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Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs F5 Silverline Managed Services 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Cloudflare WAF delivers immediate ROI by securing e-commerce and banking platforms, ensuring operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Sentiment score
6.6
F5 Silverline Managed Services offers effective cybersecurity solutions, with variable ROI perceptions and appreciation for time and cost savings.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
Cloudflare's support is praised for responsiveness and effectiveness, though some Indian users face communication challenges and prefer local help.
Sentiment score
6.1
F5 Silverline's customer support is responsive but varies; users praise personalization but note challenges with escalations and response times.
The technical support of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between five and seven at maximum.
Their support team is responsive, and they deliver timely updates, addressing any glitches promptly.
They resolve the issues by joining me to fix them.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is praised for its scalability, flexibility, automation, and superior advantages compared to open-source solutions.
Sentiment score
7.8
F5 Silverline offers scalable managed services, efficiently handling enterprise demands with flexible expansion and seamless capacity management.
The scalability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between 8 to 9, as it depends upon the use cases and what exactly the client needs.
F5 Silverline Managed Services is scalable enough without observed limitations.
The solution is fully scalable, and I would give it a rating of ten on a scale of one to ten for scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is highly stable and reliable, ensuring uninterrupted, effective protection and user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
7.3
F5 Silverline delivers stable performance with strong monitoring, minimal downtime, effective support, and high stability ratings despite occasional issues.
The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10.
They offer regular updates, and overall, I would rate the stability of the solution as nine out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudflare WAF must update features, improve documentation and support, reduce false negatives, and enhance usability, integrations, and visibility.
F5 Silverline needs improved pricing, integration, user interfaces, automation, API, and enhanced features like AI and bot detection.
The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available.
They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long.
Introducing preemptive support prompts would reduce the manual effort required for creating policies or blocking specific IPs.
Improvements could include the creation of highly optimized profiles.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users find Cloudflare's Web Application Firewall competitively priced, reasonable, and transparent despite starting fees and optional features.
Enterprise users view F5 Silverline pricing as competitive but costly, with room for negotiation and flexible licensing options.
On a scale where ten is very expensive, I would rate the pricing as three.
The solution is expensive
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare WAF offers API configurability, comprehensive features, robust security, scalability, with strong integration and technical support.
F5 Silverline Managed Services provides easy setup, robust security features, excellent scalability, and effective DDoS protection with comprehensive reporting.
The custom rules and the geo-redundant geographical rule feature, which allows me to implement geographical rules for customers, add significant value.
The best features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall are multiple, including the WAF, rate limiter, and bot attack protection.
The monitoring tab displays GET and POST requests in a readable format, making it accessible even to non-tech-savvy individuals.
It allows for centralized management of certificates, protecting applications from top ten attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare Web Application ...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 Silverline Managed Services
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
22nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 7.4%, up from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Silverline Managed Services is 1.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

SachidDoshi - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a huge signature repository and is superiorly effective in mitigating DDoS attacks
The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced, which presently stands at two or three months. The product has a custom rule set that users can modify and manifest as needed. The vendor can probably shorten the learning curve using cutting-edge technologies like AI. The solution provider can also work around the web applications and identify the toolset that needs to be implemented to deploy the solution in less time. The vendor has launched a SASE product that can function with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall, but many improvements are needed in terms of features, such as the web filtering feature, and CASB has not yet been added.
Archana Heeralal - PeerSpot reviewer
A reasonably priced product with a good UI, but the navigation is difficult, and the support team takes a long time to respond
Since we use the solution’s cloud, the product has more control over the back end. The customer will not have control. It is part of the product’s feature. When we get more complex requirements or if we want to write more complex tools, the support team will have the visibility to write them because they have control. The navigation is difficult to use. The navigation should be improved. Other products are quite straightforward. If I try to implement a new application and do an onboarding, it is not very easy. We must go to one feature, inside which there will be more features. It should be simplified, and a menu should be provided.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
The product has a valuable security control functionality.
What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I cannot say much about areas of improvement for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall because I haven't gone through deep understanding of it, as I am still learning. However, they need to improve t...
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Silverline Managed Services?
The solution is quite reasonably priced, with costs being lower in comparison to competitors. On a scale where ten is very expensive, I would rate the pricing as three. It offers cost savings and i...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, F5 Silverline DDoS Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. F5 Silverline Managed Services and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.