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Fortinet FortiWeb vs NSFOCUS Web Application Firewall comparison

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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
7.2
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
95
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th)
NSFOCUS Web Application Fir...
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (46th)
 

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.
it_user933945 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers Application Protection Against Web Attacks
There is a need for expanded licensing terms and options. There's also a need for improved and more agile customization features. The user needs to be able to manage each policy as required; the functionality needs to empower the user. There should be a complete suite of desktop provider policies available to users. Overall, it needs to be more user-friendly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."
"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."
"What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool."
"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."
"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."
"The customers are very happy with this solution because of two things. First, the IPS integration with a web application is very tightly done on Fortinet. Second, the ease of use is there. The management interface or the GUI interface is very easy to use, configure, and manage. These are the two main valuable features. It supports integration with other Fortinet products. It also integrates very well with the firewall and sandboxing technology. They already have enough integration with different technologies. They have got a complete tech intelligence view of the whole product."
"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."
"The GUI makes it easy to scale in terms of learning and utilization."
"The most valuable features are support and security."
"The support is quite good."
"We find that it is quite stable and reliable."
"We were able to protect our web servers from outside attacks."
"FortiWeb's ease of deployment is what we liked the most about it. Implementing FortiWeb was extremely fast and easy, which was a significant advantage. It comes with several preconfigured rule sets and templates."
"Since we are using this tool for protection purposes we really appreciate the hybrid security abilities; the main idea here is that we powerful protection our application needs."
 

Cons

"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"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."
"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"DNS Management."
"Maybe the load balancing options could be enhanced."
"The Layer 7 DDoS attacks need improvement, it could be better."
"They could integrate some kind of machine learning and AI facilities to automate workflows."
"Its threat intelligence capabilities may not be as advanced as some competitors."
"The memory use in each of the appliances is problematic."
"The solution could improve by being able to handle different use cases."
"Fortinet FortiWeb is not scalable. You'll need more budget to change the hardware."
"We would like the interface to be easier to use and more user-friendly. The interface needs to be enhanced."
"There is a need for expanded licensing terms and options. There's also a need for improved and more agile customization features. The user needs to be able to manage each policy as required; the functionality needs to empower the user. There should be a complete suite of desktop provider policies available to users. Overall, it needs to be more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"We are using the free version."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"​The pricing is reasonable."
"The cost isn't expensive."
"The costs are standard. We pay around $1,600 yearly."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the tool an eight."
"The pricing is pretty good. We do pass a lot of traffic through our API servers. Something like 100 gigs of web traffic is a fair amount for reduced JSON API calls, but the cost is $50. For that peace of mind, we have thousands and thousands of customers that are protected by that $50, so it's a no-brainer."
"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 product is expensive. I rate the pricing a ten out of ten."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb is reasonable. This is one of the key factors of why we use this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
41%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
5%
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...
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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
NSFOCUS WAF, NSFOCUS Web Application Security
 

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
2016 G20 Summit
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), F5, Microsoft and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: March 2025.
848,253 professionals have used our research since 2012.