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Akamai vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

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
Ranking in CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (2nd), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th)
Akamai
Ranking in CDN
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in CDN
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
147
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (1st), API Security (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 15.8%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 12.0%, down from 16.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 7.5%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare15.8%
Imperva Application Security Platform7.5%
Akamai12.0%
Other64.7%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.
JV
Sr. Strategic Accounts Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Improved security and faster operations with a seamless integration
They are one of the top solution vendors in the market. Premium though, but they're the best. We've worked closely with digital-native customers, not so much from the media segment. Fintechs, financial organizations, banking segment, manufacturing, these are the ones we have worked with. Not much on media because most of the media houses are already covered by Akamai. 95% of media houses are already covered by Akamai. It gives a seamless view of how your infrastructure is, from an attack perspective, from a threat perspective, how your assets are behaving. It gives a very comprehensive view. It depends on the customer's environment. Wherever the customer wants, but mostly it is on the private cloud or public cloud because it's a cloud-based SaaS solution that Akamai has to offer. Implementation is feasible anywhere. The solution is aimed at Enterprise customers because it is on a premium side. On a scale of 1-10, this solution rates at 9.5.
reviewer2818155 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Application protection has improved and reporting and dashboards still need refinement
I believe Imperva Application Security Platform should have a more interactive wizard. While the dashboard is good, it could be more eye-catching. Based on my perspective, I recommend modifying the dashboards, especially the main dashboard where I can see the traffic hit count, alerts, and other latest information. In terms of reporting, I find it challenging to create reports; in my earlier days, it was difficult. Over time, I have learned how to create reports, but it should be easier to do so. I have used other tools such as firewalls or SolarWinds, where creating a report is straightforward and does not take much time, unlike in Imperva, where I have to add many elements. Modifications in the integration aspects would also be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If it was not for CloudFlare, I would have to hire a dedicated resource to manage all this for me."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"Cloudflare is easier to manage than the solutions provided by these vendors, and the user experience is much more straightforward and appeals to a lot of developers."
"It's very user-friendly."
"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."
"Their free account offers an awful lot of functionality and savings alone, before you get on to the minimal $20 a month for a Pro account which comes with its own great list of features."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"I have used it to bring enterprise-grade features to my small business clients at low or no cost."
"Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."
"The stability and efficiency of Akamai have enhanced our network's performance significantly."
"As of now, the best thing about Akamai is WAF, and though CDN is a good feature, it comes in second place when compared to WAF. I am very impressed with the WAF offered by Akamai."
"The solution's technical support is very prompt and good."
"All the policies of the CDNs are very beneficial."
"It's a scalable and reliable solution."
"The solution is very sustainable and flexible."
"It's beneficial since it's one of the best solutions in the world for CDN."
"Imperva Application Security Platform has positively impacted my organization by providing strong protection for web applications, as many big companies in the UK use Imperva WAF as an essential protection layer, illustrating its effectiveness."
"Gives us the ability to trace each connection, and to have logs to be able to differentiate between a positive and a false-positive intruder action."
"The user-generated spam stopped after we started using Incapsula, and so we feel more secure."
"Great product, it will not let you down!"
"It is easy to use and has good security."
"Incapsula’s DDoS Protection and Load Balancing really helped maximize our security."
"Imperva DDoS helps us automate production. The client had specific requirements for a cloud project in the financial sector."
"Automatic failover between primary and secondary sites enables high availability and accelerates disaster recovery."
 

Cons

"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."
"For the services I am using, it is a bit expensive."
"The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"Honestly the product has not really improved the way of my organisation."
"Yes, there were a few times when some of their CDN nodes would fail, creating serious speed issues with the site without any warning or notification from their side."
"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."
"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."
"Akamai's configuration part is an area of concern where improvements are required to make the process easy."
"When we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."
"Local connectivity would be great linked to our own telecom/Cablevision CDN, as we are a key player for Internet access in Argentina for final users of mobile, DSL, cable, and FTTH users."
"The solution could offer more integrations."
"I'd like to see improvements in log files and data visualizations within the interface."
"Caching strategy is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution where improvements are required."
"Costing-wise and integration with other tools need improvement, especially API security."
"The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist."
"Customer Service: Average to poor. Technical Support: Average to poor."
"They guarantee to fix your problem within 15 minutes, but they don’t always keep their word."
"I think that better bot protection is needed in this solution."
"Some of the features should be included in the next release is a file integrating monitoring tool. This feature should be improved."
"Incapsula has a built-in monitoring module, but it is a paid feature; I would expect that for the price we pay for the basic service, we would be able to integrate a monitoring solution, even a simple one."
"HTML minification could be improved. The actual HTML minification does not provide the maximum HTML minification nor provides the best result."
"An improvement for Imperva WAF would be to reduce the number of false positives and create more strong use cases based on AI/ML or behavioral analytics."
"Incapsula: Allow easier scripting of firewall rules."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The price is reasonable."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"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."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."
"From the resource component, it's very costly, and Akamai's charges are also high. So, any organization with a high-tech budget can definitely afford it, but companies with 10-15% of their revenue as a technical budget probably won't be able to. That's where they have a lot of room for improvement if they want to onboard those early users."
"It is an expensive product. The licensing costs for the solution are based on the usage. If we need premium support, we need to buy it from Akamai."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."
"The pricing of Akamai is moderate, in my opinion. My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to Akamai. There are no additional costs besides the licensing costs for the solution."
"Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features."
"We have an issue with Imperva Incapsula in the Iraqi market because of the high price."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall's pricing is expensive."
"The license is on a yearly basis."
"It is expensive."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."
"The cost is somewhere around $10,000 a site. For every site, you pay individually. For every DNS entry, you have you pay."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."
"The cost is on par with other solutions such as Cloudflare and Akamai."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business88
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise70
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare DNS?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall.
What needs improvement with Akamai?
Other solutions are probably easier to set up, but you have more capability in Akamai. It would be beneficial if they...
What is your primary use case for Akamai?
We are using many of the solutions from Akamai, with the WAF in front of it and distribution to multiple targets wher...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai?
The pricing is good, with no complaints about costs, which is essential when deciding to have Akamai in your network.
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 mana...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provi...
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators o...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
 

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.
Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Capital One, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Disney, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Home Depot, HP, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, LinkedIn, McDonald's, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Oracle, PayPal, Pinterest, Qualcomm, Rakuten, SAP, Spotify, Tesla, Toyota, Visa, Walmart, WeWork
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai vs. Imperva Application Security Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
899,125 professionals have used our research since 2012.