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NetScaler vs Symantec Web Application Firewall comparison

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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
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
75
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 (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (12th)
Symantec Web Application Fi...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (44th)
 

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

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"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."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"It's very user-friendly."
"Cloudflare has many features."
"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."
"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."
"When our primary link goes down I can still get to my Cisco devices and the NetScaler devices on-prem because of the SDN solution. If the internet connection at one of the branches goes down, we can still route them, they still get internet based on the SDN solution through one of the other sites. They can carry on working."
"The most valuable features of Citrix ADC are load balancing and application firewall."
"Available on any device and can be accessed on a wide area network."
"I like the solution's simplicity compared to Citrix's on-prem solutions."
"The web application firewalling component is a powerful feature."
"Helped us a lot with load balancing."
"My clients use it for load balancing."
"The most valuable feature of Citrix NetScaler was the seamless integration. Additionally, the UI is good."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"The solution has an up-to-date data repository to deal with external threats."
"The setup was straightforward."
 

Cons

"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."
"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."
"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."
"The licensing model and technical support of the solution could be improved."
"I would like to see support for scripting, like "iRule", which gives you the option to implement any configuration which is not available out of the box."
"Its GUI should be improved. Its CLI is powerful, but GUI needs more features."
"Citrix should improve the documentation. It is not really clear how to set up many features to our advantage. When we setup Citrix NetScaler ADC, we have to figure it out by ourselves without a lot of documentation."
"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."
"Reducing the overhead required for AppFlow data collection, specifically for HDX Insight, would be a huge improvement."
"Deployment is complicated."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"Sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."
"I'm not convinced that it's necessary the best solution going forward in the future."
"It would be an improvement if the management dashboards were not reliant upon Java."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The firewall license is included by default, with no additional costs."
"It is an enterprise solution. Thus, its costs are reasonable."
"There isn't much of a difference between the cost of Citrix and that of other similar solutions."
"It is very pricey, but we get it. If you need the best, money shouldn't be a problem."
"NetScaler does the same thing as an F5 and it's cheaper."
"I do not have any experience with the pricing of the product."
"The license for Citrix NetScaler is on an annual basis and it is reasonably priced."
"For partners, NetScaler is not as expensive price-wise versus F5."
Information not available
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
18%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
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: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.