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F5 Shape Security vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 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
Ranking in Bot Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Fraud Detection and Prevention (6th)
Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in Bot Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
133
Ranking in other categories
CDN (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), API Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Bot Management category, the mindshare of F5 Shape Security is 16.6%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 11.9%, down from 14.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Bot Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
F5 Shape Security16.6%
Imperva Application Security Platform11.9%
Other71.5%
Bot Management
 

Featured Reviews

Nikolay Dimitrov - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Mitesh D Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively defends against threats like cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and others
It does bring value. For example, consider a BFSI customer. Their application is critical and represents their brand. Without a WAF, an attack could take their application down, harming their reputation. It leads to hampering the customer's workflow. With an Imperva WAF, they protect against attacks like DDoS or SQL injection, ensuring their application remains available and customers are happy. That's the main benefit for both the customer and the organization. The impact depends on the customer's use case. If their business primarily operates online, a CDN is beneficial for traffic optimization. Moreover, the integration options depend on the specific use case of our customers. Generally, integration capabilities are good with SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) parts.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"F5 Shape Security's most valuable feature is performance."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of configuration."
"We have peace of mind that nobody will use malware on us or try to hack our website."
"It's very pretty easy to onboard the URL."
"Scalability is pretty easy on the base platform. You just add another, and you're ready to go."
"There is a quick switch between any of the the nodes if something goes wrong, where there's a there's an attack against a specific area. The security setup is reasonably easy. It's not a problem to do setups and rules and integrations. And, yeah, just the the back end team is also very willing to insist if there's questions that that we cannot answer or with these questions that we do have"
"The setup of Imperva DDoS was easy."
"Imperva has a complete picture of how the applications are utilizing it. It is handy. DDoS is good. It has an internally managed database. It is very easy to integrate. We have integrated it with SIEM services."
"The solution is cloud-based and offers us good uptime. It has combined web and API security. Therefore, with one license, you access both application security and also API security."
"The solution integrates seamlessly with other tools and has a good alert mechanism."
 

Cons

"I want the solution's custom exclusion rules to be more granular."
"The tool's price is high."
"I would like to have support for SSL management and secure DNS."
"In the past, I have bugs on the WAF. I've contacted Imperva about them. Future releases should be less buggy."
"I loved the approach of the cloud. The cloud has a lot of new features, like advanced web protection and DDoS protection. If those could also be on-boarded onto the on-prem versions, that would be ideal. They need to pay attention to both deployment options and not just favor one."
"The solution needs to improve Integration with third parties for their on-prem deployment models. The integration is not that good yet."
"They can provide an option to create reports, automatically import the entire report, and create rules again. In a real-life crisis, it would be helpful to be able to import a report and generate security rules from that report. I should be able to create a simple query and import the reports automatically. It can maybe also tell us the format of the report."
"The reporting is missing some features, such as: only two export formats, and the time period does not include the last day, week, year."
"The only disadvantage of Imperva is that it is a pretty costly solution."
"It is complicated to integrate the solution's on-cloud version with other platforms."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is moderately priced."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"The cost is on par with other solutions such as Cloudflare and Akamai."
"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."
"It is a very expensive solution. The price is very high. A lot of customers tell us that they would love to use Imperva more. I have some customers who have 50 websites, but they have only 10 websites on Imperva because of the price. They would love to have all their websites running through Imperva, but they can't. They have to choose the more critical websites to protect because the price is very high. It is a very good product, but it is too expensive. If you buy a plan for 20 megabytes and you don't consume all of your 20 megabytes, it is okay, but if you consume more, you are charged for the superior traffic."
"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."
"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."
"The cost is somewhere around $10,000 a site. For every site, you pay individually. For every DNS entry, you have you pay."
"Imperva’s pricing is a bit higher in the market since it offers a full-blown WAF."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Bot Management solutions are best for your needs.
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
32%
Healthcare Company
8%
Retailer
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business83
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.
869,832 professionals have used our research since 2012.