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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Web Application F...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
18th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
26th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
CDN (11th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (18th), API Security (17th), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Barracuda Web Application Firewall is 1.8%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is 1.4%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Barracuda Web Application Firewall1.8%
Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud1.4%
Other96.8%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Shahzad Abid - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Information Technology at College of Physicians & Surgeons Pakistan
Has protected our legacy applications effectively but has required constant manual filtering due to false positives
I assess the effectiveness of the machine learning-driven threat detection in Barracuda Web Application Firewall as sometimes behaving abnormally, often showing me false positive attacks, so I have to fix these attacks from time to time. From a stability point of view, I would definitely rate Barracuda Web Application Firewall a seven out of ten. There is definitely some room for improvement; nothing is perfect in the world. I am not satisfied with the technical support from Barracuda. I am somewhat disappointed with the technical support that I have received so far. Whenever I generate a ticket for my problem, it goes to the Indian support team, and they all the time start with the most junior team member, consuming all my precious time. At the end, I have to close that ticket without any satisfactory solution. I have complained that they should shift my support to any other region because I don't need Indian support; they are simply pathetic and not up to mark. To improve Barracuda Web Application Firewall, customers should be given ongoing training opportunities regarding the product and its features. I am not familiar with many features that are available, only using those which are necessary for my applications. I believe Barracuda must provide clearer product information or training sessions to make it more user-friendly, as sometimes its interface can be rigid and lacking in helpful resources or user tutorials about its features. For it to get closer to a ten, I think advanced reporting is missing because, as I mentioned earlier, there are many false positive events being recorded. Often, when I analyze these attacks, they turn out to be genuine customers or users interacting with my product, but Barracuda tags them as attackers. Reducing false positives must be a priority.
OE
CIO at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Advanced threat protection has reduced financial risk and improves application security visibility
The issue I have with Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is that the real-time analysis is not robust; I am unable to see all the logs of everything that happened, including what is passive. It only logs when there are suspicious activities, which means if something is not considered suspicious by Fortinet, I will not see the full picture. That is a disadvantage because it will not log unless it identifies an IOC or attacks, meaning I cannot see traffic information in a way that helps build more intelligence. The biggest issue I have with Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is that the logging is not as extensive as I would prefer. For instance, if there was an issue two days ago and Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud did not mark it as a concern, I will not see any information about that, making it challenging to explain to customers if their request did not reach us. It hampers visibility from an API perspective. They need to enhance monitoring and logging to be more extensive and capture even passive activities. The AI integration in Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is still new. The generative models are good, but there is much work left to improve. It is not as intelligent as it could be; thus, enhancements around the AI co-assistant would be beneficial. Additionally, logging and monitoring need improvement as I can capture traffic and investigate offline on my Fortinet firewall, including full traffic view, but Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud currently focuses only on security concerns, which does not give the complete picture.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The installation is straightforward."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the simplicity of configuration."
"I find the solution very stable."
"The product has fantastic support services."
"The most valuable feature is the rule set."
"Barracuda Web Application Firewall provides optimized performance, a user-friendly environment, helpful dashboards, and is simple to use."
"Data leak prevention is very important and ensures protection against attacks."
"My favorite Fortinet device is the FortiGate next-gen firewall itself; it is a complete suite with intrusion prevention, intrusion detection, anti-malware, anti-DDoS, and SD-WAN functionalities."
"We have seen a reduction in incidents and a good return on investment from Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud, with our return on investment around 60%."
 

Cons

"As most people are aware, the implementation is not easy."
"The areas where it could be better are in security profiles, where a single service can have only one policy; there is no feature to add multiple security policies for separate endpoints within the same application, and the traffic manager is not flexible enough to handle unusual traffic patterns, sometimes leading to crashes."
"I would suggest that someone implementing this product is knowledgeable in the IT field, and with the network needs. It is complex."
"I have issues with the load balancing of the solution which is slow. The connection pooling in Barracuda also doesn't work. There is an issue when someone needs access to a site quickly. The issue is with HTTPS services. I am not sure if they have changed all these in the solution’s latest version."
"The solution needs to leverage some additional features to a broader scale of software-defined networks."
"Barracuda Web Application Firewall lacks some of the more specified and structured features offered by solutions like Tenable."
"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."
"I have found F5 more stable than Barracuda Web Application Firewall. They should improve the stability."
"The issue I have with Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is that the real-time analysis is not robust; I am unable to see all the logs of everything that happened, including what is passive."
"Real-time traffic analysis has posed an issue for us because we did not see logs for legitimate traffic."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They only offer a yearly licensing plan."
"The Barracuda Web Application Firewall is quite expensive."
"The price is reasonable, more so than other products."
"The product pricing was competitive for the value it offers regarding security features."
"The price of this solution is okay."
"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."
"The product is inexpensive."
"The solution is based on a licensing model and might be $360 for the hybrid version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
6%
Construction Company
6%
Construction Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise12
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
My main use case for Barracuda Web Application Firewall is utilizing it in the areas of perimeter security, load balancing, and deploying it on the cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments, whic...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Barracuda Web Application Firewall are reasonable. They are competitive when compared to other vendors including F5 and Imperva, who tend to have higher p...
What needs improvement with Barracuda Web Application Firewall?
I think Barracuda Web Application Firewall can be improved by providing more information around data integrity control, which would be interesting to see.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud?
Real-time traffic analysis has posed an issue for us because we did not see logs for legitimate traffic. A separate license is needed for Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud to send logs to other cloud serv...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud?
Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is used as a WAF solution.
What advice do you have for others considering Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud?
We are a customer running Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud for both our organization and one for our customer. Three users use Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud. As administrators, it is easy to maintain. Using...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar
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Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.