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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

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
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
148
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (3rd), Bot Management (1st), API Security (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Akamai is 11.3%, down from 16.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 7.0%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform7.0%
Akamai11.3%
Other81.7%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

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

"Our primary use case for this solution is data transfer, and we deploy the solution on private cloud."
"Akamai's scalability is good."
"It's a scalable and reliable solution."
"The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy."
"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 support is excellent because they have great debugging tools, and they are highly competent, with proactive and responsive engineers whenever we have issues, so everything is pretty smooth."
"With 300 servers deployed worldwide, it's highly scalable and is the best web application firewall on the market."
"The stability and efficiency of Akamai have enhanced our network's performance significantly."
"Thanks to Incapsula, we got easily manageable DDoS protection; HTTP2 and SSL certificates for all the services; CDN in good locations; and we're now sure that our web services can't be exploited remotely because of the WAF feature."
"Imperva is a good solution; it has fewer false positives, is very simple to maintain, and is also simple to configure without needing any HTTP knowledge or understanding of HTTP programming languages."
"My advice to anyone considering Imperva Web Application Firewall is that they can safely go to this environment without having a second thought."
"I am impressed with the product's automatic bot mechanism. It also gives us the control to create our own custom bot rules."
"It is an effective threat mitigation tool."
"Imperva Application Security Platform has helped reduce incidents, save time, and improve my organization's security posture with specific measurable outcomes and metrics."
"It is the best product on the market, in my opinion."
"It's worth it. It's a fine solution for medium/big companies worried about attacks that happen in the wild."
 

Cons

"The fact that it is an expensive product is its only shortcoming."
"It would be better if we could be notified about specific attacks."
"Akamai could improve by having a more robust and responsive support team."
"I'd like to see improvements in log files and data visualizations within the interface."
"When we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"After three or four months from this perspective, I don’t know all the features on the platform yet, so I am still learning about it."
"Akamai should improve its integrations."
"Clients also often complain about the cost of the solution."
"However, I'd like to be able to drill down more into the analytics that Incapsula collects."
"It would be useful if the solution used more intelligence in attack protection. For example, firewalls are to be dependent on the configuration, but if they could have some data science around it the solution would be even better. The profiling of the traffic, and making decisions surrounding that should be intelligence-based, instead of being based on the configuration of the firewall itself."
"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."
"They once terminated a free account without warning, resulting in a few days downtime."
"The reporting is missing some features, such as: only two export formats, and the time period does not include the last day, week, year."
"Analytics in the area of risk need to be improved to supply more information to the users for creating better environments."
"Imperva always needs to adjust to new versions of cyber attacks, it needs to be faster, improve the resiliency of the software of the solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"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."
"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."
"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's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."
"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."
"It is very costly, but the return on investment is very high. Its cost was around $70,000, and we got it back in just six months."
"It is a very affordable solution."
"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."
"The tool is expensive."
"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
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
University
6%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business88
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise71
 

Questions from the Community

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 could make some cases less complex to set up. There could be improvements in ho...
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 where AWS is one of the targets. We are building up websites that we are pointing to...
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 management.
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 provided. I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap a...
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 of compromise. For example, the initiation of an attack on the endpoint level cou...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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: November 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.