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

Fortinet FortiWeb vs NetScaler comparison

Sponsored
 

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

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)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th)
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) (14th)
 

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.
OcheEluma - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced security with comprehensive traffic inspection and some downtime automation needs
One area that needs improvement is the handling of SaaS downtime. When there is downtime at their data center, it becomes a transit point issue for us, causing downtime in our environment as well. Although measures like built-in redundancy and manual switching between data centers exist, there is room for improvement in making these transitions automatic without impacting the customer. Automating the migration without manual intervention would significantly enhance user experience during downtime. Additionally, being able to read non-flagged traffic for operational purposes could also be an area to improve.
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

"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."
"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"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 features of the solution are performance and security."
"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"The most important feature of this solution is protection from attack."
"Even though most products have the same functionality nowadays, FortiWeb is easy to integrate."
"It's the extra security that is the most valuable feature. You have insight into your traffic. There are some great insights into what utilities hackers are trying to exploit. It blocks a lot of stuff from the internet."
"When we had Cisco we had around thirty thousand entries on our firewalls. Now we are down to three thousand. Fortinet has a mechanism to detect all of your entries which are not used, and it can clean it up."
"The support is quite good."
"You have the ability to control everything from one single dashboard."
"The solution is stable."
"We were able to protect our web servers from outside attacks."
"The web application firewall which protects our services on the internet, and then of course services like our ability to provide high availability for the services we are offering are the most valuable features."
"The solution is very stable."
"The GSLB feature allows us to move services between data centers. We can do this in either a planned or unplanned manner. We have experienced service provider outages at our primary data center and GSLB will kick in to automatically modify DNS records to point to a secondary data center (active/passive). We also make use of GeoIP information to point clients to the closest data center for accessing applications."
"The load balancing feature of this solution is very good."
"I like app flows and custom flows. They integrate with multiple flows."
"It is a complete solution for those looking for an all-in-one."
"The NetScaler appliance has provided a lot of customers with greater high availability for their enterprise applications within a single site and across multiple locations."
"We like the periodic upgrades and backups, also made via ADMs, and it makes our environment much more robust and reliable."
 

Cons

"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"Technical support is not well developed. While there are good engineers, Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model."
"Latencies are always a problem."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."
"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"Maybe the load balancing options could be enhanced."
"The solution is not very scalable, to scale up would require another deployment with a new appliance and a change to the network."
"The automation piece can be improved. Although they say it can be automated very well, there is still manual work. Its usability should be improved in terms of automation because we want to build an infrastructure with code, but you can't do that easily with this solution. If they can give us APIs in the firewalls that we can tap into, it would be perfect."
"Though the reporting is a nice aspect associated with the tool, I feel that it has certain shortcomings and can be made better."
"The dashboard evaluating the performance of each application connected to the web app's firewall is quite helpful, but the tool is only available in application performance management. So I think if Fortinet could better integrate that particular feature, it would add a lot of value to the product."
"The integration with other products should be improved."
"The dashboards are not that configurable. Application-specific dashboards can be improved. If we have 50 applications, there should be something to see what's happening with these 50 applications. There could be a graph or a consolidated alert page where all alerts are inbuilt. They have other products that I can use, but this feature should be built into FortiWeb."
"I would like to see the Application Delivery Control (ADC) and Web Application Firewall (WAF) combined in one device."
"Citrix should improve the documentation. It is not really clear how to set up many features to our advantage. When we setup Citrix NetScaler ADC, we have to figure it out by ourselves without a lot of documentation."
"The configuration for its web application firewall is complicated."
"Improvements are needed to address the issue of machines becoming unregistered, ensuring stability for end users. Troubleshooting with Citrix support can be challenging, so clearer diagnostics would be beneficial. As for global server load balancing, it works well on-premises, depending on user volume and service stability. Overall, it's satisfactory for us."
"Getting to use some of the advanced tools, even with the assistance of Citrix support, can be challenging."
"Manageability and adaptability can also be challenging for end customers."
"The WAF component needs to be simplified so that it is easier to use."
"I think the documentation should be improved."
"Development team's response time could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."
"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"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 of Fortinet FortiWeb is reasonable. This is one of the key factors of why we use this solution."
"​The pricing is reasonable."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb depends from customer to customer because some customers are considering using other solutions, such as Imperva. The price of Fortinet FortiWeb sits well for the middle-sized customers that we deal with."
"The solution is cheaper compared with other solutions. It has a yearly license."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb is expensive in our Ethiopian currency."
"The cost isn't expensive."
"The price is competitive."
"When I use any other firewall, I have to take a license. It could be a perpetual license or subscription-based. In both cases, we have to pay some amount in advance, whereas in the case of FortiWeb, when using it as a service, I am paying half a dollar only for the domain name, and then I am paying based on the traffic or the number of requests."
"We have a yearly licencing fee, and there are no additional costs."
"The price for Citrix ADC here in Mexico was good, when you compare it with F5 and Radware."
"It's an expensive product but it works well."
"For partners, NetScaler is not as expensive price-wise versus F5."
"We get value for money. Its price is fair. I don't think it is overpriced."
"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."
"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."
"Our licensing fees including technical support are approximately $3,500 USD."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
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 Fortinet FortiWeb?
The WAF profiles has been effective at mitigating web-based threats.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb?
Fortinet FortiWeb is cost-effective compared to solutions like F5. It offers strong performance for the price, provid...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?
The cloud-based security service of Fortinet FortiWeb could be enhanced to match the level of providers like Cloudfla...
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
No data available
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.
Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiWeb vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.