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

Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs Imperva DDoS comparison

 

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

Barracuda Web Application F...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
17th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Imperva DDoS
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
21st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
CDN (6th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Barracuda Web Application Firewall is 2.0%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva DDoS is 1.9%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
DerrickAkankwasa - PeerSpot reviewer
Provide DDoS protection and better security at effective rate
It is expanding its number of data centers for scrubbing traffic. Currently, there is only one POP for cleaning in South Africa. They might add another POP in North Africa, possibly in Nigeria or Egypt. Latency concerns customers, especially in regions like East and West Africa, where traffic has to travel to South Africa before returning. Increasing the number of POPs across the continent would help address these latency issues and improve overall service. While the platform is already quite strong, there’s always room for improvement, especially in keeping up with emerging trends and new types of attacks. Enhancing security capabilities could be beneficial. Integrating more advanced AI features could significantly improve its effectiveness and help customers leverage these tools more effectively. It would be great to see more focus on AI integration to handle and analyze data more efficiently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution offers multiple security features. There are machine learning features and great URL encryption. It also offers multi-protocol support against DDoS attacks."
"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."
"We run it with no downtime, because it has good support."
"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."
"Parameter Protection is a valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the simplicity of configuration."
"The initial setup is easy."
"It is stable and the performance is good."
"Imperva Incapsula has many valuable features. One, it protects the top 10 OWAS vulnerability, the open web application software platform, this is standard. Secondly, it protects against broken authentication. As well, it has remote execution of code."
"Gives us the ability to trace each connection, and to have logs to be able to differentiate between a positive and a false-positive intruder action."
"The bot management features are very effective, as they help filter unwanted traffic using keywords."
"It's very pretty easy to onboard the URL."
"The solution's most valuable aspect is that it is easy to configure."
"The technical support is excellent."
"We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping."
"The solution has a very good interface."
 

Cons

"The policy updates could be improved."
"I would like to see a native multi-cloud cover."
"The solution could use more reports."
"I would suggest that someone implementing this product is knowledgeable in the IT field, and with the network needs. It is complex."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"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."
"They could improve their performance, support, and their upgrades. Their updates used to be good. Their improvements were right on the money but nowadays, the updates are minor."
"The solution needs to leverage some additional features to a broader scale of software-defined networks."
"It's quite expensive."
"The solution needs to improve Integration with third parties for their on-prem deployment models. The integration is not that good yet."
"I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators of compromise."
"Imperva DDoS does not provide version control."
"Some maintenance must be performed by our IT team."
"Users would benefit from better documentation. There is official documentation, but sometimes we need more detail. We have some use cases that are not so run of the mill. It would be great if there was a knowledge base that we could go to for more answers."
"Certificate management could be improved."
"Its price could be improved. It is quite expensive. It will be good if we could export the configuration. Currently, to control the configuration, we need to go to each website, which is not very convenient."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Cost is a bit on the higher side. Big companies can afford it."
"The price of the solution is a little expensive. There is a license for this solution and it can be purchased every one, two, or five years."
"The pricing is less compared to other web applications."
"The product is inexpensive."
"The product is expensive."
"In my opinion, the product is fairly priced."
"The solution is based on a licensing model and might be $360 for the hybrid version."
"The cost is on par with other solutions such as Cloudflare and Akamai."
"Pricing could be more competitive."
"We have an issue with Imperva Incapsula in the Iraqi market because of the high price."
"Imperva charges us based on bandwidth, which is better than other vendors that charge us according to data transfer."
"The data packages are higher than our needs so we end up paying for data that we don't use."
"The solution's price is high for small companies."
"There is a license or subscription renewal that our customers pay."
"It is not expensive compared to the other similar solutions in this category."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
20%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 in our environment.
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 bots. This involved analyzing the type of data being collected through websites...
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 negotiate with Barracuda. Software licenses, premium support, and advanced bot protecti...
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 is rated a ten on a scale where ten is very expensive. The solution is only cloud-based and does not provide on-premises services.
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
Pricing can be improved, as it is quite expensive. Additionally, support response times for emails can sometimes be delayed, which is an area that could use improvement.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Imperva Incapsula
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva DDoS and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.