF. I've contacted Imperva about them. Future releases should be less buggy."
"I am looking for more data enrichment. We should have the ability to add our own custom data to the system, to the live traffic."
"Users would benefit from better documentation. There is official documentation, but sometimes we need more detail. We have some use cases that are not so run of the mill. It would be great if there was a knowledge base that we could go to for more answers."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is very expensive."
"Imperva should have more points of presence in Africa."
"The UI interface needs improvement."
"It would be helpful to have a "recommended deployment", or even a list of basic features that should either be used or turned on by default."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall could improve the console by making it easier to use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is moderately priced."
"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."
"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."
"The data packages are higher than our needs so we end up paying for data that we don't use."
"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."
"It is not expensive compared to the other similar solutions in this category."
"Imperva charges us based on bandwidth, which is better than other vendors that charge us according to data transfer."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Expert with 51-200 employees
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Healthcare Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business84
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about F5 Shape Security?
The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of configuration.
What needs improvement with F5 Shape Security?
There could be some improvement in the options to make custom exclusion rules to be more granular. Sometimes, the solution blocks something that you don't want to be blocked. The solution should al...
What advice do you have for others considering F5 Shape Security?
The solution is deployed on the F5 cloud. The solution's real-time analytics help you see what has been blocked. It helps to see whether the attack category was an automation attack or a fake brows...
Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot management.
What do you like most about Imperva Incapsula?
We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provided. I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap a...
 

Also Known As

Shape Security
Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Wells Fargo, Loblaw, JetBlue, Zoosk
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Shape Security vs. Imperva Application Security Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
883,026 professionals have used our research since 2012.