Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Hillstone I-Series Server Breach Detection System comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th)
Hillstone I-Series Server B...
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (21st), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (19th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
Kacem CHAMMALI - PeerSpot reviewer
Even if an attacker detects the IP address, they can't connect directly to the server due to FortiWeb
The xFF, or X-Forwarded-For feature, IP reputation, and protected hostname. We can block access using the IP address, so no one can connect to our web server or website using the real IP. They need to use the FQDN instead. Even if an attacker detects the IP address, they can't connect directly to the server due to FortiWeb and the option to protect the hostname. All traffic passes through FortiWeb. Machine learning capabilities in FortiWeb: I don't use machine learning all the time. In the initial phase of FortiWeb deployment, we use the learning process to detect the traffic passing through FortiGate to our website.
DAVI TEIXEIRA - PeerSpot reviewer
Beneficial AI detection, helpful support, but modern UI needed
The initial setup of the Hillstone I-Series Server Breach Detection System requires a bunch of steps starting with installing the hardware and setting it up. However, most of the setup is done by the vendor. I rate the initial setup of the Hillstone I-Series Server Breach Detection System an eight out of ten. The vendor provides free training in the software provided.

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 Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."
"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."
"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."
"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"High-performance and detection engines, provide a high rate of exposure of web attacks."
"Fortinet is a great SD-WAN player when it comes to security capabilities."
"The solution is easy to configure and deploy."
"If I need something from tech support, I can get it answered within the hour."
"The most valuable features in Fortinet FortiWeb are sandboxing and threat prevention."
"Banks have to be compliant with PCI and other things, and FortiWeb is absolutely amazing in terms of providing these reports. Otherwise, they will have to spend a lot of time on them."
"It can scale well."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its security profile."
"The most valuable features of the Hillstone I-Series Server Breach Detection System are the AI detection and monitoring of common threats."
"One or two people can maintain and support the solution. The maintenance is not difficult."
 

Cons

"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."
"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"Latencies are always a problem."
"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"There are some issues with the CDN services."
"Fortinet FortiWeb could improve in reference architecture for different deployment scenarios."
"Lacks functionalities that are available in other solutions."
"A better load balancer is needed when multiple servers are used for the same website."
"The F5 solution has more features than Fortinet FortiWeb, such as multiple load balancing."
"The dashboards are not that configurable. Application-specific dashboards can be improved. If we have 50 applications, there should be something to see what's happening with these 50 applications. There could be a graph or a consolidated alert page where all alerts are inbuilt. They have other products that I can use, but this feature should be built into FortiWeb."
"I had some small problems when I was upgrading firmware. After the upgrade, some of my certificates were deleted.​"
"The automation piece can be improved. Although they say it can be automated very well, there is still manual work. Its usability should be improved in terms of automation because we want to build an infrastructure with code, but you can't do that easily with this solution. If they can give us APIs in the firewalls that we can tap into, it would be perfect."
"I know that we have run into some issues with an SSL certificate and how it functions. Sometimes this breaks connectivity or just limits certain websites that are whitelisted."
"The UI dashboard view needs to be improved because it is ugly. If it was more modern it would be better. Additionally, better integration with other databases would be good."
"Hillstone I-Series Server Breach Detection System can improve by having more anti-spam features that will hopefully eliminate all of the other threats."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The price is reasonable."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"It keeps changing, but it's based on the size of the VM you buy and also the traffic throughput you want from it, whereas what we have on Azure is just the traffic throughput. You can also pay on a monthly basis from Azure. During each part of the project, it's okay to get Azure-based licensing or AWS-based licensing for FortiWeb, but over time, you would want to go with the perpetual license. You should go to Fortinet and buy the license from them. So, there is a two-step process there."
"It should be somewhere about 36,000 Euros. That's the cost for three years. It's moderately priced."
"We are on an annual license for this solution and the price is approximately €100."
"Previously, for each project, the cost was $800 to $1,000 per application. Now, it's $100 to $120. For some of the applications, there is a 90% reduction, and for some of the applications, there is a 50% reduction. We're paying only $500 to $600."
"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The pricing is in the middle. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten. It feels like a justified cost for the features."
"Fortinet FortiWeb's pricing is reasonable. Its licensing costs are yearly."
"All our Fortinet pricing is bundled together for different products, like FortiGate, FortiAnalyzer, and FortiWeb. FortiWeb, by itself, is probably around $2,500 to $3,500."
"The price of the solution is good. It is less expensive than the other solutions in the market. There are not any additional features or hidden costs."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
43%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
4%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiWeb?
The WAF profiles has been effective at mitigating web-based threats.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb?
I would rate the licensing cost as seven out of ten, considering it good value for money. The price is affordable and...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?
There is room for improvement in the portability on multi-cloud environments. Enhanced DDoS integration to make Forti...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Hillstone sBDS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
Norbert Wiener University, Regional Government of the Amazon
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), F5, Microsoft and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.