Imperva Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler comparison

Imperva and NetScaler are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Imperva is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.9, while NetScaler is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.2. Additionally, 97% of Imperva users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of NetScaler users who would recommend it.

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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: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler

January 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 solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."

"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."

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."

"The UI is good."

"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"

More Cloudflare pros

"The solution has been quite stable. I have not seen any bugs at all."

"There are some features that are configured by default, so even without doing much, it can still provide a level of protection."

"Learning mode and custom policies are helpful features."

"Imperva is a Gartner leader, so its scalability, performance, and features are excellent."

"There are many features. There is ease of deployment. You can deploy the Imperva Web Application Firewall in two to three minutes. After that, you have to set the policies. For setting policies, you have toggle buttons. You can turn something on or off."

"The solution is scalable."

"Configuration for different application sources is most valuable. We can segregate the traffic that an application is carrying and identify the sizing in Imperva."

"One good thing about Imperva Web Application Firewall is it can be on the cloud and also it can be on-premise."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pros

"Helped us a lot with load balancing."

"The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic enters our environment."

"Content filtering, security layer, and application customization features are the most valuable."

"Global load balancing between data centers."

"I find all of it to be valuable, because of the flexibility that is built into this product."

"The analytics are a great feature."

"For NetScaler, our major use cases are database load balancing, PowerVPN VPN access gateway, WAF (Web Application Firewall), and content switching."

"NetScaler Gateway: Why? Availability/Security: We delivered more than 200 applications thru Xenapp. This feature give us the possibility to deliver the applications anywhere. Currently, 30% of access is made through our NetScaler Gateway (Internet connections)."

More NetScaler pros

Cons

"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."

"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."

"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."

"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."

"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."

"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 pricing could be improved."

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

More Cloudflare cons

"It would be useful if the solution used more intelligence in attack protection. For example, firewalls are to be dependent on the configuration, but if they could have some data science around it the solution would be even better. The profiling of the traffic, and making decisions surrounding that should be intelligence-based, instead of being based on the configuration of the firewall itself."

"Some of the features should be included in the next release is a file integrating monitoring tool. This feature should be improved."

"The Imperva Web Application Firewall automations are good, but there is still room for improvement with them."

"It should be more user-friendly. Like other web solutions, it would be helpful to be able to easily do policy configuration and identification inside the application. Understanding the in-depth configuration of a policy is somewhat difficult for an engineer, and they can improve that."

"The tool's UI is complicated. It would be best to have a more accessible UI dashboard to make the job easier."

"It's a complicated tool to keep."

"The UI interface needs improvement."

"They can provide an option to create reports, automatically import the entire report, and create rules again. In a real-life crisis, it would be helpful to be able to import a report and generate security rules from that report. I should be able to create a simple query and import the reports automatically. It can maybe also tell us the format of the report."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall cons

"The vendor provides frequent patches, however, the security of the website has room for improvement."

"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."

"An area for improvement in Citrix Web App and API Protection is for it to give real-time notifications and alerts. It would be practical if the solution warns you if there's an attack or if the load or traffic volume increases or decreases. An additional feature I'd like to see in Citrix Web App and API Protection is a prediction or artificial intelligence on what is happening, for example, attacks."

"Security could be improved because then I can get rid of my Cisco firewalls. If they improve the security then I could run my security, my proxy, my firewalling and my SDN solution on one device instead of having to have multiple devices."

"Some of our customers have questioned the security of this solution lately, wondering whether it is safe or not, so enhancements in this respect would be good."

"Too many bugs in the software and it's always difficult when you need to update."

"The technical support could be better. Whenever I contacted support, I rarely got the solution that we needed. And most of the time, I finished fixing the problem by looking on the internet or by finding documents about the problem on Google."

"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."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"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."

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

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"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."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"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."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"It is a very affordable solution."

"The price is high compared to other solutions like FortiWeb."

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

"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."

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

"The tool is expensive."

"There are some licenses that you have to buy to use some features. Its price could be better. Price is always important because, at the end of the day, customers have a budget. If you can meet the budget, you can sell, and if you don't, you cannot sell."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The licenses for this product are payable as a yearly subscription, and carry a high price-point. The subscription scheme is quite complicated, and costs will increase with each additional feature that is required, outside of the basic setup."

"Our licensing fees including technical support are approximately $3,500 USD."

"We have all the features and functions of Citrix because we have a premium license."

"Citrix Web App and API Protection are in the middle when we talk about pricing and licensing"

"The solution is undoubtedly very good, but it is expensive."

"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."

"F5 BIG-IP is much more expensive than Citrix ADC. For example, If we choose two platforms, Citrix ADC, 3000 version, and we choose F5, F4200 version. F5 BIG-IP has connections, timers, and throughput similar to Citrix ADC, but the price is very expensive."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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

My recommendation is Imperva.

See all answers

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 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 ...

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...

See all answers

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 49% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% 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 15% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 13% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 11% of the time

Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 1% of the time

More Imperva Web Application Firewall Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 14% of the time

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

Compared 13% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 10% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs NetScaler

Compared 7% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Imperva Web Application Firewall

January 2025

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Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

December 2024

Download NetScaler product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

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

Learn More

Cloudflare

Imperva

NetScaler

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

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.

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.

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

January 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: January 2025.

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We monitor all Web Application Firewall (WAF) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.