Imperva Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler comparison

Imperva and NetScaler are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Imperva is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.9, while NetScaler is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.3. Additionally, 97% of Imperva users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of NetScaler users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

NetScaler and Imperva Web Application Firewall compete in application protection. User feedback indicates NetScaler holds an edge due to favorable deployment flexibility and robust support, while Imperva is recognized for its superior security features despite higher costs.

Features: NetScaler offers flexible deployment models, including the TriScale architecture, SSL offload capabilities, and global server load balancing to aid in cost management. Imperva provides inline transfer mode, strong threat intelligence, and extensive web application security for comprehensive protection.

Room for Improvement: NetScaler can enhance feature innovation, improve configuration capabilities, and manage frequent disruptive updates. Imperva could benefit from reducing its pricing and simplifying its licensing structure, alongside enhancing its configuration interface and management processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetScaler boasts adaptable deployment across on-premises and hybrid clouds but requires simplified configuration management. Its customer service sees mixed reviews in terms of responsiveness. Imperva is straightforward in cloud deployment but less so on-premises, with customer support noted for lack of responsiveness and high pricing complexities.

Pricing and ROI: NetScaler's pricing is considered high and complex, yet its ROI remains favorable due to management cost savings. Imperva's pricing is premium, justified by advanced security features, with its ROI seen as worthwhile by various users, though perceptions of cost-effectiveness differ.

To learn more, read our detailed Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler

March 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

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.

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Abdullah Jin

Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

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.

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DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"

"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

"The UI is good."

"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."

"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."

"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."

More Cloudflare pros

"The most valuable features of the Imperva Web Application Firewall are DDoS, malware, and the other malicious threat prevention it provides. Additionally, third-party integration is available. You can forward the log for further analysis."

"The most valuable features of the Imperva Web Application Firewall are performance and flexibility. We can extend or customize the box itself."

"I have had a positive experience with Imperva Web Application Firewall's tech support so far. They are knowledgeable and respond on time."

"There are a number of features that are valuable such as the account takeover and various antivirus features."

"The solution integrates seamlessly with other tools and has a good alert mechanism."

"Very intuitive and granular configuration - It does not require much time, or advanced knowledge, for configuration and maintenance."

"The configurability of the tools and the ease of operation to be the most valuable feature of Imperva."

"Imperva has a complete picture of how the applications are utilizing it. It is handy. DDoS is good. It has an internally managed database. It is very easy to integrate. We have integrated it with SIEM services."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pros

"I like app flows and custom flows. They integrate with multiple flows."

"Load Balancing and SSL offloading are key features."

"The most valuable features are the VDA Delivery, Gateway Fort, and the load balancing."

"Unified Gateway allows me to provide secure external access to applications for suppliers and customers while requiring Multi-Factor Authentication."

"The GSLB feature allows us to move services between data centers. We can do this in either a planned or unplanned manner. We have experienced service provider outages at our primary data center and GSLB will kick in to automatically modify DNS records to point to a secondary data center (active/passive). We also make use of GeoIP information to point clients to the closest data center for accessing applications."

"Global load balancing between data centers."

"The most valuable feature is the content switching."

"Content Redirection and SSO integration with Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop. The GUI was wonderful."

More NetScaler pros

Cons

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."

"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."

"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."

"DNS Management."

"The pricing could be improved."

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."

More Cloudflare cons

"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by providing better features, such as improved prevention of zero-day attacks. Additionally, it should include a VR meta-analysis."

"Sometimes, support tickets don't get addressed quickly."

"It would be helpful to have a "recommended deployment", or even a list of basic features that should either be used or turned on by default."

"The product's customization capabilities are a bit problematic, requiring support cases for backend modifications."

"The user interface could be better."

"Sometimes our web application firewall will slow down."

"I don't really use it and therefore can't speak to areas of improvement."

"The signature updates could be faster. Sometimes we have to upload signatures to the Imperva portal for checking and analysis before we can use them."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall cons

"The GUI should be improved."

"If one device or switch fails, the failover to another device is not seamless which is painful."

"Some features of Citrix ADM are available on the cloud, which could really be helpful if they were available on an on-premise version."

"I feel that Citrix NetScaler's customer support needs to improve."

"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."

"Currently, the support team's responsiveness is lacking, and the technical personnel on calls often seem unfamiliar with the issues or inadequately trained."

"Improvements are needed to address the issue of machines becoming unregistered, ensuring stability for end users. Troubleshooting with Citrix support can be challenging, so clearer diagnostics would be beneficial. As for global server load balancing, it works well on-premises, depending on user volume and service stability. Overall, it's satisfactory for us."

"The solution can improve their support and send tickets directly to a Citrix ADC engineer in order to avoid having to escalate each support call."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We don't have any issues with the price."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."

"We are using the free version."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"There are a couple of different licensing models."

"The solution's pricing is an issue."

"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."

"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."

"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."

"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."

"Imperva’s pricing is a bit higher in the market since it offers a full-blown WAF."

"It is a very affordable solution."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"Price-wise, I feel that the solution is a little bit expensive."

"It is very pricey, but we get it. If you need the best, money shouldn't be a problem."

"For the specific use case that my customers primarily engage with, I would give the pricing a rating of seven out of ten."

"Its licensing cost is much higher than other products, but it is acceptable because it is a one-time investment, and we are getting our requirements fulfilled when we buy this product. So, there is no issue with the pricing."

"It is true that it is a bit pricey compared to newer technologies coming to the market. For example, A10 is a load balancer that does everything that Citrix can and it does a lot more than what NetScaler does when it comes to the security space, and their prices are so cheap. Every box comes with its own license and support built into it. When you compare that with NetScaler, you have to buy licenses separately, you have to buy a support agreement that is going to be separate. A small NetScaler, even if it is a VPX which is a virtual server, could cost you close to $150,000 to $200,000 dollars. So the pricing is really high."

"I do not have any experience with the pricing of the product."

"You get the value for your money. There aren't any hidden fees."

"The firewall license is included by default, with no additional costs."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

15%

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

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...

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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...

See all answers

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.

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Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

My recommendation is Imperva.

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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...

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DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DDoS Protection Service 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 ...

See all answers

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...

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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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 17% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 13% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 10% of the time

Fastly vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 2% of the time

More Imperva Web Application Firewall Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 12% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 10% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Imperva Web Application Firewall

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

March 2025

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“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. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“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.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“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.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Imperva Web Application Firewall is a versatile solution that protects web applications and databases from various attacks, including DDoS, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection attacks. It offers data security, availability, and access control and can be deployed on-premises or on the cloud.

The solution has good security against web attacks and offers advanced bot protection, API security, and mitigation features. Imperva WAF is easy to configure and deploy; it has good customer service and an excellent user interface.

Imperva

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

NetScaler

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk

Buyer's Guide

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler

March 2025

Free Report: Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler

Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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