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AWS Shield vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Imperva are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.7, while Imperva is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 3.5% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Imperva’s 8.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Imperva users who would recommend it.
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Cloudflare
Read 79 Cloudflare reviews
  • 38,688 Views
  • 6,577 Comparison Views
96% willing to recommend
AWS Shield
Read 11 AWS Shield reviews
  • 2,238 Views
  • 2,238 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
Imperva Application Securit...
Read 142 Imperva Application Security Platform reviews
  • 12,925 Views
  • 4,265 Comparison Views
95% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

Imperva and AWS Shield both offer advanced solutions in application security, specifically targeting DDoS protection and web application vulnerabilities. Imperva appears to have a broader set of features, particularly in API security and profiling features, giving it a slight edge in comprehensiveness.

Features: Imperva provides robust features for application security, including advanced DDoS protection, API security, and a flexible deployment model. It's known for ease of use and custom policy profiling. AWS Shield integrates seamlessly with AWS services, offering real-time attack detection, advanced threat intelligence, and a strong focus on DDoS prevention, especially effective for cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: Imperva users point out the need for a more user-friendly GUI, improved policy rule sets, and quicker support response times. AWS Shield's health checks and anomaly detection require enhancements, particularly under complex attack scenarios. It also has limited built-in WAF features, needing AWS WAF for layer 7 protection, which adds to costs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Imperva supports diverse deployment models like on-premises and cloud-based environments. While customer service is generally positive, response times can be an issue. AWS Shield offers simple public cloud deployment, but some users face challenges in accessing complex support services, affecting responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: Imperva's pricing is on the higher side with a complex model across various features, leading to a significant investment. However, the ROI is seen as high in sectors like banking. AWS Shield provides a scalable usage-based pricing model but incurs additional costs for AWS WAF. Its basic services are more affordable, yet comprehensive protection requires investing in Shield Advanced.

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To learn more, read our detailed AWS Shield vs. Imperva Application Security Platform Report (Updated: April 2026).
Buyer's Guide
AWS Shield vs. Imperva Application Security Platform
April 2026
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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
Sponsored
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th)
AWS Shield
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
142
Ranking in other categories
CDN (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd), Bot Management (1st), API Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 14.9%, down from 18.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Shield is 3.5%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 8.3%, up from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare14.9%
Imperva Application Security Platform8.3%
AWS Shield3.5%
Other73.3%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Read full review
reviewer2767527 - PeerSpot reviewer
reviewer2767527
Lead Architect at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Has enabled multi-layered threat mitigation but still lacks deeper visibility for advanced application attacks
AWS Shield has limited coverage as it only protects against common and high-volume network and transport layer attacks, such as SYN floods. It does not provide inherent protection against more sophisticated layer 7 attacks such as HTTP floods. In such cases, integration with WAF is necessary, which results in additional costs for customers. To protect layer 7, layer 4, and layer 3, customers must implement both solutions. The service also has difficulties with static detection thresholds, which may not be sensitive enough to detect smaller application-specific attacks. While AWS Shield is a key security service, AWS should enhance their expert support with 24/7 response for complex attacks, which is currently limited.
Read full review
ST
Stephen Tanimowo
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.
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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 web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it."
"I have not had a DDOS attack since, or at least not become unavailable due to DDOS which means my ROI is pretty good."
"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."
More Cloudflare pros
"If most of your internet presence from your application side is in AWS, AWS Shield is a great option."
"We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, which is crucial for us. It's easy to use and set up and stops attacks on our servers. We haven't encountered any attack problems because the solution stops them in real-time. AWS Shield specifically focuses on defending against denial-of-service attacks, making it a great solution for that type of threat."
"The product is easy to use."
"I am impressed with the product's multiple features like security."
"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."
"AWS Shield offers numerous protection features that are crucial at the application layer, safeguarding users from distributed denial of service attacks, man-in-the-middle assaults, and hacker orchestrations."
"It is integrated with AWS. So, it gives you a good first step."
"The solution operates smoothly at its baseline level, and we do not encounter any issues at that level."
More AWS Shield pros
"The three-second service level agreement is already better than the competition."
"Incapsula takes care of the CDN infrastructure and bandwidth volume, providing several enterprise "load balancing" features."
"The most valuable features of the Imperva Web Application Firewall are DDoS, malware, and the other malicious threat prevention it provides. Additionally, third-party integration is available. You can forward the log for further analysis."
"Basic setup is simple but, as with any caching/WAF setup, there are tricks you need to learn, but it works really nice out of the box!"
"We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping."
"Hands down, the WAF is the most valuable feature; being able to identify, block, whitelist or blacklist as needed, are all valuable."
"There is a quick switch between any of the the nodes if something goes wrong, where there's a there's an attack against a specific area. The security setup is reasonably easy. It's not a problem to do setups and rules and integrations. And, yeah, just the the back end team is also very willing to insist if there's questions that that we cannot answer or with these questions that we do have"
"The setup of Imperva DDoS was easy."
More Imperva Application Security Platform pros
 

Cons

"The pricing could be improved."
"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"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."
"I think they have failed with their technical support."
"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."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"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."
More Cloudflare cons
"AWS Shield Standard requires improvement, particularly regarding its dashboard since it currently provides limited coverage against comprehensive DDoS attacks."
"The product is expensive."
"The product needs to improve its logs and reports to make it read better."
"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced."
"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a situation is normal or abnormal."
"We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need."
"AWS Shield has limited coverage as it only protects against common and high-volume network and transport layer attacks, such as SYN floods."
"The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements."
More AWS Shield cons
"The cost could be lower; our end clients need to have a high budget to purchase this solution."
"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."
"We would like them to hire people in Sweden because it's quite hard when people are sitting in the UK or Belgium because some of the customers really want them to be local."
"HTML minification could be improved. The actual HTML minification does not provide the maximum HTML minification nor provides the best result."
"The solution works for particular zones but isn't always the best solution for all zones."
"The weakest point of Imperva is their first level of support, which should be improved. They should also improve the access and security logs viewing directly on the portal. I would like to see better access and security logs through the portal and not only through a SIM solution. Currently, if you want to explore your access and security logs from Imperva, you need a SIM tool or a SIM infrastructure on your side to do it. You can't do it manually or directly through the portal, which is a big problem for us. I had a call yesterday with Imperva for the roadmap, and I just told them this. They agreed that this is an improvement point from their side."
"I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators of compromise."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by adding more features to the dashboard. increasing the visibility of the real-time events, besides configuring the administration itself."
More Imperva Application Security Platform cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"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."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"A free version of the solution is available."
More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice
"The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."
"It depends on your subscription level and the volume that you're spending with AWS. So, it is very relative to the consumption alignment in your subscription level. It is a well-constructed, scalable pricing option, but it is relative to how much you're spending on AWS. Because the more you spend, typically, the more you get off on services like this. I find it to be comparable to other solutions."
"The tool is cheap."
"The cost is on par with other solutions such as Cloudflare and Akamai."
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
"The price of Imperva Web Application Firewalls is expensive compared to others."
"The solution's pricing is an issue."
"Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well."
"The price is high compared to other solutions like FortiWeb."
"It is not expensive compared to the other similar solutions in this category."
"It is a very expensive solution. The price is very high. A lot of customers tell us that they would love to use Imperva more. I have some customers who have 50 websites, but they have only 10 websites on Imperva because of the price. They would love to have all their websites running through Imperva, but they can't. They have to choose the more critical websites to protect because the price is very high. It is a very good product, but it is too expensive. If you buy a plan for 20 megabytes and you don't consume all of your 20 megabytes, it is okay, but if you consume more, you are charged for the superior traffic."
More Imperva Application Security Platform pricing and cost advice
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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%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
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 Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
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...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
What do you like most about AWS Shield?
We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't de...
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Shield?
The pricing structure for AWS Shield is fair, yet it depends on the specific protections chosen. Enabling Shield Adva...
See all answers
What needs improvement with AWS Shield?
Services always benefit from improvements, including AWS Shield. With respect to the Web Application Firewall, curren...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare Logo
Quad9 vs Cloudflare
Compared 40% of the time
Akamai vs Cloudflare Logo
Akamai vs Cloudflare
Compared 4% of the time
Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare Logo
Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare
Compared 2% of the time
Fastly vs Cloudflare Logo
Fastly vs Cloudflare
Compared 2% of the time
Azure DNS vs Cloudflare Logo
Azure DNS vs Cloudflare
Compared 2% of the time
More Cloudflare Competitors
Azure DDoS Protection vs AWS Shield Logo
Azure DDoS Protection vs AWS Shield
Compared 15% of the time
Cloudflare One vs AWS Shield Logo
Cloudflare One vs AWS Shield
Compared 12% of the time
Akamai App and API Protector vs AWS Shield Logo
Akamai App and API Protector vs AWS Shield
Compared 10% of the time
Radware DDoS vs AWS Shield Logo
Radware DDoS vs AWS Shield
Compared 10% of the time
Prolexic vs AWS Shield Logo
Prolexic vs AWS Shield
Compared 5% of the time
More AWS Shield Competitors
Fortinet FortiWeb vs Imperva Application Security Platform Logo
Fortinet FortiWeb vs Imperva Application Security Platform
Compared 5% of the time
Akamai vs Imperva Application Security Platform Logo
Akamai vs Imperva Application Security Platform
Compared 5% of the time
AWS WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform Logo
AWS WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform
Compared 3% of the time
F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform Logo
F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform
Compared 3% of the time
Fastly vs Imperva Application Security Platform Logo
Fastly vs Imperva Application Security Platform
Compared 2% of the time
More Imperva Application Security Platform Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Cloudflare
April 2026
Cloudflare reportDownload Cloudflare product report
Buyer's Guide
AWS Shield
April 2026
AWS Shield reportDownload AWS Shield product report
Buyer's Guide
Imperva Application Security Platform
April 2026
Imperva Application Security Platform reportDownload Imperva Application Security Platform product 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

AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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.
netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Buyer's Guide
AWS Shield vs. Imperva Application Security Platform
April 2026
Free Report: AWS Shield vs. Imperva Application Security Platform
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Shield vs. Imperva Application Security Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
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