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Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Ivanti Virtual Web Applicat...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
43rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
0
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (16th)
NetScaler
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd), Network Management Applications (14th)
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user712188 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a tech company
Jun 30, 2018
 

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.
MD
Consultant at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Good feature set and is simple to deploy
In terms of what needs improvement, the price could be lowered. We've tried to deploy more of them but our purchasing department has said that they're way too expensive and they would prefer to use something else. We sort of stopped deploying them because of that. There are additional costs to the standard licensing. There are bandwidth prices. The feature set is quite good. We've been told to stop using them because of the price. If they can do something to address that I believe it would be better. On the latest version they've got a community edition, which is quite a good bandwidth, but in essence, it's to address the entry-level price. When you get to 10 gig bandwidth, it's way too expensive.
AR
IT Security Specialist at a educational organization with 201-500 employees
Allows students and lecturers access to necessary software for their courses cost-effectively
I am a consultant and do not recommend specific products. I work with customers, and they decide what they want to buy. I'm a CISO as a service, dealing with security. I'm from an integrator company, and they usually sell a few products. One customer uses NetScaler for a VDI system with Citrix…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
"I have not had any issues with this solution, and I would recommend it to others who are interested in using it."
"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."
"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that it is simple to deploy. The deployment took us ten minutes."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that it is simple to deploy."
"Content Switching provides flexibility for routing traffic as desired to designated real servers. It also provides good geo capabilities through its GSLB feature."
"An 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."
"High availability, performance, and security are the main pillars. It enhances the security for accessing the applications."
"Manageability and visibility are good."
"HTTP analysis and action. We have a lot of custom web applications that sometimes require custom header insertions. Some of these custom apps are external and, via the content switching, we can use one IP and leverage various back-end web app servers."
"It has helped us to increase the resiliency of the application and the performance."
"It is a very stable solution."
"I like app flows and custom flows. They integrate with multiple flows."
 

Cons

"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."
"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"The reporting could be more granular."
"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."
"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the price could be lowered; we've tried to deploy more of them but our purchasing department has said that they're way too expensive and they would prefer to use something else."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the price could be lowered. We've tried to deploy more of them but our purchasing department has said that they're way too expensive and they would prefer to use something else."
"But if they're consulting as an enterprise product and in a very large scale deployment enterprise, Citrix is not a complete solution."
"We would like to see some fairly large scale improvement in the configuration process for this solution."
"An area for improvement would be the difficulty in finding information about standard licensing costs over the internet. They should provide some reference prices on the net to be quickly referred to."
"The tool's pricing is a pain point since we have many cheaper alternatives."
"Citrix NetScaler has been recently acquired by another company and the support has been negatively impacted, the solution is at its end of life. The support for the solution could improve. The sales team needs to be improved."
"It can be a complex setup in some cases."
"I will try to migrate all the tools to the cloud because there is more lab and more VPN scalability available in the cloud. It is not available on-premises."
"Scripting and writing expressions need to be improved by putting logic behind the rules and improve policies involving some of the scripting part, which is a tedious task to do."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"It is not too pricey."
"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"The solution is expensive."
Information not available
"Citrix ADM costs us approximately $5000 per month."
"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."
"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten since it is expensive."
"It's an expensive product but it works well."
"Costly product and complicated licensing."
"Ninety day free trial makes it easy to try out this solution."
"We get value for money. Its price is fair. I don't think it is overpriced."
"For the specific use case that my customers primarily engage with, I would give the pricing a rating of seven out of ten."
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Answers from the Community

it_user712188 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a tech company
Jun 30, 2018
Jun 30, 2018
Zeus was a great company - Its a shame Riverbed screwed up the acquisition and destroyed it. The product has been in a state of limbo for several years, I wouldn't trust Pulse to make anything out of it. Go with F5 or Citrix if you have the money. If money is an issue then go with Kemp or Loadbalancer.org which are #1 and #2 at the value end of the market. Radware is pretty cool as well - but ...
2 out of 5 answers
MS
network specialist at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 19, 2018
As far as I know, Netscaler has special hardware solution SDX where you can run virtual appliance (VPX) so much as you need and license determines the total system performance. It's not a problem for scaling virtual appliance by each application. You can ask Citrix managers for details. I hope it will be helpful.
GB
unemployed
Jun 19, 2018
My thought would be Barracuda Cloud WAF. This will work in 15 min. With lb and default templates. Go to demo.Barracuda.com Select WAF for hardware or select cloud. Additional info ask if needed
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
No data available
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
 

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 Business44
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise58
 

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 advice do you have for others considering Citrix NetScaler?
Each product has its advantages, and combining certain features of F5 and NetScaler could be beneficial. I'd rate the...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADM?
Regarding pricing, educational institutes often receive better prices. In the context of virtualization, prices are i...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Pulse vWAF, Pulse Virtual Traffic Manager
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall, NetScaler VPX - Customer Licensed
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Gilt Groupe
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about F5, NetScaler, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC). Updated: April 2026.
894,830 professionals have used our research since 2012.