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Ipanema IpIengine vs Steelhead comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 10, 2024

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 Web Application ...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th)
Ipanema IpIengine
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (9th)
Steelhead
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (1st), WAN Edge (13th)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
it_user143973 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Systems Admin at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
We tried KPN for 1 year, but ROI is not practical. Huge differences with IPANEMA.
WAN Acceleration Unlike other firewall and internet accelerator network device, it has its own IPS/IDS built in. Well improved performance. Acceleration and ACL (Access control list), IPS/IDS. Since January 2014 None There was an issue in regards to Heartbleed case and Orange Business service…
Chaudhary Muhammad Moez Manzar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Reduces operational costs through bandwidth optimization but struggles with high traffic licensing and complex deployments
The logs in Steelhead are fantastic. There is a deep level of logs such as top 10 docker and top 50 docker. I can check from the top 50 docker which type of application is optimizing well and which type of traffic is not optimized. Steelhead provides logs and percentage levels, which is good. I can see any type of log report, report security, different types of report availability, but it is not customizable. Overall, this is a good feature. Steelhead provides real-time optimization with graphs and tables on real-time optimization, informing us packet by packet including port, source IP, destination IP, and destination port number. This reporting and real-time monitoring is fantastic, although I faced a problem in Oracle. Steelhead mainly saves the money that needs to be paid to ISPs. My actual traffic is around 2 GB, but I purchased a link from the ISP for only around 700 to 800 MB. All the prices that need to be paid monthly to the ISP are saved, which is a significant saving for my company after using Riverbed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The impact of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's integration with existing web technologies on our site's performance and security measures is quite great, actually."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"The most valuable part of the solution for us overall is exactly that it is a Software-as-a-Service product."
"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"It is configurable via API."
"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
"Making use of two connections per site we were able to minimize expensive MPLS connections and replace them with cheap internet lines with IPsec tunnels."
"Application visibility is without doubt the strongest point of this product and the most valuable to me as a user."
"In terms of ROI and features aside from other expensive IDS and IPS hardware, this product I recommend."
"There are several features specific to branches, like keeping data hot and active on Steelhead devices. These features prevent unnecessary data travel across the international LAN."
"I find the most valuable to be the compression and exchange replication."
"Scalable data referencing is the most valuable feature developed by Riverbed."
"We've been very pleased with the solution and its capabilities over the years."
"Through this product, we can easily find the bottlenecks and where the traffic occurs or is generated in the network."
"The data reduction that we realize (>85% for our most common protocols) is amazing."
"Steelhead's most valuable feature is its ability to hash and send only the important parts of the information, avoiding the resending of data."
"Steelhead mainly saves the money that needs to be paid to ISPs; my actual traffic is around 2 GB, but I purchased a link from the ISP for only around 700 to 800 MB, and all the prices that need to be paid monthly to the ISP are saved, which is a significant saving for my company after using Riverbed."
 

Cons

"Support can be challenging at times."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"The learning curve was steep initially."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"Its stability could be better."
"We don't even use Cloudflare Bot Management because it's too expensive; you need to pay per request, and it's much cheaper to get one or two additional machines."
"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."
"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."
"Acceleration and ACL (Access control list), IPS/IDS."
"I suppose being able to set performance targets or QoS Profiles individually per location would be nice."
"Application response time and network performance could be improved."
"Steelhead's handling of encrypted traffic could be improved because it requires some complex configuration to optimize encrypted traffic, especially when working with Microsoft protocols for mail servers and VPN services"
"The scalability is not the best. If you find that you have outgrown the capacity of your appliance you are forced to repurchase the license and the appliance with very little discount even if your appliance is still under contract."
"I didn't like the way platforms were scaled – if you started with a top end model of one of the tiers, if you needed to upgrade you had to rip and replace the box with a whole new one."
"The application response time of the solution can be improved."
"I would like to see improvement in the solution’s configuration and protocol aspects. We have got some configurations that are not set. I would also like to simplify the call detection of some protocols."
"There was a significant challenge when moving from an older version to a newer one due to changed quality of service policies."
"The traffic is passing, but Oracle DB traffic experiences lag and slowness due to Steelhead, while other applications perform fine."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"It is not too pricey."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
Information not available
"Across our 12 data centers, we spend around $150k annually."
"The solution is expensive and the service contacts are costly too. The cost of the device makes the value proposition borderline acceptable for us. The service contract fees we pay is approximately $30,000 annually."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
No data available
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We just did an assessment for our 47 datacenters around North America. The top two enterprise-level network monitorin...
What is your primary use case for Riverbed Steelhead?
I am currently working with Riverbed for replication between PR to DR for synchronization purposes, and for WAN optim...
What advice do you have for others considering Riverbed Steelhead?
Application performance may improve with Steelhead, but it varies application to application. Some applications, such...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
IpIengine
RIverbed Steelhead
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Valeo, KBC, Henkel, Bouygues Telecom, Gemalto, VDABês, Globus, EADS, faurecia, Fiat, Renault Nissan, Safran, Valeo, Volvo, Aviva, Visa, L'Oreal, Hasbro, Moet & Chandon Champagne
ElAraby, SFK Leblanc, Bobst Group, Northwest Pipe Company, Halkbank, Tradebridge, EFG Hermes
Find out what your peers are saying about Ipanema IpIengine vs. Steelhead and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,467 professionals have used our research since 2012.