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Imperva DDoS vs Imperva Web Application Firewall comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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)
Imperva DDoS
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
CDN (7th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (23rd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (9th)
Imperva Web Application Fir...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
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.
Syed Ubaid Ali Jafri - PeerSpot reviewer
I like the content monitoring feature which I haven't seen in other WAF solutions.
They could improve by minimizing false positive results. Although this occurs less with Imperva, we would like to see some further improvements. We have been using this product for last 1 years, it's result is very impressive. But due to the excessive load on the Web site where thousands of requests‎ are generated from legitimate users, however the request in which any sequential or specialised characters are requested would be directly blocked by impreva . Currently imperva blocks the special character request generated from the user, as I conduct a test where I am parsing the encoded html values of the same special characters to the input field, imperva bypasses these encoded values for example : ' i.e. %27 or / i.e %2F, the WAF bypasses these encoded characters. I hope that this device should have a capability to detect the pattern which is associated with Xss or Xsrf, rather then by not blocking the request which contains any special characters.
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

"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."
"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 technical support is good."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"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."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"The setup of Imperva DDoS was easy."
"There is no need to have an appliance in house for the services because it is on the cloud."
"The most valuable features for us are the DDoS and Bot."
"IncapRules is one of the most valuable features, as you can create your own security and access control rules on top of your security policy. Using IncapRules we were able to easily block Layer 7 DDoS attacks several times."
"The complete solution is valuable for everything it delivers and the protection it offers."
"On the real time, you can see live traffic, which is flowing into our website."
"Imperva DDoS helps us automate production. The client had specific requirements for a cloud project in the financial sector."
"Provides Anti-DDoS protection, as well as other protections like SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting, and antiscanner. These types of protection are valuable to the business due to the daily attacks on our portals, and that often cannot be seen without a tool like this."
"The most valuable feature of Imperva, in addition to its strong knowledge base, is its effective protection for web applications."
"The tool's profiling feature maps all the web application directories and related components on the profile directory. It has improved the security of my client's website applications."
"Compared to other web application firewalls in the market, Imperva does things in the most accurate way."
"I have had a positive experience with Imperva Web Application Firewall's tech support so far. They are knowledgeable and respond on time."
"It has threat intelligence and we are using Incapsula. With threat intelligence, we can separate HTTP and HTTPS traffic. We can use Incapsula to send all the threat intelligence to the WAF."
"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."
"The solution integrates seamlessly with other tools and has a good alert mechanism."
 

Cons

"Technical support is lacking."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."
"The documentation could improve 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."
"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"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."
"Imperva should have more points of presence in Africa."
"I miss being able to integrate the dashboard with other BI tools we are using. We have to export and import data to be able to present it, and doing so is a lot of work."
"The rules surrounding the making of web applications could be improved."
"We faced issues regarding compliance with client procedures. The client had strict compliance rules, and Imperva needed to be on a VM, while the client required containerization, causing a conflict. They went with Imperva for the on-premise version but shelved the cloud project due to too many blockers."
"Imperva DDoS does not provide version control."
"It needs to be improved every time there are new attacks."
"Pricing can be improved, as it is quite expensive."
"The solution needs to improve Integration with third parties for their on-prem deployment models. The integration is not that good yet."
"The solution works for particular zones but isn't always the best solution for all zones."
"The support for the on-premises version needs improvement."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall could improve the console by making it easier to use."
"I am looking for more data enrichment. We should have the ability to add our own custom data to the system, to the live traffic."
"The user interface could be better."
"One potential improvement for Imperva is enhancing its alert system."
"I would like the solution to improve its support response time."
"It would be nice to have more security control over mobile applications so I would suggest adding more mobile security features. It would also be beneficial to see improvements in regards to interface bandwidth performance, CPU time, and RAM size. Learning capability of the device is quite weak."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The solution's price is high for small companies."
"We are satisfied with the pricing."
"The data packages are higher than our needs so we end up paying for data that we don't use."
"Varies depending on the needs of the customer."
"There is a license or subscription renewal that our customers pay."
"​Although the pricing can be a little high, it is worth the protection and security that it offers.​"
"It is expensive."
"We have an issue with Imperva Incapsula in the Iraqi market because of the high price."
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
"It is a very affordable solution."
"The price is high compared to other solutions like FortiWeb."
"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."
"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall's pricing is expensive."
"The tool is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is an issue."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
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 Imperva Incapsula?
We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing is rated a ten on a scale where ten is very expensive. The solution is only cloud-based and does not prov...
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
Pricing can be improved, as it is quite expensive. Additionally, support response times for emails can sometimes be d...
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
Imperva Incapsula
No data available
 

Learn More

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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.
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva DDoS vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.