Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler comparison

Ivanti and NetScaler are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. Ivanti is ranked #16, while NetScaler is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3. Additionally, 100% of Ivanti users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of NetScaler users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall and NetScaler based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about NetScaler, F5, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC).

To learn more, read our detailed Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 847,772 peers since 2012

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

Q&A Highlights

it_user712188

Works at a tech company

Jun 30, 2018

Pulse vADC/vTM vs. Netscaler

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 not cheap. https://www.loadbalancer.org/blog/so-just-how-should-you-compare-load-balancers/

See all answers

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.

Read full review

reviewer890211

Consultant at a consultancy

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.

Read full review

VivekKumar10

Co-Founder at Virajo

Good stability and offers various valuable features like WAF

Pricing is one area for improvement. It's on the higher side because NetScaler is a premium product used for over 70% of internet traffic worldwide. However, price is not the only concern. Manageability and adaptability can also be challenging for end customers, who may require the assistance of experts like us to deploy and manage the product effectively. Although this is good for us as partners, it can limit the product's appeal to customers who prioritize ease of use. Moreover, having some GUI-based tools for log management and troubleshooting would be helpful and make it easier for customers to manage and troubleshoot their databases. For the future release of Citrix NetScaler, I would like to see better pricing, as well as improved manageability and log management features. Another thing is if a problem occurs, we have to rely on the central support system. We need to collect the log and send it back to support for analysis, and then Citrix support will provide the solution. It would be much easier to troubleshoot if something is handy, such as a web portal or a common platform where customers can upload logs and resolve some of the issues automatically.

Read full review

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 is the web application firewall."

"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."

"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."

"The technical support is good."

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

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

"It is a fast and secure DNS."

More Cloudflare pros

"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that it is simple to deploy. The deployment took us ten minutes."

"The solution improves security performance."

"We like the periodic upgrades and backups, also made via ADMs, and it makes our environment much more robust and reliable."

"The solution is very stable."

"The advantage of Citrix Web App and API Protection is just its graphic user interface for beginners. The solution is nothing special, but we have to use it for the corporation. Another advantage of Citrix Web App and API Protection is that we have our copy to test things and get the know-how of it."

"The maintenance of the solution is not complex."

"The load balancing is one of the most valuable features."

"The most impressive thing about Citrix ADM is that we don't encounter latency."

"Enables a Web service that offers persistent client-server connections, IP restriction, URL rewrite (such as remove "/assets/" path from client-side URL path), and cache for CSS or JS files... You can easily use the GUI to set up all these requirements on the same network device within 20-30 minutes. (If you do the same steps on CLI, it might take less time.)"

More NetScaler pros

Cons

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

"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."

"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."

"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."

"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."

"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."

More Cloudflare cons

"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."

"The interface needs to be improved because the competition is coming up with ones that are more eye-catching, straightforward, and sophisticated."

"The GUI should be improved."

"Citrix ADC can be really complex. It isn't very simple like some other appliances that I've worked with. You need a lot of skill and experience to manage it. I'm not talking about a year or two. You need at least four years to understand it very well. It is not that easy to learn. They should make it a lot simpler for users to understand the management of it. They can also provide some additional training. The material they have on the site is not sufficient enough for you to understand how to manage it. Their training is expensive, and not everyone has the funds and experience for it. Citrix isn't very popular around these parts of the world. So, it can use some more marketing, sales, enlightenment, and advertisement. These could bring more market for them. Basically, there are just a few companies that really go for Citrix. Most of the companies go for VMware because they marketed themselves more than Citrix. There isn't much difference between Citrix and VMware. VMware is a little more robust than Citrix. Citrix has focused more on desktops rather than server virtualization, and that's the advantage VMware has over Citrix. Citrix also needs to educate and inform users about the infrastructure that is supported with a version. Currently, if the customers don't look at the datasheet, they might miss this important information."

"The SLB could be better, and they should improve it."

"The solution's pricing is a big concern and should be improved."

"We face challenges with the solution's firmware upgrades frequently."

"There are some features which are missing."

"Citrix Web App and API Protection could improve in the area of licensing"

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

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

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"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."

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

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

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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

"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."

"NetScaler does the same thing as an F5 and it's cheaper."

"The tool is cheap."

"It's an expensive product but it works well."

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

"There isn't much of a difference between the cost of Citrix and that of other similar solutions."

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

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

847,772 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Answers from the Community

it_user712188

Works at a tech company

Jun 30, 2018

Pulse vADC/vTM vs. Netscaler

2 out of 5 answers

Maksim Sataev

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.

Read full answer

GregBristow

Works

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

Read full answer

See all 5 answers

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

19%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

19%

Energy/Utilities Company

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

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 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 3% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

No data available

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

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

Compared 8% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

April 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

April 2025

Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall report

Download Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall product report

Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

March 2025

Download NetScaler product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

Pulse vWAF, Pulse Virtual Traffic Manager

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

Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall delivers scalable application security for off-the-shelf and custom applications, including third-party frameworks. Apply business rules to online traffic, inspect and block attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS), and filter outgoing traffic and data to mask credit card data. Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall helps achieve compliance with PCI-DSS requirements.

Ivanti

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.

Gilt Groupe

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

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

April 2025

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about NetScaler, F5, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC). Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

847,772 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) vendors and best Web Application Firewall (WAF) vendors.

We monitor all Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) 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.