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F5 Shape Security vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

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 (21st)
Imperva Application Securit...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
141
Ranking in other categories
CDN (3rd), 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 1.6% compared to last year.
Imperva Application Security Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection, holds 8.3% mindshare, up 7.7% since last year.
Fraud Detection and Prevention Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Shape Security1.5%
ThreatMetrix5.4%
BioCatch3.5%
Other89.6%
Fraud Detection and Prevention
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform8.3%
Cloudflare14.9%
Arbor DDoS7.8%
Other69.0%
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.
ST
Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at Cyberoutcome Limited
Strong policies and bot defenses have secured critical APIs and have reduced attack noise
From my research regarding the IAM space that Imperva Application Security Platform is trying to look into, I believe they still need to do a lot of modeling and modification to make sure that also helps. There are several competitors in the IAM space, so Imperva would do well if they can do some basic modeling and modifications from my own personal research and my own experience in the IAM space. Alternatively, they could actually just focus on trying to be stronger in the web application space and the database activity monitoring space.The main reason it is not a perfect ten is regarding support. At times, having to reach the support team takes eight hours to ten hours maximum. There are times when clients could have urgent issues to attend to. The support team could do more by having a faster response rate.

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."
"Well, just by using the security rules to block all secured areas by IP minimized the chance of sensitive data leaking outside."
"​Technical support provides good, quick responses."
"I have had a positive experience with Imperva Web Application Firewall's tech support so far. They are knowledgeable and respond on time."
"Thanks to Incapsula, we got easily manageable DDoS protection; HTTP2 and SSL certificates for all the services; CDN in good locations; and we're now sure that our web services can't be exploited remotely because of the WAF feature."
"I would encourage people to implement Imperva Incapsula, as it is a very mature, easy to use, and reliable solution."
"An improvement has been to our website: It increases the speed of our response, the capacity of the site, and optimizes the bandwidth."
"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."
"On the site security, I can see which countries have incidents, whether it was a robot attack, a real human user, or non-human user."
 

Cons

"The tool's price is high."
"I want the solution's custom exclusion rules to be more granular."
"The reporting is missing some features, such as: only two export formats, and the time period does not include the last day, week, year."
"It is complicated to integrate the solution's on-cloud version with other platforms."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by adding more features to the dashboard. increasing the visibility of the real-time events, besides configuring the administration itself."
"Caching rules are really basic now and lots of space for improvement here."
"I see some areas for improvement in Imperva Application Security Platform, especially regarding price."
"The salespeople tend to exaggerate its capabilities, which can cost you money if you don't verify the information."
"The product's customization capabilities are a bit problematic, requiring support cases for backend modifications."
"I would like to see automated reporting to improve visibility."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is moderately priced."
"Varies depending on the needs of the customer."
"The data packages are higher than our needs so we end up paying for data that we don't use."
"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"There are a couple of different licensing models."
"The cost is on par with other solutions such as Cloudflare and Akamai."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
"It is a very affordable solution."
"We have an issue with Imperva Incapsula in the Iraqi market because of the high price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Healthcare Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business87
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise66
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 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...
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators of compromise. For example, the initiation of an attack on the endpoint level cou...
 

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.
887,041 professionals have used our research since 2012.