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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
7.1
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)
Barracuda Web Application F...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (17th)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
123
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Barracuda Web Application Firewall2.1%
Fortinet FortiWeb8.1%
F5 Advanced WAF7.8%
Other82.0%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)15.3%
NetScaler13.2%
HAProxy9.9%
Other61.6%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

HA
Owner at Hga consulting
Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility
I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.
Shahzad Abid - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Information Technology at College of Physicians & Surgeons Pakistan
Has protected our legacy applications effectively but has required constant manual filtering due to false positives
I assess the effectiveness of the machine learning-driven threat detection in Barracuda Web Application Firewall as sometimes behaving abnormally, often showing me false positive attacks, so I have to fix these attacks from time to time. From a stability point of view, I would definitely rate Barracuda Web Application Firewall a seven out of ten. There is definitely some room for improvement; nothing is perfect in the world. I am not satisfied with the technical support from Barracuda. I am somewhat disappointed with the technical support that I have received so far. Whenever I generate a ticket for my problem, it goes to the Indian support team, and they all the time start with the most junior team member, consuming all my precious time. At the end, I have to close that ticket without any satisfactory solution. I have complained that they should shift my support to any other region because I don't need Indian support; they are simply pathetic and not up to mark. To improve Barracuda Web Application Firewall, customers should be given ongoing training opportunities regarding the product and its features. I am not familiar with many features that are available, only using those which are necessary for my applications. I believe Barracuda must provide clearer product information or training sessions to make it more user-friendly, as sometimes its interface can be rigid and lacking in helpful resources or user tutorials about its features. For it to get closer to a ten, I think advanced reporting is missing because, as I mentioned earlier, there are many false positive events being recorded. Often, when I analyze these attacks, they turn out to be genuine customers or users interacting with my product, but Barracuda tags them as attackers. Reducing false positives must be a priority.
Bonieber  Orofeo - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital
Identifying compromised traffic and securing data has been a significant advantage
One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication. Additionally, the security aspect of it provides a significant advantage as it helps us secure our data, which is a major investment and benefit for us. Before using this system, we had difficulties in storing our data and managing the traffic that comes in and out.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"It's a great product because it's scalable, has great coverage, and is mature with good defenses against DDoS attacks."
"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."
"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."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it actually protects our website, and it provides all the required security functions."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the simplicity of configuration."
"The stability of the product is good. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"It allows us to scale out to multiple phase servers."
"The most valuable feature is the rule set."
"The solution ensures layer seven is secure from attacks."
"There is no one special feature, but the WAF itself is valuable: user-friendly protection against web attacks etc., authentication, reporting, accountability, alerting, and hardened OS."
"The product's advanced bot and threat protection capabilities are valuable."
"The tech support we got from F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager directly was pretty good."
"One of the best features of the solution is the operating system."
"The most valuable feature is the proxy."
"We are fond of the load balancing feature for DNS and servers."
"The most helpful thing is that it's open-source. It's very easy to program and customize."
"F5 Big-IP Local Traffic Manager has better modular features especially LTM, which according to the clients, is very beneficial. Most of the users opt for a combination of big IP LTM and WAF which helps them to leverage application load balancing and enhance application security many-fold."
"The solution is robust and reliable."
"BIG-IP LTM's most valuable feature is that it allows you to seamlessly add more servers without impacting your application's configuration."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"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."
"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."
"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."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"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."
"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."
"The solution needs to leverage some additional features to a broader scale of software-defined networks."
"The usability of the interface could be improved."
"If you know nothing about networks, then you can't set it up."
"The documentation is lacking. It's not like what you'd get if you were using Juniper or Cisco. They need to expand on it and make it more useful."
"I have to go to an individual obligation, make changes, and come out, and go to the next obligation and make the same changes. There is no grouping option."
"In the Barracuda Web Application Firewall, there should be more affordable options for WAF as a service."
"I would like to see a native multi-cloud cover."
"One of Barracuda's limitations is its user interface. The GUI for configuration is not intuitive and has remained largely unchanged for the past 10 to 12 years."
"The ASM administration is quite complex. The topic itself is pretty complex, so it is not easy to provide a nice, clean interface. There are a lot of references and dependencies in-between the different subareas."
"Lacking in free training to help users understand the product more, so they would know how to correctly use it. Like other vendors and their products, becoming more proactive is an area for improvement."
"It would possibly help to get more training, even better in local languages."
"BIG-IP LTM is taking a long time to mature in cloud environments. They plan to improve cloud integration in the next version, but it isn't out yet. It's essential because more companies are moving to the cloud these days and using things like Kubernetes or microservices. F5 needs to improve in that direction, and they are."
"If they made it easier for engineers to get F5 training then it would be better."
"They need to improve the interface and some of the functionalities."
"For integration with other AWS environments, we do some tie-ins with some autoscaling groups. This has been challenging for us. We have had issues, where when autoscaling groups scale up, there are some instances which are not showing up in the proper size. Then, those IPs would get registered with F5, but never get released. Therefore, we are ending up with a whole bunch of ghosted IPs."
"The price needs improvement as it is quite costly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is expensive."
"We are using the free version."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"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."
"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."
"They have competitive pricing."
"The product pricing was competitive for the value it offers regarding security features."
"The price of the solution is a little expensive. There is a license for this solution and it can be purchased every one, two, or five years."
"They only offer a yearly licensing plan."
"The Barracuda Web Application Firewall is quite expensive."
"Cost is a bit on the higher side. Big companies can afford it."
"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."
"For small companies, the price is very expensive because the WAF is an enterprise-level application, not intended for smaller businesses. In my opinion, the price is right for enterprise-level use."
"The price should be reduced because it is expensive when compared to the competition."
"I found F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) an expensive product. The costs would depend on the appliance and infrastructure size. However, my company didn't have to pay extra to use additional features."
"If your IT budget is good, go for it."
"It is quite expensive as a product. Because it is very stable, it is also expensive."
"It is a bit expensive product. Kemp Loadmaster is much cheaper than F5. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It can be for one year or three years."
"I would recommend that the cost be lowered."
"The tool is a bit expensive."
"F5 pricing is too high, compared to Citrix."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise32
Large Enterprise85
 

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 Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
I am not using the API protection feature right now because I don't host any APIs through Barracuda Web Application F...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
At the time I was acquiring Barracuda Web Application Firewall, I found it costly compared to other products. To over...
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?
The pricing of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is on the higher side compared to competitors, but it is worth it.
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?
Our main use cases involve multiple applications, so we are using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) services, and...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
 

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.
Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar
Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and other solutions. Updated: September 2020.
879,425 professionals have used our research since 2012.