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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
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
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."
"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."
"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."
"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."
"The GUI is user-friendly and it's easy to understand how to manage it."
"Both the internal firewall management and the cloud can be managed by a single console."
"Before a platform faces the internet, Fortinet FortiWeb inspects the traffic."
"It's easy to use and allows us to integrate solutions together."
"The most valuable features are support and security."
"It offers some feedback and suggestions that guide our system development while helping our vendors to update their applications and fix any issues or bugs."
"We find that it is quite stable and reliable."
"It is cost-effective compared to other solutions."
"The load balancing feature of this solution is very good."
"We appreciate that this solution facilitates our access to Citrix internet."
"I like the monitoring ability as it enables me to identify when an internal (load-balanced) resource is having issues before it becomes a problem in production."
"The solution is very stable."
"The maintenance of the solution is not complex."
"Enables a Web service that offers persistent client-server connections, IP restriction, URL rewrite (such as remove "/assets/" path from client-side URL path), and cache for CSS or JS files... You can easily use the GUI to set up all these requirements on the same network device within 20-30 minutes. (If you do the same steps on CLI, it might take less time.)"
"I would say the rewriting and redirection functions are must-have's for us."
"The work balancing applications are the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"There are some issues with the CDN services."
"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."
"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."
"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."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"Support response time could be improved."
"The F5 solution has more features than Fortinet FortiWeb, such as multiple load balancing."
"We would like the interface to be easier to use and more user-friendly. The interface needs to be enhanced."
"The reporting could be optimized."
"The initial setup is complex."
"It can be better with web application firewalls."
"We would like to know more about the integration with the hardware or security products, such as Gemalto, because we need to move to that point."
"Fortinet FortiWeb could improve data integration."
"They could integrate some kind of machine learning and AI facilities to automate workflows."
"Technical support could be improved."
"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."
"Citrix ADC can improve if it provides a more user-friendly interface and clear working protocols. Citrix is not working with classic RFC, it is working with Citrix RFC, which is not common in the world. If engineers of Citrix can provide us with more information on working with the classic IP networks it would be a benefit."
"We have issues with the certificates. All authorization processes need certificates, however, every three months we needed to change certificates. This process iss complicated for us because Citrix does not have a not user-friendly interface and does not off user-friendly services. This needs a lot of improvement."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"I am not an expert in this solution, but simplicity and user-friendly interfaces are crucial for me. I would appreciate advice from Citrix, particularly in the form of an interactive guide for API protection. It would be helpful if they could provide specific points and recommendations for cybersecurity, indicating areas that need attention or improvement. I find such interactive guidance valuable."
"There are certain features that are very useful and Citrix makes you pay a bit more for them."
"Citrix should offer a demo or free-trial version of NetScaler. Several other vendors do, but Citrix does not. Pricing should also be more readily available."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"The price is reasonable."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"If one is very cheap and ten is very expensive, I rate the product price as three or four."
"There are no licensing costs."
"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."
"The solution is very inexpensive when compared to F5 Advanced WAF and Avi Networks but offers the same benefits."
"The pricing is average; the product is neither particularly expensive nor affordable."
"It is an expensive suite and it is an expensive solution, but it is a manageable one for an enterprise."
"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."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb is reasonable. This is one of the key factors of why we use this solution."
"The pricing for Citrix Web App and API Protection is unreasonable. I don't know the exact price, but I heard it's tens of thousands and it's a bit too much for the small country I live in."
"I give the price of the solution a seven out of ten."
"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten since it is expensive."
"Citrix ADC could improve the price and make it less expensive, other competitors have a better prices. This would allow Citrix ADC to keep dominating the market."
"After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more expensive."
"You can do CapEx and then a yearly monthly fee, or you can do a subscription model, whether that's one month, month-to-month, or three-year subscription model."
"In Turkey, everything is good, but it seems expensive for us due to the currency exchange. I don't have a specific rating scale, but if I had to rate the price, I would say it's around a six out of ten."
"You get the value for your money. There aren't any hidden fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
24%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
43%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
5%
Educational Organization
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
 

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.
839,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.