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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 (3rd), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th)
Akamai
Ranking in CDN
4th
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
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
142
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (1st), API Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 17.5%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 13.4%, down from 16.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 8.5%, up from 8.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare17.5%
Imperva Application Security Platform8.5%
Akamai13.4%
Other60.6%
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.
ST
Senior Cybersecurity Consultant at Cyberoutcome Limited
Strong policies and bot defenses have secured critical APIs and have reduced attack noise
From my research regarding the IAM space that Imperva Application Security Platform is trying to look into, I believe they still need to do a lot of modeling and modification to make sure that also helps. There are several competitors in the IAM space, so Imperva would do well if they can do some basic modeling and modifications from my own personal research and my own experience in the IAM space. Alternatively, they could actually just focus on trying to be stronger in the web application space and the database activity monitoring space.The main reason it is not a perfect ten is regarding support. At times, having to reach the support team takes eight hours to ten hours maximum. There are times when clients could have urgent issues to attend to. The support team could do more by having a faster response rate.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup is extremely easy but will require access to your Domain Name Servers."
"Cloudflare has positively impacted our organization by giving us flexibility to manage the DNS part, being quite fast, and allowing us to manage everything from a single dashboard, which is quite handy."
"If someone is looking for a secure and optimized wrapper over an open website, I would suggest CloudFlare services."
"In my opinion, CloudFlare is one of the best CDN networks I have ever used."
"Stability is great; I love their mechanisms, I love their GUI, I love their front end, I love their behind the scenes, algorithms and everything, it all makes sense."
"Cloudflare makes it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple users and multiple clients, and basically go in and access their account, make the changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."
"Using the CDN of Cloudflare improved the speed significantly, reducing the page loading times to appropriate levels."
"The solution is a great fit for customers who want unlimited bandwidth."
"It's beneficial since it's one of the best solutions in the world for CDN."
"The solution's technical support is very prompt and good."
"Akamai has a very established network of PoPs globally."
"Our primary use case for this solution is data transfer, and we deploy the solution on private cloud."
"We have received excellent support from their team; I have not worked with any other applications where they have delivered professional services as good as them."
"Akamai's scalability is good."
"Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."
"The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy."
"Hands down, the WAF is the most valuable feature; being able to identify, block, whitelist or blacklist as needed, are all valuable."
"I would recommend this solution to others; it has been working fine for us, and it has all the features that we need."
"Human contact Fast SLA Trustworthy and excellent communication Highly-functional back office with user friendly reports and intelligence on bad IPS and malicious software is at very high level and very quick."
"The compliance is the most valuable aspect."
"By using this application, the firewall is blocking every suspicious activity and event, and now we are safe with peace of mind that nobody will use malware on us or try to hack our website."
"The website itself is our first priority and we have seen improvements in that area -- it's faster."
"Data masking is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"The solution is very good at intercepting traffic before it gets to our data centers."
 

Cons

"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."
"I would like to not need a separate server for non-www redirection under the CNAME setup option."
"I think they have failed with their technical support."
"There are some issues with the CDN services."
"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist."
"Their support is very slow. If you file a support ticket, it takes a long time before it gets resolved."
"Costing-wise and integration with other tools need improvement, especially API security."
"I'd like to see more Web 3.0 and IoT solutions."
"Akamai could improve by having a more robust and responsive support team."
"The solution can be improved by creating a communication pathway with technical engineers because when we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."
"The user console is quite overloaded, sometimes it's hard to find your way around."
"When we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."
"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."
"An Incapsula website configuration instance can be in a "Pending DNS changes" state, where further work is needing to be done by the customer, while website access is otherwise fully functional."
"Some maintenance must be performed by our IT team."
"Customer Service: Average to poor. Technical Support: Average to poor."
"The firewall aspect of the solution needs improvement."
"We had an issue when securing the web applications for DDoS protection."
"If I had the opportunity to recommend an enhancement to Imperva it would be to have more POP (Point of Presence) in East and West Africa, and in Central Africa as well."
"The solution works for particular zones but isn't always the best solution for all zones."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"Price-wise, I find Akamai's pricing model's inclination to be more towards the expensive side of the spectrum, though I can't say that it is a very expensive product."
"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 can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."
"Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."
"It is expensive."
"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well."
"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."
"There is a license or subscription renewal that our customers pay."
"Make sure you understand the way that Imperva charges. It's very affordable. However, I would like to see a package with the Virtual Patching included. You get to do patching separately."
"We are satisfied with the pricing."
"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."
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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
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business88
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise66
 

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?
The tool's pricing is moderate. I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expens...
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: April 2026.
890,124 professionals have used our research since 2012.