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Fortinet FortiWeb vs NetScaler comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 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

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)
NetScaler
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st), Network Management Applications (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (11th)
 

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.
DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU - PeerSpot reviewer
A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking
Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."
"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."
"It's very user-friendly."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"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 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."
"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."
"The UI is good."
"The product has a very user-friendly dashboard."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"It is cost-effective compared to other solutions."
"One of the big advantages of using Fortinet FortiWeb is all the Fortinet family solutions use the same user interface and logic. This makes it easy to use, configure, manage, and understand if you have used one of their solutions before or are wanting to implement other Fortinet solutions in the future. Additionally, all Fortinet solutions can be managed with one application called FortiManager."
"The deployment was very easy."
"It's easy to use and allows us to integrate solutions together."
"It's stable and works efficiently against OWASP Top 10 attacks."
"When we had Cisco we had around thirty thousand entries on our firewalls. Now we are down to three thousand. Fortinet has a mechanism to detect all of your entries which are not used, and it can clean it up."
"It is a very stable solution."
"The most valuable features are the VDA Delivery, Gateway Fort, and the load balancing."
"Its customer support service is good."
"Manageability and visibility are good."
"The load balancing is one of the most valuable features."
"It has helped us to increase the resiliency of the application and the performance."
"I like app flows and custom flows. They integrate with multiple flows."
"It is the best product out there."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"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 product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."
"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."
"The support side of things can be improved."
"Centralized configuration using FortiManager – like what exists for NGFW FortiGate appliances - would improve the configuration."
"The upgrade process could be a bit smoother."
"When we look at the incident reports in the dashboard, they are available for a maximum duration of 24 hours. They should provide more time for the analysis and increase the duration of the availability of these reports. Currently, it gives the options for 5 minutes, 1 hour, and 24 hours. It would be excellent if there are more options for a longer time period. It may be configurable, but I don't know how to do it."
"We would like the interface to be easier to use and more user-friendly. The interface needs to be enhanced."
"F5 and some other firewalls are easier to customize. FortiWeb could be more flexible and customizable. The documentation could also be improved because many of the advanced features aren't fully documented."
"Fortinet FortiWeb could improve in reference architecture for different deployment scenarios."
"The initial setup in our data center was somewhat complex."
"Scripting and writing expressions need to be improved by putting logic behind the rules and improve policies involving some of the scripting part, which is a tedious task to do."
"We had some bugs in the previous firmware. These were not big issues, but more testing on the firmware would be key to happier customers."
"Getting to use some of the advanced tools, even with the assistance of Citrix support, can be challenging."
"Development team's response time could be better."
"I feel that Citrix NetScaler's customer support needs to improve."
"Technical support sometimes takes a little longer because of the multilevel ticket priority."
"I think there is always room for improvement in this type of solutions. For example, I think the GUI should be easy to understand."
"Technical support could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"We are using the free version."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb is expensive in our Ethiopian currency."
"The license cost depends on the size of the box or the size of the solution. It can go from €200 Euros to a few hundred thousand Euros a year depending on your size."
"We are on an annual license for this solution and the price is approximately €100."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb depends from customer to customer because some customers are considering using other solutions, such as Imperva. The price of Fortinet FortiWeb sits well for the middle-sized customers that we deal with."
"Cheaper than others."
"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."
"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."
"Its subscription prices are cheaper, and it is not very expensive. From a price perspective, Fortinet is a very well-known security vendor. Subscriptions are very simple. They have a couple of licenses on an appliance, and that's it. The cost is not that big. One license is 40K, which they give with all the products. Another one includes the subscriptions for threat prevention, IPS, sandboxing, etc, which is more than enough."
"Citrix ADM costs us approximately $5000 per month."
"I give the price of the solution a seven out of ten."
"The licensing costs for this solution vary depending on which model is being used."
"Our licensing fees including technical support are approximately $3,500 USD."
"The tool is cheap."
"Regarding pricing, while it's expensive, I can't comment on the exact ROI without a budget analysis. However, in terms of service quality, it's worth the price."
"Price-wise, I feel that the solution is a little bit expensive."
"We have been evaluating F5, Citrix, and other ADC products. Citrix is the most expense of all of them."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
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%
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
 

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?
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...
What do you like most about Citrix ADC?
The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?
After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...
What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?
Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall
 

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
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiWeb vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,615 professionals have used our research since 2012.