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FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) vs Symantec Web Application Firewall 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)
FortiWeb Web Application Fi...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (16th)
Symantec Web Application Fi...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (44th)
 

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.
IgnitiusMolepo - PeerSpot reviewer
Protects internal applications and prevents target attacks
The tool secures our critical applications, especially the mobile money application, which is often targeted by attacks. The solution provides rapid protection and has proven reliable against various threats. It blocks malicious traffic, including dormant and DDoS attacks, and offers integrated Web Application Firewall features to safeguard against compromises. You can set it up for customer-facing web applications because customers don't necessarily know all the IP addresses. It uses a source-based approach where any source accessing the application is defined by its IP. When accessing the application, it checks if they are using HTTP or HTTPS and blocks them if necessary. The tool's performance and security reporting capabilities contribute positively to IT security management. Consolidating management within the solution makes it easier for IT to handle the solutions. All functionalities managed on a single box reduce the number of boxes needed for management.
reviewer1231533 - PeerSpot reviewer
An excellent up-to-date data repository handling external threats successfully
We have multiple applications that we wanted to ensure were protected and we chose Symantec for that. I'm the head of IT infrastructure and we are partners with Symantec.  Symantec has specifically helped connect external users to our internal network. It has also enabled us to ensure that those…

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."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."
"The solution's integration with other products is easy. Its most valuable feature is the antivirus engine. The tool helps us comply with GDPR and KVKK standards."
"Their support is truly exceptional when I compare it with similar large-sized companies."
"The initial setup was easy since it was possible to get remote support for the product."
"The tool's HTTP traffic, website fixing, and blocking are fantastic. It is user-friendly with easy configuration."
"FortiWeb has a very extensive library of known attack signatures, which makes the product fit for any environment, regardless if the customer uses Windows-specific or non-Windows-specific applications."
"The most valuable feature is the tool's integration with load-balancing applications, similar to FortiADC. Its importance depends on customer requirements, such as whether they prioritize application load balancing or layer seven protection."
"The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtration, web filter, application filter, and IPS."
"The good thing about Fortinet is that their enablement is very good in terms of training me and enabling resources on their technology."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"The solution has an up-to-date data repository to deal with external threats."
"The setup was straightforward."
 

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."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"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."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"Support response time could be improved."
"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"FortiWeb WAF's tuning causes trouble. It's complicated. The solution needs to improve the signature feature as well."
"If some of my customers want to migrate from F5 to Fortinet Firewall, or the Fortinet WAF solution, there are some migration issues since I cannot migrate all the elements quickly using Fortinet Firewall."
"The documentation is poor."
"FortiWeb could have an inbound load balancing pack."
"We have encountered issues with webhooks and management of FortiWeb Web Application Firewall's on-premise version."
"I don't see any issues with the tool apart from the pricing aspect of the product. The price of the product is an area where improvements are required."
"The product is complicated to set up."
"The tool's price and performance are areas of concern where improvements are required."
"I'm not convinced that it's necessary the best solution going forward in the future."
"It would be an improvement if the management dashboards were not reliant upon Java."
"Sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable."
"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."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"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."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"This product offers two pricing options: a standard package and an advanced package."
"It is a cheap solution."
"The tool is really expensive."
"The product provides very good prices to customers. The price is set well and offers great value for money."
"FortiWeb Web Application Firewall is not expensive."
"FortiWeb has a good presence because of its price."
"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
"I would rate the pricing a four out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
8%
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 FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtration, web filter, application filter, and IPS.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
FortiWeb uses a subscription-based license, but there is also an option for a perpetual license. It's not the cheapes...
What needs improvement with FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
There are some issues pertaining to the migration. If some of my customers want to migrate from F5 to Fortinet Firewa...
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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Symantec WAF, Blue Coat Protecting Web Applications
 

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.
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