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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs HAProxy comparison

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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

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)
HAProxy
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (4th), Service Mesh (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

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 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.
Kaushlendra Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for load balancing, but its dashboard and reporting could be improved
We use the solution for load balancing The solution's implementation and troubleshooting are not easy. The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved. I have been using HAProxy for 12 years. We didn’t face any issues with the solution’s stability. I rate the solution’s stability an…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"The technical support is good."
"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."
"It's a great product because it's scalable, has great coverage, and is mature with good defenses against DDoS attacks."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the simplicity of configuration."
"Data leak prevention is very important and ensures protection against attacks."
"The customer service and support are exceptional, and I would give them a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable features of Barracuda Web Application Firewall include advanced bot protection, DDoS protection, and addressing the top ten vulnerabilities."
"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."
"It is stable and the performance is good."
"Has a good dashboard."
"The most valuable feature is the rule set."
"​It has allowed us to evenly distribute the load across a number of servers, and check their health and automatically react to errors."
"It reduced the load on our main load balancers."
"I am also able to make configuration changes during the day, in production, with no worries of problems and/or downtime occurring."
"It solves a problem for me where I can build files, not based on the health of the check, but rather the speed of the check."
"The features I find valuable in this solution are session control which automatically disconnects users that forget to log off, and the ability to write rules to either allow or block certain file requests."
"I have found HAProxy very helpful in replicating production environment architecture in a development and testing environment."
"Load balancing is valuable, and we are also using the WAF feature."
"Software defined load balancing allows us to dynamically adjust and codify routing decisions. This speeds up development."
 

Cons

"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."
"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"There are some issues with the CDN services."
"This product could easily progress to be among the industry leaders. I think they need to improve enterprise level automation. It integrates with a small number of vulnerability scanners, so report results should be imported manually; same for SIEM integration."
"While the UI is good, it can get a little bit complicated."
"I have found F5 more stable than Barracuda Web Application Firewall. They should improve the stability."
"I would suggest that someone implementing this product is knowledgeable in the IT field, and with the network needs. It is complex."
"An area for improvement in Barracuda Web Application Firewall is attack identification. Other banks identified attacks and tracked logs that the solution wasn't able to identify because of its ready-made rules pre-deployed by the vendor. My organization raised this issue with the technical support team. Another area to improve in Barracuda Web Application Firewall is its service desk. The team resorted to stonewalling because they couldn't accept that a feature was missing in the solution, and it was only after a lot of drilling down that the service desk team accepted that, and would be adding that feature in the future. My organization had to submit a report to the Reserve Bank of India with information on the logs identified and the attacks that happened, and that there was a failure on the part of the Barracuda Web Application Firewall. The Reserve Bank of India conducts a tri-monthly cyber risk audit in all Indian banks. Even smaller banks identified and caught attacks that my organization wasn't able to do, so I was looking into other solutions that competitor banks could be using because Barracuda Web Application Firewall failed to identify some of the attacks."
"As a service, Barracuda needs to host in Saudi Arabia, as they currently don't have this functionality."
"There are some vulnerabilities that are reported across the tools offered by Barracuda for some devices, which need to be taken care of from an improvement perspective."
"It is not stable nor mature."
"Dynamic update API. More things should be possible to be configured during runtime."
"HAProxy could improve by making the dashboards easier to use, and better reports and administration tickets."
"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."
"​It needs proper HTTP/2 support.​"
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model. It could be cheaper."
"Pricing, monitoring, and reports can be improved."
"The reconfigurability in terms of the tooling could be improved and maybe an editor plugin can be added."
"Documentation could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"We are using the free version."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"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 price is reasonable."
"The price of this solution is okay."
"The price is reasonable, more so than other products."
"The pricing is less compared to other web applications."
"The Barracuda Web Application Firewall is quite expensive."
"They have competitive pricing."
"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 solution is based on a licensing model and might be $360 for the hybrid version."
"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."
"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."
"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."
"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."
"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."
"HAProxy is an open-source solution."
"The product is open source."
"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
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...
Do you recommend HAProxy?
I do recommend HAProxy for more simple applications or for companies with a low budget, since HAProxy is a free, open...
What do you like most about HAProxy?
The solution is effective in managing our traffic.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

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
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Find out what your peers are saying about F5, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: August 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.