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Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs Imperva Web Application Firewall 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 Web Application Fir...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Web Application Firewall is 5.8%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user566739 - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 07, 2016
 

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.
Mitesh D Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively defends against threats like cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and others
It does bring value. For example, consider a BFSI customer. Their application is critical and represents their brand. Without a WAF, an attack could take their application down, harming their reputation. It leads to hampering the customer's workflow. With an Imperva WAF, they protect against attacks like DDoS or SQL injection, ensuring their application remains available and customers are happy. That's the main benefit for both the customer and the organization. The impact depends on the customer's use case. If their business primarily operates online, a CDN is beneficial for traffic optimization. Moreover, the integration options depend on the specific use case of our customers. Generally, integration capabilities are good with SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) parts.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"It is stable and the performance is good."
"Even when we were upgrading to a new OS, we didn't have any difficulties with the product. The stability is good."
"What I like most about Barracuda Web Application Firewall is its availability. I also like that it's an easy-to-use solution."
"We use Barracuda to protect the application. That's the main feature we use it for."
"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."
"Has a good dashboard."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the simplicity of configuration."
"The solution is stable."
"The compliance is the most valuable aspect."
"Very scalable and very stable firewall for web applications, with a good interface in its cloud version. Mitigation is its most valuable feature. The technical support for this product is also good."
"Imperva is easy to use and deploy. The UI is excellent."
"Imperva is a Gartner leader, so its scalability, performance, and features are excellent."
"Imperva has a complete picture of how the applications are utilizing it. It is handy. DDoS is good. It has an internally managed database. It is very easy to integrate. We have integrated it with SIEM services."
"We can prevent attacks or issues even before they happen."
"The most valuable features of Imperva Web Application Firewall are the monitoring of databases and the dashboards are easy to understand."
 

Cons

"Its interface can be better. It is not very friendly."
"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."
"The usability of the interface could be improved."
"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."
"Barracuda Web Application Firewall’s scalability needs improvement."
"I have to go to an individual obligation, make changes, and come out, and go to the next obligation and make the same changes. There is no grouping option."
"As most people are aware, the implementation is not easy."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement."
"The initial setup could be simplified. Every time you have to install the solution you have to get in touch with support or somebody that can to do that for you."
"Their portal is very limited and needs improvement."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is very expensive."
"An improvement for Imperva WAF would be to reduce the number of false positives and create more strong use cases based on AI/ML or behavioral analytics."
"In the past, I have bugs on the WAF. I've contacted Imperva about them. Future releases should be less buggy."
"I am looking for more data enrichment. We should have the ability to add our own custom data to the system, to the live traffic."
"It should be more user-friendly. Like other web solutions, it would be helpful to be able to easily do policy configuration and identification inside the application. Understanding the in-depth configuration of a policy is somewhat difficult for an engineer, and they can improve that."
"It's a complicated tool to keep."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cost is a bit on the higher side. Big companies can afford it."
"The product is inexpensive."
"They have competitive pricing."
"While I would have to check on the price of the solution, I feel it to be okay and it matches the market price."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The Barracuda Web Application Firewall is quite expensive."
"The solution is based on a licensing model and might be $360 for the hybrid version."
"Barracuda costs us $8,000 per year. Barracuda costs $20,000 for a full subscription, when you try to protect multi-site infrastructure, in different geographical zones and for different data centers. If you have only one site, Barracuda will be cheaper."
"There are some licenses that you have to buy to use some features. Its price could be better. Price is always important because, at the end of the day, customers have a budget. If you can meet the budget, you can sell, and if you don't, you cannot sell."
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
"It is a very affordable solution."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."
"Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well."
"The price is high compared to other solutions like FortiWeb."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall's pricing is expensive."
"There are a couple of different licensing models."
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Answers from the Community

it_user566739 - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 8, 2016
Dec 8, 2016
To prevent OWASP TOP 10 (SQL Injection, XSS, XSFR...etc) attacks, stop L7 DDoS like SlowLoris and HeavyURL, protect against web fraud, phishing and endpoint malware (Dridex) on endpoint machines outside administrative control, secure application API's, the option to deploy as a managed service in the cloud and available on premises, use DAST integration for policy building with Qualys, Cenzic, ...
2 out of 13 answers
it_user307584 - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 7, 2016
Today i would say Barracuda is the better WAF based on that Imperva Dev slowed down over the last two years and the customers give bad feedback on the support, but there is a newer generation of WAF´s in the market that is better than Imperva and Barracuda, both in performance and price, PT application firewall, the only visionary in the GMQ
Dec 7, 2016
Neither. F5 Networks Sent from my iPhone
 

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
12%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
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...
Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?
For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc.
DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DDoS Protection Service and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?
You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot of DDoS attacks that were well managed (even not seen by the customer) by Imperv...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Oracle, CBS, Pioneer, Hyundai, Publix, Barnes Noble, Calzedonia, Nordstrom, Samsung, Nascar
BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.