Akamai vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

Akamai vs. Imperva Application Security Platform

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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

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
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudflare	15.8%
Imperva Application Security Platform	7.5%
Akamai	12.0%
Other	64.7%

CDN

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal

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.

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VinuThomas John

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.

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reviewer2818155

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

"CloudFlare's caching brings the load speed down from 4.32 seconds to 2.45 seconds."

"Cloudflare has many features."

"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."

"For businesses that don't have a dedicated security team, I think it's a better product; it's more intuitive for people like us."

"What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool."

"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."

"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."

More Cloudflare pros

"All the policies of the CDNs are very beneficial."

"The worldwide reach of the Akamai CDN is one of the key values of this CDN and the agreements worldwide that they keep running."

"The initial setup is simple, especially for SaaS solutions."

"This solution can be used for web , video and media caching and streaming."

"It's a scalable and reliable solution."

"If an attacker conducts an attack, we can check what query he is running and whether he wants to see our password or any other files."

"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 is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."

More Akamai pros

"There is no need to have an in-house WAF to manage and maintain; we are now able to bring a new website live within minutes, without false positive alerts, and it has improved user/customer experience and website performance."

"I suggest others looking into using Imperva Application Security Platform consider it as the best solution."

"Imperva DDoS is fairly stable, and its availability is quite high."

"Real-time monitoring is also a great tool, as you may watch several parameters in real time."

"We are using Incapsula as our web application firewall and for DDoS protection, and it performs really well at its job."

"The three-second service level agreement is already better than the competition."

"Imperva is easy to use and deploy, and the UI is excellent."

"The most valuable feature of Imperva, in addition to its strong knowledge base, is its effective protection for web applications."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pros

Cons

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

"Eventually, things go sideways and require fixes when it would have been easier to prevent the issue initially."

"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."

"The pricing could be improved."

"The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service."

"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."

"I rate technical support quite badly."

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

More Cloudflare cons

"Their support is very slow. If you file a support ticket, it takes a long time before it gets resolved."

"Akamai could improve by having a more robust and responsive support team."

"Akamai should improve its integrations."

"When we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."

"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."

"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."

"Costing-wise and integration with other tools need improvement, especially API security."

More Akamai cons

"I'd like it to work with Let's Encrypt."

"I am not sure if this application has a policy where you can create your custom policy and run it as our firewall. We should have some ability to also create some custom policy, then run it as a firewall."

"Their customer service sometimes has different responses for similar requests. We sometimes need to explain the issue many times before they understand."

"Its user interface could be improved, as the competition looks better, but it doesn’t really need improvements in its functionality."

"I am looking for more data enrichment. We should have the ability to add our own custom data to the system, to the live traffic."

"It would be useful if the solution used more intelligence in attack protection."

"We had an issue when securing the web applications for DDoS protection."

"I loved the approach of the cloud. The cloud has a lot of new features, like advanced web protection and DDoS protection. If those could also be on-boarded onto the on-prem versions, that would be ideal. They need to pay attention to both deployment options and not just favor one."

More Imperva Application Security Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"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 are using the free tier of the solution."

"We are using the free version."

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."

"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."

"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."

"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."

"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."

"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"

"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."

"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."

More Akamai pricing and cost advice

"We are satisfied with the pricing."

"The license is on a yearly basis."

"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."

"For enterprise contracts you will be in touch with a dedicated account manager who will guide you regarding licensing."

"Pricing could be more competitive."

"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."

"Imperva’s pricing is a bit higher in the market since it offers a full-blown WAF."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CDN solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	88
Midsize Enterprise	25
Large Enterprise	70

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...

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 36% of the time

Fastly vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Compared 2% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Amazon Route 53 vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

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Fastly vs Akamai

Compared 10% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

Uplynk vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

Windows Azure CDN vs Akamai

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon CloudFront vs Akamai

Compared 4% of the time

More Akamai Competitors

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 4% of the time

Fastly vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 3% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 3% of the time

Link11 vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 3% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 2% of the time

More Imperva Application Security Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Cloudflare

Download Cloudflare product report

Akamai

Download Akamai product report

Imperva Application Security Platform

Download Imperva Application Security Platform product report

Imperva Application Security Platform report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

Akamai enhances performance and security for web applications with features such as a robust CDN and web application firewall. It supports traffic management and improving content delivery speed through a global data center network.

Akamai, known for its web application firewall and CDN, provides comprehensive solutions catering to enterprises with advanced needs like traffic offloading, logging, security, and scalability. Its global Points of Presence network and threat intelligence capabilities, incorporating AI and machine learning, ensure strong security and traffic management. Users appreciate the ease of integration and management, despite the complexity and navigation challenges of the Akamai console. The potential improvements in API security, caching strategies, and migration processes alongside competitive pricing could broaden its appeal. Akamai primarily focuses on content delivery, video streaming, and caching, supporting sectors such as streaming, gaming, and businesses requiring rapid content delivery and cyber threat protection.

What are Akamai's key features?

Web Application Firewall: Protects against common vulnerabilities and threats.
CDN: Enhances website performance by reducing load times.
Security: Includes DDoS protection and threat intelligence.
Traffic Management: Efficient handling and scaling of web traffic.
Global Presence: Extensive data centers for faster content delivery.
Automatic Updates: Ensures security features are up-to-date.

What benefits do users find with Akamai?

Improved Performance: Faster content delivery enhances user experience.
Enhanced Security: Robust protection against cyber threats.
Scalability: Accommodates growing traffic demands seamlessly.
Integration Ease: Simplifies operational workflows.
Reliability: Ensures consistent uptime and performance quality.

In streaming and gaming industries, Akamai optimizes content delivery and security measures, meeting the demands for rapid, secure, and reliable services. Businesses leverage its CDN and monitoring capabilities to reduce load times and enhance application performance, whilst increasing protection against cyber threats.

Akamai

Imperva Application Security Platform delivers comprehensive and continuous web threat protection. Renowned for its ease of use, it shields web applications and databases from various cyber threats while integrating seamlessly with cloud and on-premises environments.

Imperva Application Security Platform protects web environments by offering advanced security measures against threats like DDoS attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting. As a robust web application firewall, it provides extensive monitoring and bot management capabilities. The platform integrates content delivery networks for enhanced performance and scalability, while real-time traffic analysis ensures consistent protection. Despite its strengths, improvements can be made in policy management and customization options. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and more competitive pricing models. The inclusion of AI for enhanced analytics is also anticipated.

What are the key features of Imperva Application Security Platform?

Correlated Attack Validation: Enhances threat assessment by linking related security events.
Threat Radar: Offers visibility into potential and ongoing threats.
Virtual Patching: Provides protection against vulnerabilities without immediate code changes.
IncapRules: Allows creation of custom security policies.
DDoS Protection: Defends against large-scale distributed denial-of-service attacks.
CDN Integration: Improves content delivery speed and reliability.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

User-Friendly Administration: Simplifies setup and ongoing management tasks.
Seamless Integration: Ensures smooth operation with existing infrastructure.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Shields digital assets from a wide range of threats.
Hands-On Support: Provides timely and effective customer service assistance.

Imperva Application Security Platform is implemented in industries needing strong database and application protection. Companies use it to enforce geolocation restrictions and manage bots, benefiting sectors like finance and e-commerce where data security and threat monitoring are critical. Its ability to protect and ensure data accessibility makes it integral to business operations prioritizing cyber resilience.

Imperva

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.

Akamai vs. Imperva Application Security Platform