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Fortinet FortiWeb vs Imperva Web Application Firewall comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

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
6.5
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th)
Imperva Web Application Fir...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (6th)
 

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.
Abdullah Jin - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers bot protection and DDoS Protection and protects public-facing portals
Support is one thing I wish Imperva could improve. They follow the phone model and keep rotating you from one customer service person to another. The layer one support isn't very clear about the workings of the product. My feedback is primarily about Imperva Cloud, not on-premise. On-premise is a whole new story. Support is the issue for Imperva Cloud. It's also a bit pricey. It's a premium service and very expensive. The licensing model is not very straightforward. Every feature is priced separately, and to enjoy maximum protection, you'll have to spend a lot of money. The licensing model is a bit complex, and each feature is very pricey. For example, API security and web application protection are two separate license packages.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very user-friendly."
"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."
"The UI is good."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"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."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"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 product's initial setup phase was straightforward, and since our company didn't have any problems with it, we didn't encounter many problems with the tool."
"The GUI is user-friendly."
"The policies and the filtering are the most valuable features, especially traffic, URL, and application filtering. The solution is excellent at detecting vulnerabilities."
"It is easy to install and to maintain."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall (WAF)."
"FortiWeb offers machine learning in the latest product. This fixed many problems. There are no false negatives."
"The solution is stable."
"High-performance and detection engines, provide a high rate of exposure of web attacks."
"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 features I have found most valuable with Imperva Web Application Firewall are account takeover protection, advanced bot protection, and API security."
"I am impressed with the product's scalability, availability, easy management, and security. We were able to integrate the product with Azure and Sentinel."
"Imperva WAF's strongest features are the detection of web application threats and vulnerabilities in the source code."
"We can prevent attacks or issues even before they happen."
"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."
"The compliance is the most valuable aspect."
"It works right out of the box once you integrate the application."
 

Cons

"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."
"Support response time could be improved."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."
"The pricing could be improved."
"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."
"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"The solution could improve by providing more integration with solutions other than the Fortinet family."
"I would like to have an antivirus option."
"Integration and learning about attacks. I would improve these areas by making FortiWeb integrate with other network technologies and feedback from multiple platforms."
"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."
"We want to see more detailed logging, such as audit logging, as this would significantly enhance the solution's reporting. We currently get some information from logs, but more would be better."
"We use Kubernetes, so I would like to have a plugin to configure FortiWeb Cloud automatically using Kubernetes Ingress. That would reduce the complexity of setting up an Ingress object in Kubernetes. Some competing solutions help you configure Ingress and Kubernetes automatically."
"FortiGate could be improved on the security end because we've had some incidents with the customer. Otherwise, there is no problem."
"The upgrade process could be a bit smoother."
"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 works for particular zones but isn't always the best solution for all zones."
"I would like the solution to improve its support response time."
"The process to upgrade from one version to another can be a lot simpler than it is currently."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by providing better features, such as improved prevention of zero-day attacks. Additionally, it should include a VR meta-analysis."
"An improvement for Imperva WAF would be to reduce the number of false positives and create more strong use cases based on AI/ML or behavioral analytics."
"In the past, I have bugs on the WAF. I've contacted Imperva about them. Future releases should be less buggy."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall could improve the API integration. It was complex for us. Additionally, The onboarding could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a ten out of ten."
"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 is not a cheap product. It is not like a Linux or a Genex that you can deploy. It is a hardware appliance, and it is built for a specific reason and reliability. It is an enterprise-class solution. You wouldn't find an SMB investing in something like this."
"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."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb is reasonable. This is one of the key factors of why we use this solution."
"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."
"The license to use Fortinet FortiWeb is approximately $14,000."
"The cost isn't expensive."
"It is very costly, but the return on investment is very high. Its cost was around $70,000, and we got it back in just six months."
"Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well."
"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."
"Make sure you understand the way that Imperva charges. It's very affordable. However, I would like to see a package with the Virtual Patching included. You get to do patching separately."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."
"The tool is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
43%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
The pricing of Fortinet FortiWeb is affordable and competitive.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?
I see no room for improvement at the moment.
Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?
For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you hav...
DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DefensePro and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?
You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
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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
BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiWeb vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
823,795 professionals have used our research since 2012.