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NetScaler vs Symantec Web Application Firewall comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
NetScaler
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st), Network Management Applications (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (11th)
Symantec Web Application Fi...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (42nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU - PeerSpot reviewer
A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking
Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another 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.
reviewer1231533 - PeerSpot reviewer
An excellent up-to-date data repository handling external threats successfully
We have multiple applications that we wanted to ensure were protected and we chose Symantec for that. I'm the head of IT infrastructure and we are partners with Symantec.  Symantec has specifically helped connect external users to our internal network. It has also enabled us to ensure that those…

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 features of the solution are performance and security."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."
"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."
"It's very user-friendly."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"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 technical support is good."
"Most of the functions are user-friendly and great."
"The solution's technical support is good."
"Citrix NetScaler offers robust security features, including SmartAccess and customizable policies, making it a reliable choice for safeguarding user data."
"If you need PCI-compliance and have high security requirements, WAF is the most valuable feature. If you need to monitor your load-balancing services with complex types of monitoring, make sure everything is alright, and load balancing is important, Content Switching and Monitoring features are the keys to your needs. If you want to provide a lot of static images or data, the Caching feature works best for you."
"Scalability is great. One of the best features of NetScaler is that it can scale out."
"For desktop application management, I recommend the NetScaler edition. This product is like a Swiss army knife. Citrix NetScaler ADC supports the education front-end."
"Manageability and visibility are good."
"Citrix Director has been great. It gives us one pane of glass to be able to monitor what's going on with the user sessions as well as to keep on top of the virtual desktops, any servers that may be offline or behaving suspiciously, or any troublesome spots like disconnections. We also use Citrix Studio for maintaining the actual servers that are hosting these applications. We use it for delivery groups in case we need to modify delivery groups in regards to which groups have access to which applications. It has been very helpful."
"The setup was straightforward."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"The solution has an up-to-date data repository to deal with external threats."
 

Cons

"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."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."
"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"We would like to see some fairly large scale improvement in the configuration process for this solution."
"The solution is a bit more expensive than some of the available solutions in this region. One solution in particular that I noticed was cheaper was Kemp."
"I would like to see more integration for single sign-on."
"The technical support could be improved. They do not respond or assist customers in a timely manner."
"It does not have a sandbox cloud service and antivirus. It should have on-prem or cloud sandboxing and antivirus."
"Citrix ADC can improve if it provides a more user-friendly interface and clear working protocols. Citrix is not working with classic RFC, it is working with Citrix RFC, which is not common in the world. If engineers of Citrix can provide us with more information on working with the classic IP networks it would be a benefit."
"The configuration for its web application firewall is complicated."
"Integration with other third party providers and third party applications could be better because it can be a bit complex at present."
"Sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."
"It would be an improvement if the management dashboards were not reliant upon Java."
"I'm not convinced that it's necessary the best solution going forward in the future."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"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."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The solution's pricing is very high compared to its competitors."
"Licensing is adequate. I wanted to have a more prominent license, but until I do they don't give enough support. The additional cost would be too much."
"Citrix NetScaler VPX is not the cheapest solution out there, but you get what you pay for."
"The pricing could be lower."
"NetScaler does the same thing as an F5 and it's cheaper."
"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten since it is expensive."
"For partners, NetScaler is not as expensive price-wise versus F5."
"It all depends on the features that will be used and the number of accesses."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
No data available
 

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...
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.
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...
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...
What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?
Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...
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Comparisons

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall
Symantec WAF, Blue Coat Protecting Web Applications
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
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Find out what your peers are saying about NetScaler vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,672 professionals have used our research since 2012.