We performed a comparison between AWS WAF and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager LTM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: AWS WAF's pricing is more affordable, but users find that technical support for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager LTM is better, and mention a positive ROI.
"The product's initial setup phase was very simple."
"AWS WAF is a stable solution. The performance of the solution is very good."
"The interface is good."
"The most valuable feature is the scalability because it automatically scales up or scales down as per our requirements."
"The most valuable feature is the capability to limit access based on geographical location by restricting specific IP addresses."
"The solution is stable."
"The customized billing is the most valuable feature."
"The product’s availability, ease of configuration, and documentation are valuable."
"The setup is pretty easy."
"It supports APIs and virtual additions for cloud and VMware."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The v11 clustering is a new technology they have brought in that does not require improvement. They are the leader in it."
"Great load balancing."
"The most valuable feature of F5 BIG-IP LTM is brand image and recognition and the application delivery controller."
"The combination of ADC and WAN is the most valuable feature."
"Currently, it's distributing the load perfectly, as per my understanding of our requirements."
"Technical support for AWS WAF needs improvement."
"It is sometimes a lot of work going through the rules and making sure you have everything covered for a use case. It is just the way rules are set and maintained in this solution. Some UI changes will probably be helpful. It is not easy to find the documentation of new features. Documentation not being updated is a common problem with all services, including this one. You have different versions of the console, and the options shown in the documentation are not there. For a new feature, there is probably an announcement about being released, but when it comes out, there is no actual documentation about how to use it. This makes you either go to technical support or community, which probably doesn't have an idea either. The documentation on the cloud should be the latest one. Finding information about a specific event can be a bit challenging. For this solution, not much documentation is available in the community. It could be because it is a new tool. Whenever there is an issue, it is just not that simple to resolve, especially if you don't have premium support. You have pretty much nowhere to look around, and you just need to poke around to try and make it work right."
"An improvement area would be that it's more of a manual effort when you have to enable rules. That's one of the downsides. If that can be done in an automated way, it would be great. That's a lagging feature currently."
"I would like to be able to view a graphical deployment map in the user interface that will give me an overview of the configuration and help to determine whether I have missed any steps."
"On the UI side, I would like it if they could bring back the geolocation view on the corner."
"They should make the implementation process faster."
"There is room for improvement in pricing."
"I would like to see it more tightly integrated with other AWS services."
"For a future release, I would like to see more features in the cloud."
"The pricing model has caused some frustration. My clients implemented the solution and later wanted to upgrade the features but the pricing structure was complicated. There are other solutions with better pricing models."
"A lot of functions that are attributed to iRules can actually be simple profile changes. iRules do have a certain performance impact. Therefore, instead of writing simple iRules, they can create certain profiles for classes that will perform the same function."
"Implementing whitepapers with a lot more applications could easily be added."
"It is a hardware load balancer, and its installation procedure is more complex than a software load balancer. There are pros and cons of using hardware load balancing. You have to have specific hardware deployed in your data center to activate this load balancer. They never came up with any software-based load balancing solution. It is all hardware-based."
"LTM would be improved with the inclusion of signature-based blocking."
"We would like to see load balancing between the cloud and the on-premise, a straightforward deployment feature."
"It would possibly help to get more training, even better in local languages."
More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Pricing and Cost Advice →
AWS WAF is ranked 1st in Web Application Firewall (WAF) with 51 reviews while F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is ranked 1st in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 116 reviews. AWS WAF is rated 8.2, while F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of AWS WAF writes "A highly stable solution that helps mitigate different kinds of bot attacks and SQL injection attacks". On the other hand, the top reviewer of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) writes "Helps deliver applications to users in a reliable, secure, and optimized way". AWS WAF is most compared with Azure Web Application Firewall, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, Imperva Web Application Firewall and F5 Advanced WAF, whereas F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is most compared with Citrix NetScaler, Fortinet FortiADC, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, NGINX Plus and HAProxy. See our AWS WAF vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report.
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.