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Airlock 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 Web Application ...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (6th)
Airlock
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
9.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (40th)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
124
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Airlock0.8%
Imperva Application Security Platform7.4%
Fortinet FortiWeb5.4%
Other86.4%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)12.6%
NetScaler11.8%
HAProxy8.7%
Other66.9%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
Tiodor Jovovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Business Officer at Sky Express
Provides endless features and can be adapted to every single application that exists in the world
WAF is the most beneficial feature for security posture. Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product. The level of detail of the configuration is the most significant aspect. We can adapt it to every single application that exists in the world. The product helps with the compliance processes.
edshyaa - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at Stryker
Load balancing has improved traffic distribution and currently supports high availability upgrades
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) offers effective load balancing methods that help distribute traffic across our servers, whether we have two or several. This load balancing feature stands out as it is the fundamental work we do with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). While I recognize there are many features, such as iRules, which I have not explored yet, we primarily work on VIPs, pool members, and traffic distribution. The load balancing algorithms' flexibility makes them very useful for our team, enabling us to choose different servers and manage load effectively. We use various methods based on user or application requirements, making the algorithms set up by F5 in the backend quite helpful. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) positively impacts our organization primarily through its load balancing capabilities. We avoid traffic overload on individual servers by placing backend servers behind F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) VIP. This load balancing helps us manage traffic effectively. Since the configuration of the I-series, we have had smooth performance, and with the recent migration to the R-series, it is working faster than before, providing positive outcomes for our operations. Since moving to the R-series, I notice improved performance; it is user-friendly and handles traffic efficiently. The upgrading process is different as we create tenants and a main host. R-series has better CPU and memory, leading to higher throughput with minimal downtime, making it a significant improvement over the I-series.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This is a good product; it's reliable and scales well."
"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"It is configurable via API."
"Cloudflare has positively impacted my organization by making it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple clients; I can easily go in and access their accounts, make changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."
"The setup process is very simple for me."
"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."
"Our customers are more than satisfied with the user experience provided by the product."
"The solution is very easy to use and easy to understand. It's quite an intuitive system."
"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."
"The Local Traffic Manager (LTM) provides a simple low balance and SSL decryption, in addition to some TCP parameters, for incoming and outgoing traffic to redirect appropriate traffic patterns to appropriate servers."
"One of the greatest things about F5 Load Balancer is that it provides additional capability for handling huge workloads and routing them to an SAP or non-SAP application. It is capable of supporting a large amount of user workload and application connectivity workload. This was the main reason why we chose F5."
"We chose F5 BIG because of its technical support as well as its documentation."
"Secure and scalable traffic management solution for applications. Good for bigger environments."
"This product has improved our load balance, especially when it comes to using the termination at the A5 level, making us more efficient."
"In terms of stability, it is stable."
 

Cons

"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."
"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."
"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"
"The notification part could be improved. It's very much connected to Web Application Firewall, rate-limiting, and DDoS protection."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."
"Support can be challenging at times."
"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."
"The tool must be simplified."
"The solution is scalable."
"Implementing whitepapers with a lot more applications could easily be added."
"When WAF is enabled, you can see a decrease in performance."
"An area for improvement in F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is that it's a high-priced product."
"With the new pricing model, ROI was low, hence we switched."
"The UI could be improved."
"I don't think that this product really provides value for the money."
"They are expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"It is not too pricey."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"The tool is cheap."
"When we purchased additional licenses for our other locations, we received a discount of between 20% and 25%."
"It's fair, it's not too expensive. Maybe just a little high."
"You can buy it on a yearly basis, or you can go for a subscription. For on-premise boxes, it is just the RMA."
"The only area that has room for improvement would be pricing, so its competitors do not have a say."
"The price of F5 BIG-IP LTM could improve."
"It was probably a one-time purchase and then you have maintenance, but I don't have the details on that. We bought what they called the Best bundle at the time, which pretty much included all of the modules. There was probably no additional cost afterward."
"If you are planning to use security features, better to go for strong hardware and the best bundle license, which is great for web security."
"The licensing model of F5 BIG-IP LTM is highly complex. The operation cost of the solution is high. The overall cost is high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise32
Large Enterprise86
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) could improve file upload speeds when opening cases and attaching files; someti...
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?
My main use case for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is placing our applications on F5 and the backend servers ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Airlock Suite
F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Raiffeisen, SGKB, Generali, Visana
Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva, Fortinet, F5 and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: June 2026.
902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.