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F5 Silverline Managed Services vs Imperva Web Application Firewall comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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

F5 Silverline Managed Services
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
22nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (13th)
Imperva Web Application Fir...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of F5 Silverline Managed Services is 1.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Web Application Firewall is 5.6%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Archana Heeralal - PeerSpot reviewer
A reasonably priced product with a good UI, but the navigation is difficult, and the support team takes a long time to respond
Since we use the solution’s cloud, the product has more control over the back end. The customer will not have control. It is part of the product’s feature. When we get more complex requirements or if we want to write more complex tools, the support team will have the visibility to write them because they have control. The navigation is difficult to use. The navigation should be improved. Other products are quite straightforward. If I try to implement a new application and do an onboarding, it is not very easy. We must go to one feature, inside which there will be more features. It should be simplified, and a menu should be provided.
Mitesh D Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively defends against threats like cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and others
It does bring value. For example, consider a BFSI customer. Their application is critical and represents their brand. Without a WAF, an attack could take their application down, harming their reputation. It leads to hampering the customer's workflow. With an Imperva WAF, they protect against attacks like DDoS or SQL injection, ensuring their application remains available and customers are happy. That's the main benefit for both the customer and the organization. The impact depends on the customer's use case. If their business primarily operates online, a CDN is beneficial for traffic optimization. Moreover, the integration options depend on the specific use case of our customers. Generally, integration capabilities are good with SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) parts.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are the configuration and configuring the process."
"The best advantage of F5 Silverline Managed Services is that it is easy to use."
"Its flexibility is the most valuable because it is a managed service. The good part is that you don't need to set it up. It just needs DNS routing, which is the easiest thing. Our client had Akamai for certain websites because they were using CDN features. They had NetScaler on the internal zone, F5 AWAFs on the data centers, and no WAF at all in the cloud. One of the main activities of the project was to move all these policies into a single WAF so that we could control and use that as a choke point. That exercise itself was very easy because it was a managed service and F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall does that for you. That's the best thing about F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall. It is easy to apply policies on-premises. If you have AWAF on-premises and you want to replicate some policies on F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, other than the policies that it applies by itself, it is easy because you have a team that supports it. F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall works perfectly fine. It pretty much does everything that an Advanced WAF on-premises should do."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"The most important feature is that they have seven firewall protection, to protect our web servers."
"We have a lot of businesses that we put behind this solution, and it has really helped us in terms of monitoring the logs and incidents."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Silverline Managed Services is it becomes similar to a distributed architecture."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of Imperva, in addition to its strong knowledge base, is its effective protection for web applications."
"The solution can scale."
"Imperva has a complete picture of how the applications are utilizing it. It is handy. DDoS is good. It has an internally managed database. It is very easy to integrate. We have integrated it with SIEM services."
"Configuration for different application sources is most valuable. We can segregate the traffic that an application is carrying and identify the sizing in Imperva."
"The features I have found most valuable with Imperva Web Application Firewall are account takeover protection, advanced bot protection, and API security."
"Protection is the best solution since it has profile functionality."
"The most valuable features of Imperva Web Application Firewall are the monitoring of databases and the dashboards are easy to understand."
"The solution is cloud-based and offers us good uptime. It has combined web and API security. Therefore, with one license, you access both application security and also API security."
 

Cons

"We need to have support for cloud protection, which is not offered by this solution."
"F5 Silverline Managed Services can improve by reducing the price."
"The price is high in comparison to other products."
"Improvements could include the creation of highly optimized profiles, optimization deployments, and compression profiles for better performance."
"The navigation is difficult to use."
"F5 Silverline Managed Services can improve by adding features that Palo Alto has."
"There is a lot of room for improvement with their tech support. I am not sure F5 Silverline Managed Services can be classified as having tech support."
"There is room for improvement in the stability of the solution."
"It's a complicated tool to keep."
"The user interface could be better."
"There could be some limitations that from the converged infrastructure perspective: when you want to converge with everything and you want Imperva to get there easily because it's not a cloud component. For example, when you want to build servers and you're using OneView to manage your software-defined networks, implementing Imperva right away is not that simple. But if you're doing just a simple cloud infrastructure with servers in there, you're good to go. Also, we are not able, with Imperva, to block by signatures. Imperva by itself needs to be complemented with another service to do URL filtering."
"I don't really use it and therefore can't speak to areas of improvement."
"The tool's UI is complicated. It would be best to have a more accessible UI dashboard to make the job easier."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall could improve the API integration. It was complex for us. Additionally, The onboarding could be better."
"The Imperva Web Application Firewall automations are good, but there is still room for improvement with them."
"The initial setup could be simplified. Every time you have to install the solution you have to get in touch with support or somebody that can to do that for you."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be better, they are not very flexible. The price of the solution is based on the requirements of the enterprise."
"F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall works based on your bandwidth. They look at the clean bandwidth and do the pricing. 20% of a total pipe would be a clean bandwidth. The list price or a non-negotiated price for F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall would be around $2,200 per application per year for everything that you need. When you get into an enterprise kind of a setup, they negotiate this to the last bit. I would easily take 20% on that, which would be the cost, but it should cover all your Advance WAF features, bot protection, tech campaign, etc. It is built as a package and gives you most of the capability. You don't get the mobile SDK, which is an additional license. Mobile SDK is required only if you're buying or if you have a mobile application, and you are going to instrument F5 or Imperva into your mobile appliance. This anyways would be an additional module. It doesn't come within the WAF, but it is a WAF feature."
"The product’s pricing is reasonable."
"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be reduced."
"The solution's pricing is an issue."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall's pricing is expensive."
"It is a very affordable solution."
"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."
"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."
"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?
For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Silverline Managed Services?
The solution is quite reasonably priced, with costs being lower in comparison to competitors. On a scale where ten is very expensive, I would rate the pricing as three. It offers cost savings and i...
DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DDoS Protection Service and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?
You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot of DDoS attacks that were well managed (even not seen by the customer) by Imperv...
Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot management.
 

Also Known As

F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, F5 Silverline DDoS Protection
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.