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Ivanti Virtual Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler 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
7.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
Ivanti Virtual Web Applicat...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
0
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (16th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (45th)
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) (12th)
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user712188 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 30, 2018
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
reviewer890211 - PeerSpot reviewer
Good feature set and is simple to deploy
In terms of what needs improvement, the price could be lowered. We've tried to deploy more of them but our purchasing department has said that they're way too expensive and they would prefer to use something else. We sort of stopped deploying them because of that. There are additional costs to the standard licensing. There are bandwidth prices. The feature set is quite good. We've been told to stop using them because of the price. If they can do something to address that I believe it would be better. On the latest version they've got a community edition, which is quite a good bandwidth, but in essence, it's to address the entry-level price. When you get to 10 gig bandwidth, it's way too expensive.
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

"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"The technical support is good."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"The UI is good."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that it is simple to deploy. The deployment took us ten minutes."
"Content filtering, security layer, and application customization features are the most valuable."
"The work balancing applications are the most valuable feature."
"One feature that works really well is the SSL VPN. It's very easy to set up and you can go very granular with it. You can define what user groups get what kind of access and the management overhead is very low."
"The solution can be configured very granularly and has good control over security."
"The solution is very stable."
"I prefer this solution because of its user-friendly interface. I find it simple and close to what I am currently using, which is Citrix Fortiva Access for Multi-Factor Authentication. I appreciate the familiar user interface and troubleshooting tools it offers."
"The most valuable features of Citrix ADC are load balancing and application firewall."
"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."
 

Cons

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"Support response time could be improved."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the price could be lowered. We've tried to deploy more of them but our purchasing department has said that they're way too expensive and they would prefer to use something else."
"Scripting and writing expressions need to be improved by putting logic behind the rules and improve policies involving some of the scripting part, which is a tedious task to do."
"The setup was not simple."
"I feel that Citrix NetScaler's customer support needs to improve."
"The WAF component needs to be simplified so that it is easier to use."
"We have issues with the certificates. All authorization processes need certificates, however, every three months we needed to change certificates. This process iss complicated for us because Citrix does not have a not user-friendly interface and does not off user-friendly services. This needs a lot of improvement."
"The setup for Citrix NetScaler has room for improvement. It could be easier."
"Should offer more flexible cost-effective licensing for small to medium sized organizations."
"The customization has always been a key area where some improvements are required. In the beginning, everything was for customizing the outer shell of it. You had to use the command-based utility and you had to do a lot of manual work. They have improved it a little bit and now there are some GUI-based functionalities that can be used. However, more can be done that doesn't require a lot of intervention. Right now there are some features, there are some customizations that can be done, but it's still very tedious, very cumbersome, a lot of work. So that could be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"The price is reasonable."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
Information not available
"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."
"For the specific use case that my customers primarily engage with, I would give the pricing a rating of seven out of ten."
"It is true that it is a bit pricey compared to newer technologies coming to the market. For example, A10 is a load balancer that does everything that Citrix can and it does a lot more than what NetScaler does when it comes to the security space, and their prices are so cheap. Every box comes with its own license and support built into it. When you compare that with NetScaler, you have to buy licenses separately, you have to buy a support agreement that is going to be separate. A small NetScaler, even if it is a VPX which is a virtual server, could cost you close to $150,000 to $200,000 dollars. So the pricing is really high."
"Citrix ADC could improve the price and make it less expensive, other competitors have a better prices. This would allow Citrix ADC to keep dominating the market."
"It is very pricey, but we get it. If you need the best, money shouldn't be a problem."
"It is an enterprise solution. Thus, its costs are reasonable."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is very high compared to its competitors."
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Answers from the Community

it_user712188 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 30, 2018
Jun 30, 2018
Zeus was a great company - Its a shame Riverbed screwed up the acquisition and destroyed it. The product has been in a state of limbo for several years, I wouldn't trust Pulse to make anything out of it. Go with F5 or Citrix if you have the money. If money is an issue then go with Kemp or Loadbalancer.org which are #1 and #2 at the value end of the market. Radware is pretty cool as well - but ...
2 out of 5 answers
MS
Jun 19, 2018
As far as I know, Netscaler has special hardware solution SDX where you can run virtual appliance (VPX) so much as you need and license determines the total system performance. It's not a problem for scaling virtual appliance by each application. You can ask Citrix managers for details. I hope it will be helpful.
Jun 19, 2018
My thought would be Barracuda Cloud WAF. This will work in 15 min. With lb and default templates. Go to demo.Barracuda.com Select WAF for hardware or select cloud. Additional info ask if needed
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
No data available
Computer Software Company
16%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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.
Ask a question
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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
Pulse vWAF, Pulse Virtual Traffic Manager
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.
Gilt Groupe
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about NetScaler, F5, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC). Updated: April 2025.
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