Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
Barracuda Web Application F...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (17th)
NetScaler
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st), Network Management Applications (5th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (14th)
 

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.
Anne-Aimee Wollerich - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing bot traffic effectively enhances usability for non-technical users
Barracuda Web Application Firewall ( /products/barracuda-web-application-firewall-reviews ) lacks some of the more specified and structured features offered by solutions like Tenable. Although Tenable is more expensive and less easily deployable, its features are more deepened and chiseled, particularly for IT personnel. For example, Tenable provides more comprehensive dark web scanning capabilities, which Barracuda could improve upon.
DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU - PeerSpot reviewer
A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking
Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."
"Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."
"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"It's a great product because it's scalable, has great coverage, and is mature with good defenses against DDoS attacks."
"If an attack is coming continuously, you can ask the device to block it temporarily for two to three minutes. F5 has not provided us with an option to block certain IPs for some time. Barracuda can help you block someone if the source is from a different IP. You can apply the rule to the device and block it for whatsoever time you want. The solution will unblock the IP after the prescribed time as well."
"Its recommendation about the probabilities on the website is great. It also has free probability managers for the website, which is really helpful. The protection engine, signature-based protection behavior, and analysis features are also great. It also has an ATP module for sandbox scanning and behavior analysis for file uploads."
"We use Barracuda to protect the application. That's the main feature we use it for."
"One of the strongest points is its robust issue discovery capabilities. Barracuda invests significant efforts in identifying and resolving issues. They have multiple products that work in tandem to perform these checks, which is beneficial because it automates security updates. This is the primary reason I recommend it to my customers."
"There is no one special feature, but the WAF itself is valuable: user-friendly protection against web attacks etc., authentication, reporting, accountability, alerting, and hardened OS."
"The most valuable features are the client VPN and content filtering."
"The most valuable feature is the automatic content filtering."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward, especially if you enlist assistance."
"We like the periodic upgrades and backups, also made via ADMs, and it makes our environment much more robust and reliable."
"I found that the GUI was very easy to to navigate. If you were looking for something, it was fairly easy to find. There's a lot of third-party documentation and information available online as well."
"The load balancing feature and the fact that you can do context switching in the WAF are the most valuable. We majorly use it for load balancing, but we also use it for context switching in the WAF. It is also robust and very easy to work with and manage."
"Load Balancing and SSL offloading are key features."
"The NetScaler appliance has provided a lot of customers with greater high availability for their enterprise applications within a single site and across multiple locations."
"The solution is extremely stable."
"The solution can scale."
"Its customer support service is good."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."
"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"Support response time could be improved."
"The usability of the interface could be improved."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"The documentation is lacking. It's not like what you'd get if you were using Juniper or Cisco. They need to expand on it and make it more useful."
"They should improve their features, so they easily compare to the competition."
"I faced an issue when Barracuda decided not to support Azure Stack Hub anymore, which was a significant issue as we had many customers using it on that platform."
"Barracuda Web Application Firewall's load balancing feature could be improved."
"The reporting aspect of the solution needs improvement. I don't find that it's very good. They could do some work on it to make it much better. It's not that the reporting isn't secure. It's just that I would prefer to store my reports for an extended period of time. Right now, that's not possible and I'd prefer it if that could change. I also would say that the reports themselves are expensive."
"As most people are aware, the implementation is not easy."
"The technical support could be improved. They do not respond or assist customers in a timely manner."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the user interface because sometimes it can be complicated."
"An area for improvement would be the difficulty in finding information about standard licensing costs over the internet. They should provide some reference prices on the net to be quickly referred to."
"Improvements are needed to address the issue of machines becoming unregistered, ensuring stability for end users. Troubleshooting with Citrix support can be challenging, so clearer diagnostics would be beneficial. As for global server load balancing, it works well on-premises, depending on user volume and service stability. Overall, it's satisfactory for us."
"We face challenges with the solution's firmware upgrades frequently."
"Technical support sometimes takes a little longer because of the multilevel ticket priority."
"The WAF component needs to be simplified so that it is easier to use."
"We would like to see some fairly large scale improvement in the configuration process for this solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's pricing is cheap."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"They have competitive pricing."
"Cost is a bit on the higher side. Big companies can afford it."
"The price of this solution is okay."
"The solution is based on a licensing model and might be $360 for the hybrid version."
"The pricing is less compared to other web applications."
"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."
"For small companies, the price is very expensive because the WAF is an enterprise-level application, not intended for smaller businesses. In my opinion, the price is right for enterprise-level use."
"They only offer a yearly licensing plan."
"Price-wise, I feel that the solution is a little bit expensive."
"You can do CapEx and then a yearly monthly fee, or you can do a subscription model, whether that's one month, month-to-month, or three-year subscription model."
"Regarding pricing, while it's expensive, I can't comment on the exact ROI without a budget analysis. However, in terms of service quality, it's worth the price."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"For partners, NetScaler is not as expensive price-wise versus F5."
"Citrix NetScaler's pricing is slightly above average but not overly expensive. I would consider F5 BIG IP to be the most expensive, Citrix NetScaler to be the second most expensive, and then Kemp Load Balancer to be the third."
"The solution's pricing is very high compared to its competitors."
"In Turkey, everything is good, but it seems expensive for us due to the currency exchange. I don't have a specific rating scale, but if I had to rate the price, I would say it's around a six out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
862,514 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
It significantly improved our overall web security posture, addressing intrusions and enhancing control over web URLs...
What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
Our primary use case was to track the traffic on websites or webshops to identify potential malicious actors, such as...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
The pricing for Barracuda is quite high compared to other OEMs. Each transaction requires my purchase team to negotia...
What do you like most about Citrix ADC?
The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?
After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...
What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?
Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall
 

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.
Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
862,514 professionals have used our research since 2012.