Cloudflare vs F5 Advanced WAF comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cloudflare and F5 Advanced WAF based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Cloudflare vs. F5 Advanced WAF Report (Updated: January 2023).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Centralized, full-featured DNS.""When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers.""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.""Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.""Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack.""The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks.""We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews.""What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool."

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"We can monitor IP locations, but we have constraints from each country. It has a replication feature. Licenses can be shared, taking turns with each license.""The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the security features and the protection.""The most valuable features of this solution are the WAF protection, Data Safe, and the seven-layer DDoS.""The initial setup was was easy to install.""In terms of F5 Advanced WAF's most valuable features, I would definitely say its stability. F5 is one the most stable products. Either as the load balancer or the web application firewall, it is very stable.""This solution inspects your traffic and based on that, automatically create distinct qualities for you, so you can add this to the policy already created. That's what I like most.""The most valuable features of F5 Advanced WAF are the balancer and you can change policies very easily.""I like all of the features, but the main one is the attack signatures."

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Cons
"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud.""The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it.""I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution.""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.""The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage.""Support response time could be improved.""The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened.""We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."

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"There is a gap in report management.""For me, an area for improvement in F5 Advanced WAF is the reporting as it isn't so clear. The vendor needs to work on the reporting capability of the solution. What I'd like to see in the next release of F5 Advanced WAF is threat intelligence to protect your web application, particularly having that capability out-of-the-box, and not needing to pay extra for it, similar to what's offered in FortiWeb, for example, any request that originates from a malicious IP will be blocked automatically by FortiWeb. F5 Advanced WAF should have the intelligence for blocking malicious IPs, or automatically blocking threats included in the license, instead of making it an add-on feature that users have to pay for apart from the standard licensing fees.""The Sandbox integration feature could be improved.""The reporting could be clearer and embedded to include our movement data.""I would like to see additional controls.""The tool needs to improve its pricing.""F5 Advanced WAF could improve the reporting. It's a bit difficult to populate, them. If you're not so familiar with the functions, such as where to find the logs and other settings.""I would like to see a better interface and better documentation compatibility with other products. It's more complicated with OWASP."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
  • "I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
  • "There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
  • "The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
  • "We don't have any issues with the price."
  • "The price is reasonable."
  • "The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
  • "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."
  • More Cloudflare Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The pricing is too high."
  • "I think the price is very high."
  • "After buying the program, you just pay for the support every year."
  • "Licensing fees for this solution are paid on a yearly basis."
  • "It's more expensive than other solutions and depending on the modules, there can be additional fees."
  • "F5 bundles up services and the bundle is what you pay for rather than individual components."
  • "Its price is fair. We have done a couple of deals where they were able to give some kind of discount to the customers. The price was initially high for the customers, but after a couple of negotiations, it came within their budget. They were happy with that."
  • "There are various plans available for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF as a Service, including a trial version."
  • More F5 Advanced WAF Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds by… more »
    Top Answer:Smaller businesses have seen great ROI due to the low investment and strong performance.
    Top Answer:Cloudflare's biggest plan for initial businesses is $200 per month, and if you're an enterprise, you'll likely exceed that on either AWS or Cloudflare itself. For comparison, Akamai's minimum billing… more »
    Top Answer:F5's user-friendly interface and seamless integration stand out as the most valuable features for us.
    Top Answer:The customer service could be improved.
    Ranking
    Views
    9,262
    Comparisons
    7,975
    Reviews
    15
    Average Words per Review
    529
    Rating
    8.3
    Views
    12,449
    Comparisons
    9,913
    Reviews
    21
    Average Words per Review
    413
    Rating
    8.7
    Comparisons
    Learn More
    Overview

    Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distribution Denial of Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can use the solution and experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

    Currently, there are millions of internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

    Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the information requests are always only seconds away.

    Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to access Cloudflare highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project Athenian, also at no additional cost.

    Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end-users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD ( bring your own device) access ensure end-users and employees always have the best resources and technology available to them at all times.



    Cloudflare Benefits

    Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

    • Faster load times
    • Robust DNS security
    • Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)
    • Free universal SSL
    • Image Enhancement
    • Automatic Browser Caching
    • Next-generation cloud load balancer
    • Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
    • Rate Limiting
    • Minification
    • Zero-trust capabilities 
    • Cost-effective
    • Reduced carbon footprint

    Reviews from Real Users

    “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. If you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a certificate.”  Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

    “What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network engineer at Ufinet

    The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” A PeerSpot user who is a Competence Center Manager at a tech services company. 

    F5 Advanced WAF is a web application security solution for financial and government sectors, e-commerce, and public-facing websites. It offers protection against various attacks, including botnets, web scraping, and foreign entities. The solution can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and is often used with other security tools. Its most valuable features include DDoS and DNS attack protection, SSL uploading, anomaly detection, and the ability to input custom rules. 

    F5 Advanced WAF has helped organizations to expose more services to the public while providing an extra layer of protection, preventing revenue loss, and securing connectivity.

    Sample Customers
    Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
    MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm23%
    Comms Service Provider23%
    Marketing Services Firm9%
    Engineering Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization37%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Comms Service Provider5%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm33%
    Computer Software Company27%
    Non Tech Company7%
    Media Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business64%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise23%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise45%
    Large Enterprise36%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise44%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise64%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cloudflare vs. F5 Advanced WAF
    January 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare vs. F5 Advanced WAF and other solutions. Updated: January 2023.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cloudflare is ranked 1st in Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection with 55 reviews while F5 Advanced WAF is ranked 3rd in Web Application Firewall (WAF) with 53 reviews. Cloudflare is rated 8.4, while F5 Advanced WAF is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cloudflare writes "It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes". On the other hand, the top reviewer of F5 Advanced WAF writes "Flexible configuration, reliable, and highly professional support". Cloudflare is most compared with Akamai, Azure Front Door, Imperva DDoS, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and AWS Shield, whereas F5 Advanced WAF is most compared with Fortinet FortiWeb, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, Imperva Web Application Firewall, AWS WAF and Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. See our Cloudflare vs. F5 Advanced WAF report.

    We monitor all Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection 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.