


NGINX App Protect and Microsoft Azure Application Gateway are contenders in the application security and traffic management sector. While Azure Application Gateway has an edge due to its seamless integration with other Azure services and ease of use, NGINX App Protect is appreciated for its robust security features.
Features: NGINX App Protect provides security headers, proxy capabilities, and a command-line interface. Its reverse proxy capabilities, auto-learning, and bot protection are highly valued. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is noted for comprehensive traffic management, ease of use, and effective web application firewall (WAF). Its seamless integration with Azure services, scalability, and straightforward configuration are significant advantages.
Room for Improvement: NGINX App Protect needs enhancements in flexibility, pricing structures, and integration with current security solutions. It also faces scalability challenges and lacks certain automation features. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway requires better flexibility, scalability, and security features. Simplifying the configuration process and enhancing performance and third-party feature integration would be beneficial.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NGINX App Protect often demands on-premises deployment, limiting its versatility compared to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway's support for public and hybrid clouds. Feedback on NGINX support varies, whereas Microsoft Azure benefits from a robust support network but is sometimes criticized for slow responses and complex initial configurations.
Pricing and ROI: NGINX App Protect is viewed as pricey with a complex pricing model based on instances but offers decent ROI with significant initial investment. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, while also expensive, provides a flexible pay-as-you-go pricing model without steep licensing fees. Users report favorable ROI, particularly those heavily integrated with Azure, though initial costs are noted as high.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
In terms of return on investment with Cloudflare, it costs my time to set them up, but basically once they're set up, it's done.
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway significantly impacts our cost savings while maintaining higher performance.
We have seen a return on investment in terms of time-saving and cost-saving by not creating our own infrastructure.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.
I have primarily worked not with the tool's customer support but with the product's sales engineers and technical sales engineers, who seem to know their stuff.
There is room for improvement, specifically in paid support, by providing more direct contact.
I would rate Microsoft support as good because they have a very skilled technical support team in the background
They were quick and efficient when we had issues.
It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.
The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.
I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a very scalable product.
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a scalable solution.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
The stability is good, and except for a few instances, I don't see the non-availability of Azure Cloud services.
It is a quality solution, and I would rate its stability as eight out of ten.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
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.
There are some performance considerations when it comes to dynamic content that involves fetching data from databases or using APIs.
There is room for improvement in terms of support, such as assigning agents directly for more straightforward engagement.
In future releases of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, I would like to see more AI functionalities and a better dashboard as well as some customizations.
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has room for improvement because it offers many features, but its configuration is a bit difficult, at least from the developer point of view.
There was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service.
I find it to be cheap.
I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.
The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.
Azure solutions are quite expensive.
When it comes to pricing for Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, I would rate it a seven out of ten.
The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.
Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.
The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.
We are using it for some of the security features for our applications, particularly for securing traffic in transit with SSL.
The Web Application Firewall (WAF) in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has been very effective in protecting applications from security threats.
The gateway's Web Application Firewall feature enhances security as it is the first entry point to your network from the outside world.
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.
Detecting bots and blocking IPs have proven effective for securing applications.

| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 46 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 8 |
| Large Enterprise | 25 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 22 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 6 |
| Large Enterprise | 23 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 8 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 5 |
| Large Enterprise | 11 |
Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.
Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.
What are Cloudflare's key features?Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.
Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. Traditional load balancers operate at the transport layer (OSI layer 4 - TCP and UDP) and route traffic based on source IP address and port, to a destination IP address and port.
To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.
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:
NGINX App Protect offers:
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