We performed a comparison between F5 Advanced WAF and Microsoft Azure Application Gateway based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, F5 Advanced WAF seems to be the superior solution. Our reviewers find that the questions concerning Microsoft Azure Application Gateway’s stability and scalability make it a riskier investment than F5 Advanced WAF.
"The web application firewall itself is most valuable. It provides positive security and negative security. In negative security, it blocks a task such as cross-site scripting, code injection, etc. In positive security, it lets you specify and enforce things, such as the parameters allowed in username and password fields and the number of characters allowed in a field."
"F5 Advanced WAF has very good stability and scalability. Its initial setup was straightforward."
"It is also quite intuitive and user-friendly. They have several webinars that are actually like labs. You can use these webinars to learn about how to use all features of the product."
"The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the security features and the protection."
"Very easy to implement and works well."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Advanced WAF is its grand unity of the implementation, where you have the freedom to configure based on how it affects your use case or your organization. With the default setting of implicit deny, you can gradually start defining and deploying the tool to align with your environment, whether it is outdated, recent, or futuristic. This allows you to customize the solution to protect you from threat actors. You have the ability to define what the advanced threat act should do - whether it should alert, deny, or both - and it will deliver based on your configuration. Unlike other online solutions, F5 Advanced WAF provides flexibility to deliver to your unique environment the way you want."
"F5 technical support is excellent. They are experts who always provide the right solution, and they understand the problem. Their response and resolution times are good."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the WAF protection, Data Safe, and the seven-layer DDoS."
"It does an excellent job of load balancing."
"Using policies to link and manage these URL-based routing configurations is also valuable."
"Some of the key features of this solution are the low-level maintenance required, floating proxy service, and load balancing."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the web application firewall (WAF)."
"The simplicity of the solution and its ability to integrate easily with others are its most valuable aspects."
"The tool helps manage microservices by providing developers with a platform to conduct tests and assessments on the web application. The custom domain option is one of the most valuable features I've found. This feature is incredibly helpful for the end-users of the web application. With the custom domain feature, you can change the lengthy link to a shorter, more memorable one. For example, instead of using a lengthy default link, you can customize it to something like imail.com, which is much easier to remember and share."
"We use the product in front-end and back-end applications to do the load balancing smartly."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway are the policies, the data store they are using, and the cloud platform it operates on."
"The contextual-based component needs a lot of help to catch up with the next-gen products."
"The reporting portion of F5 Advance WAF is not great. They need to work out something better, as it is very basic. You only see the top IPs, I think there is more they can offer."
"I would like to see additional controls."
"The solution's dashboard could be improved. When you're moving from policy to policy, the logs and the integration of the logs in other systems aren't straightforward."
"F5 Advanced WAF could improve resource usage, it is CPU intensive. Additionally, adding automated remediation would be a benefit. For example, an easy button alerts us of the events that are occurring, and what we want to do at the time. An automated approach where somebody could be alerted very quickly. Instead of going and reconfiguring everything, an automated approach is what I'm looking at."
"We usually use a third-party tool for logging and reporting. It would be nice if we could do that right on this solution. They have one, but it's not very stable. Logging and reporting effectively would be a big enhancement."
"One area for improvement in the product is its SSO integration, which posed challenges and required significant effort to resolve."
"I would like for there to be a cloud-based solution, this would also help to improve scalability."
"The tool's pricing could be improved."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway could improve by allowing features to use more third-party tools."
"Needs easier integration with the existing SIAM."
"The increased security that we are considering is because of some of the things that the security team has brought to our attention. They have pointed out that we would most likely require a better web application firewall than Azure Application Gateway."
"The support provided for the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement, especially when it comes to the response time from the support team."
"I believe that there is room for improvement in terms of additional functionality. It is an advantage to have features readily available for configuration without needing customer-defined rules."
"The support can be improved when you are configuring the system rules. The Disaster Recovery feature can be added in the next release. The price of the solution can be reduced a bit."
"Application Gateway’s limitation is that the private and the public endpoint cannot use the same port."
More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Pricing and Cost Advice →
F5 Advanced WAF is ranked 2nd in Web Application Firewall (WAF) with 55 reviews while Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is ranked 3rd in Web Application Firewall (WAF) with 40 reviews. F5 Advanced WAF is rated 8.6, while Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is rated 7.2. The top reviewer of F5 Advanced WAF writes "Flexible configuration, reliable, and highly professional support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway writes "High stability with built-in rules that reduce alerts and are easy to configure". F5 Advanced WAF is most compared with Fortinet FortiWeb, AWS WAF, Imperva Web Application Firewall, F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, whereas Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is most compared with AWS WAF, Citrix NetScaler, Azure Front Door, Cloudflare Web Application Firewall and HAProxy. See our F5 Advanced WAF vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report.
See our list of best Web Application Firewall (WAF) vendors.
We monitor all Web Application Firewall (WAF) 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.
