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Azure Front Door vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.5
Cloudflare users experienced increased performance, security, and cost-effectiveness, leading to improved loyalty and revenue despite difficult ROI calculations.
Sentiment score
6.9
Azure Front Door offers ROI through cost reduction, quick setup, and simplified management, prompting proactive adoption amid system phase-out.
Sentiment score
6.3
Users report Imperva's significant ROI, citing cost recovery, DDoS protection, reduced cloud bills, and improved efficiency and compliance.
WordPress security can be tricky, and that's where Cloudflare can be absolutely helpful for small businesses.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
In terms of return on investment with Cloudflare, it costs my time to set them up, but basically once they're set up, it's done.
Azure Front Door offers a quick return on investment once it is set up.
They know how much money they are losing while the system is down, so by increasing the possibility of not having a down website or web application, return on investment can be calculated easily.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Cloudflare's customer service is quick, but technical support feedback is mixed, with improvement needed in responsiveness and detailed assistance.
Sentiment score
7.1
Azure Front Door's customer service is mixed; some praise responsiveness and documentation, others find problem-solving quality inconsistent.
Sentiment score
7.2
Imperva's customer service is praised for expertise but criticized for inconsistency, with recent improvements noted by some users.
This would help us address issues promptly, especially during unforeseen events like DDoS attacks.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.
I am able to set up a critical call with Microsoft, and they respond quickly to tickets with the highest severity.
I would rate the technical support of Imperva DDoS as ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Users praise Cloudflare for seamless scalability, effective traffic management, easy upgrades, and robust global infrastructure without disruptions.
Sentiment score
7.1
Azure Front Door offers scalable, reliable global capabilities, highly rated by users, though it may become costly with extensive use.
Sentiment score
7.9
Imperva Application Security Platform offers strong scalability and reliability, though costs and on-premises flexibility may present challenges.
It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.
The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.
I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.
I find that Front Door can become expensive for large-scale projects with more transactions and users.
I consider the scalability of Azure Front Door to be strong.
99% of customers are using the cloud version of Imperva DDoS protection, so they just purchase the new license and scale as needed.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cloudflare is highly rated for stability and uptime, with few past issues, especially on higher-tier plans.
Sentiment score
8.4
Azure Front Door is praised for stability and performance, with minor DNS issues and advantages in updates via Azure Portal.
Sentiment score
7.8
Users find Imperva Application Security Platform reliable and stable, rating its stability highly despite occasional minor issues.
For DDoS protection, I would not recommend Cloudflare.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
I rate Azure Front Door's stability a nine because it is easy to make updates through Azure Portal.
The stability of Imperva DDoS is very good, as it seems they have a lot of servers around the world.
 

Room For Improvement

Enhancements needed in Cloudflare: analytics, CDN latency, API integration, user support, DNS, pricing, documentation, server coverage, WAF, and cache.
Azure Front Door needs improvements in multi-cloud support, pricing, user interface, DDoS protection, and enhanced functionalities as per feedback.
Imperva needs UI improvements, competitive pricing, better integration, real-time analytics, and enhanced support for efficiency and transparency.
There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements.
If I could use Azure Front Door with private IP addresses, it would be more beneficial.
It relies on the WAF module where users must configure rate-limiting rules, as it does not automatically sense malicious spikes in traffic.
The only significant adjustment required is with URL set parameters that need to be passed for an existing domain.
Maybe Imperva DDoS could use endpoints to get information about the attacks before they commence from the endpoint level or establish cooperation with endpoint vendors to share this information.
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare offers scalable pricing, from free to enterprise plans, providing significant value especially for mid-sized companies.
Azure Front Door offers flexible, tiered pricing praised for balancing cost and features, though premium levels may seem expensive.
The Imperva platform's pricing is competitive with advanced features, ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 annually and no setup costs.
That's where Cloudflare shines for smaller businesses – it's ten times cheaper than Akamai.
I find it to be cheap.
The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive.
Azure Front Door is cheaper for small projects, companies, or applications compared to using separate tools.
I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap and ten is very expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare enhances performance and security with CDN caching, DDoS protection, and an easy-to-use dashboard, benefiting many users.
Azure Front Door enhances security, performance, and global reach with features like SSL offloading, load-balancing, and traffic analytics.
Imperva's platform offers robust security features, user-friendly integration, real-time analytics, and scalability for diverse enterprise protection needs.
The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.
Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.
The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.
Azure Front Door provides DDoS protection and features related to WAF.
Azure Front Door includes a built-in web application firewall, which performs signature-based checks of the request payload, offering protection against common attacks or malicious requests.
I have utilized Imperva's Intelligent Traffic Filtering feature. This feature helps me understand how the attack is progressing and what is happening inside the requests to our website.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (12th)
Azure Front Door
Ranking in CDN
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (14th), Microsoft Security Suite (18th)
Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in CDN
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
133
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (2nd), API Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 20.5%, down from 21.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Front Door is 14.4%, down from 20.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 8.6%, up from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudflare20.5%
Azure Front Door14.4%
Imperva Application Security Platform8.6%
Other56.5%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Renato Roque - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamless global application delivery with features like efficient load balancing, web application firewall and robust traffic routing capabilities
I find the WAF policy to be exceptionally valuable as it adds a layer of security protection to our applications. I particularly appreciate its load-balancing capabilities as it allows us to manage multiple instances and support a global presence effectively. From a performance standpoint, users can connect to the Front Door, and the load balancer directs them to the nearest origin location. This aspect has been a key factor in enhancing our user experience with Azure Front Door, making it a scalable solution that positively impacts performance.
Mitesh D Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively defends against threats like cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and others
It does bring value. For example, consider a BFSI customer. Their application is critical and represents their brand. Without a WAF, an attack could take their application down, harming their reputation. It leads to hampering the customer's workflow. With an Imperva WAF, they protect against attacks like DDoS or SQL injection, ensuring their application remains available and customers are happy. That's the main benefit for both the customer and the organization. The impact depends on the customer's use case. If their business primarily operates online, a CDN is beneficial for traffic optimization. Moreover, the integration options depend on the specific use case of our customers. Generally, integration capabilities are good with SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) parts.
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business83
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise61
 

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 do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Front Door?
I am not sure about the pricing but believe Azure Front Door might require a higher cost due to its entry point nature.
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 do you like most about Imperva Incapsula?
We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.
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...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Azure Front-Door
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.
Information Not Available
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Front Door vs. Imperva Application Security Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.