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Barracuda Application Protection vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 21, 2025

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

Barracuda Application Prote...
Ranking in API Security
12th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in API Security
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
135
Ranking in other categories
CDN (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Bot Management (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Mohak Christine - PeerSpot reviewer
Web Developer at Clarivate
Secure gateway has strengthened mobile access and consistently reduced web security incidents
Barracuda Application Protection specifically helps with securing our mobile apps and remote users by providing full-spectrum security DOD-level protection, which is a big help for us for the security of our data. Implementing Barracuda Application Protection has had a measurable and strategic impact on our overall business objectives. Within the first six to seven months of deployment, I saw a 60% reduction in security incidents, incidents affecting the web application which directly translated into fewer service interruptions and less time spent on incident response. Overall, Barracuda Application Protection has made it so easy to manage all our applications. The best features Barracuda Application Protection offers include ease of setup on a firewall for security for VPN users, and configuration is easy to do and use for our security team with its features and pictures of instruction. Additionally, ease of deployment, less costly, easy to manage application, scalability is good, and security features are strong. It contains a lot of granularity, especially with URL profiles, protection, and JSON security. Granular controls and JSON security have helped our team by providing a secure gateway to protect application integrity as well as the data going from our organization to the users remotely, as well as the ones in the offices. I would also add that it has been good in lessening threats from the outside, and being able to set as many rules as needed is a big plus for us.
reviewer1247523 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Solution ensures website availability and proactive threat mitigation
Over the seven years, the most valuable features of Imperva DDoS that I have found are related to DDoS attacks, which are a group of attacks, and not all of them can be resolved on the endpoint level before the website. Using the web firewall before the website is a common use case to protect against malicious requests to the website. 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. It allows me to granularly grant or deny access to certain parts of our website. This helps when we know our customers and the types of requests that can be sent from them, enabling us to block some malicious requests. Imperva DDoS has User Behavior Analytics and Threat Intelligence on its board, and this helps us to be protected proactively. Imperva DDoS connects to its database of threats, storing whole information about attacks all over the world in one simple engine. Everyone can use this feature, which can connect to this engine and get information about what is going on at the world level. That is the way to be protected at the company's level. The integration capabilities of Imperva DDoS are very easy and simple. We can run it in 2 hours.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Within the first six to seven months of deployment, I saw a 60% reduction in security incidents, incidents affecting the web application which directly translated into fewer service interruptions and less time spent on incident response."
"Within the first six months of deployment, we have seen a 60% reduction in security incidents affecting the web application, which directly translated into fewer service interruptions and less time spent on incident response."
"The bot management features are very effective, as they help filter unwanted traffic using keywords."
"Technical support was very helpful."
"The features I have found most valuable with Imperva Web Application Firewall are account takeover protection, advanced bot protection, and API security."
"The valuable features of Imperva WAF include its effective security breach prevention through automatically updating rules."
"The most valuable feature of Imperva DDoS is to make our website available for our customers' requests 24 hours a day."
"The WAF itself has been very valuable to me because it has such a complete range of features. Another reason why I like it is because it also takes care of the total overview of the traffic over the network."
"It is an effective threat mitigation tool."
"Very intuitive and granular configuration - It does not require much time, or advanced knowledge, for configuration and maintenance."
 

Cons

"Barracuda Application Protection could be improved with a more user-friendly interface to enable all types of people to be able to use it, especially the less technical users."
"I do not have much to say about the improvement, but a more innovative solution for sniffing more on the network would be great, and having the advanced ability to close off ports when they could be getting tested from hackers for intrusion would be helpful."
"The reporting is missing some features, such as: only two export formats, and the time period does not include the last day, week, year."
"Some maintenance must be performed by our IT team."
"Imperva now offers add-ons to add functionality, but I would like to see these included in the product, even if it would cost more."
"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."
"On the negative side, API security mainly supports cloud-based solutions, while most of my customers prefer on-prem setups, so achieving high performance with on-prem solutions would be beneficial."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is a good system, but we found that the visibility of the diverse-path server, e.g. where the traffic is coming from, the different IPs, etc., needs improvement."
"We faced issues regarding compliance with client procedures. The client had strict compliance rules, and Imperva needed to be on a VM, while the client required containerization, causing a conflict. They went with Imperva for the on-premise version but shelved the cloud project due to too many blockers."
"The tool needs to include artificial intelligence and machine learning. It also needs to improve profiling."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."
"The data packages are higher than our needs so we end up paying for data that we don't use."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall's pricing is expensive."
"The cost is somewhere around $10,000 a site. For every site, you pay individually. For every DNS entry, you have you pay."
"The solution's pricing is an issue."
"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."
"The tool's pricing is good."
"​Although the pricing can be a little high, it is worth the protection and security that it offers.​"
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Expert with 51-200 employees
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
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business84
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise62
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Application Protection?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is a very cost-effective tool.
What needs improvement with Barracuda Application Protection?
I do not have much to say about the improvement, but a more innovative solution for sniffing more on the network would be great, and having the advanced ability to close off ports when they could b...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Application Protection?
My main use case for Barracuda Application Protection is for our mobile apps and for the remote users we have, as I use this as the secure gateway to protect the application integrity as well as th...
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

Information Not Available
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Application Protection vs. Imperva Application Security Platform and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
884,696 professionals have used our research since 2012.