Imperva Web Application Firewall vs NGINX App Protect comparison

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. NGINX App Protect

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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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Saurav Kumar

Senior security architecture at National Payment Corporation Of India

Offers protection to users from external threats

NGINX App Protect secures our company's application, and it has helped me a lot, considering that we have critical infrastructure in India where we see how lots of attacks come onto our organization's servers. The tool offers protection against multiple threats present in India's IT ecosystem. The tool helps our company to make our payments secure, meaning it has the ability to provide a secure payment environment in India. Speaking about the improvements in our company's application performance since implementing NGINX App Protect, the gRPC support for the solution is very low. My company is not getting any proper documentation on how to deploy gRPC over NGINX App Protect. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. People can use the product as their company's base server, WAF, or for its proxy manager, depending on the business requirements. My company follows PCI DSS compliance because we operate in a payment-related industry. Right now, my company follows all the standards, so we comply with all the requirements and policies. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

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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

"Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance."

"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."

"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

"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."

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

"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."

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."

More Cloudflare pros

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

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

"Protection is the best solution since it has profile functionality."

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

"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 WAF itself has been very valuable to me because it has such a complete range of features. Another reason why I like it is because it also takes care of the total overview of the traffic over the network."

"The solution can scale."

"Learning mode and custom policies are helpful features."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pros

"I would say that the most valuable feature is the ability to operate in a DevOps environment and to be configured through API and pipeline by the developers themselves."

"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is the reverse proxy."

"It has the best documentation features."

"NGINX App Protect is stable."

"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is its flexibility."

"The initial setup was simple and took three to four days."

"The most valuable feature of NGINX App Protect is its open source."

"The tool is not complex and is very user-friendly."

More NGINX App Protect pros

Cons

"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."

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

"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."

"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."

"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."

"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."

"The solution could be more user-friendly."

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

More Cloudflare cons

"It is complicated to integrate the solution's on-cloud version with other platforms."

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

"There is nothing specific where the application firewall is falling short."

"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."

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

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is a good system, but we found that the visibility of the diverse-path server, e.g. where the traffic is coming from, the different IPs, etc., needs improvement."

"It's a complicated tool to keep."

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

More Imperva Web Application Firewall cons

"It doesn't have more advanced features like no false-positive security, which you can configure in Advanced WAF."

"Its technical support could be better."

"The product's price is high, making it an area of concern where improvements are required. The tool's licensing model is also not good."

"As far as scalability, it takes a long time for deployment."

"NGINX App Protect could improve security."

"The solution needs to be improved in the e-commerce portal."

"It's challenging if you need to go for a high throughput."

"The integration of NGINX App Protect could improve."

More NGINX App Protect cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"A free version of the solution is available."

"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."

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

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."

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

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

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

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

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

"Imperva Web Application Firewall's pricing is expensive."

"The tool is expensive."

"It is a very affordable solution."

"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."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"There is a monthly or annual subscription to use NGINX App Protect. There are not any additional costs to the subscription."

"The price of NGINX App Protect is approximately $3,000 annually. All of our licenses are observed by a managed service partner."

"There are no additional fees."

"The solution's price is reasonable."

"The licensing fees for this solution are pretty expensive for what it does, but there is no alternative."

"The product's price is high."

"Really understand the licensing model, because we underestimated that."

"NGINX App Protect is expensive."

More NGINX App Protect pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.

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842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

Retailer

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.

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

My recommendation is Imperva.

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 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 ...

What do you like most about NGINX App Protect?

It's very easy to deploy.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?

The product's price is high.

What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?

The product's price is high, making it an area of concern where improvements are required. The tool's licensing model...

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

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

Radware Alteon vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 3% of the time

More Imperva Web Application Firewall Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 22% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 16% of the time

Azure Front Door vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 14% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 10% of the time

AWS WAF vs NGINX App Protect

Compared 8% of the time

More NGINX App Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare

Download Cloudflare product report

Imperva Web Application Firewall

Download Imperva Web Application Firewall product report

NGINX App Protect

Download NGINX App Protect product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

NGINX WAF, NGINX 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

NGINX App Protect application security solution combines the efficacy of advanced F5 web application firewall (WAF) technology with the agility and performance of NGINX Plus. The solution runs natively on NGINX Plus and addresses some of the most difficult challenges facing modern DevOps environments:

Integrating security controls directly into the development automation pipeline
Applying and managing security for modern and distributed application environments such as containers and microservices
Providing the right level of security controls without impacting release and go-to-market velocity
Complying with security and regulatory requirements

NGINX App Protect offers:

Expanded security beyond basic signatures to ensure adequate controls
F5 app‑security technology for efficacy superior to ModSecurity and other WAFs
Confidently run in “blocking” mode in production with proven F5 expertise
High‑confidence signatures for extremely low false positives
Increases visibility, integrating with third‑party analytics solutions
Integrates security and WAF natively into the CI/CD pipeline
Deploys as a lightweight software package that is agnostic of underlying infrastructure
Facilitates declarative policies for “security as code” and integration with DevOps tools
Decreases developer burden and provides feedback loop for quick security remediation
Accelerates time to market and reduces costs with DevSecOps‑automated security

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

Information Not Available

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. NGINX App Protect