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Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs F5 Silverline Managed Services comparison

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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
7.2
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) (14th)
Cloudflare Web Application ...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (7th)
F5 Silverline Managed Services
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (25th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (15th)
 

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.
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.
DejanBlagojevic - PeerSpot reviewer
Mitigates more bot activity when defending web applications than any other vendor but comes at a price
F5 Silverline Managed Services is expensive. You do get world-class quality of mitigation, but I think it is still pricey. You can find similar services, potentially of slightly lower quality, from other vendors like Cloudflare or Akamai for about half the price. When you compare what you get for the money you spend at Cloudflare or Akamai, you do get less protection but you are not dishing out too much for it. On the other hand, at F5 Silverline Managed Services, you do get better protection but, but you are paying double for it. We have had mixed feedback from our clients about this. Most of them would rather pay less for a bit of a lower-quality defense than overshoot their budget. The most common piece of feedback we receive is that the difference in protection levels is not reflected in the price.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Even when there is a high load on our servers, Cloudflare is able to cache the data and serve it to users, ensuring they can still access the website."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."
"Cloudflare has many features."
"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."
"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"The product has improved our security posture by blocking bad actors."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"The setup process is very simple for me."
"I'm highly satisfied. It's remarkably user-friendly, enabling me to quickly identify issues, and deploy solutions, and it offers the necessary features."
"Its flexibility is the most valuable because it is a managed service. The good part is that you don't need to set it up. It just needs DNS routing, which is the easiest thing. Our client had Akamai for certain websites because they were using CDN features. They had NetScaler on the internal zone, F5 AWAFs on the data centers, and no WAF at all in the cloud. One of the main activities of the project was to move all these policies into a single WAF so that we could control and use that as a choke point. That exercise itself was very easy because it was a managed service and F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall does that for you. That's the best thing about F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall. It is easy to apply policies on-premises. If you have AWAF on-premises and you want to replicate some policies on F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, other than the policies that it applies by itself, it is easy because you have a team that supports it. F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall works perfectly fine. It pretty much does everything that an Advanced WAF on-premises should do."
"F5 Silverline offers load balancing, flexibility, and reliability."
"Most vendors fulfill the requirements for standard DDoS protection, but F5 Silverline Managed Services has a better understanding of defending web applications like HTTP and can mitigate more bot activity than any other vendor."
"The stability of the solution is very good."
"We have a lot of businesses that we put behind this solution, and it has really helped us in terms of monitoring the logs and incidents."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Silverline Managed Services is it becomes similar to a distributed architecture."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"F5 technical support is really good."
 

Cons

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"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."
"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"Support response time could be improved."
"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."
"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"The pricing could be improved."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should include port forwarding features."
"The learning curve was steep initially."
"The platform's control features related to real-time authentication and response time need improvement."
"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"The reporting could be more granular."
"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be better."
"There is room for improvement in the stability of the solution."
"The navigation is difficult to use."
"F5 Silverline Managed Services can improve by adding features that Palo Alto has."
"There is a lot of room for improvement with their tech support. I am not sure F5 Silverline Managed Services can be classified as having tech support."
"I just hope the price can be cheaper."
"You need to have Linux knowledge in order to use the shell."
"The price is high in comparison to other products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"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."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"It is not too pricey."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."
"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be reduced."
"The product’s pricing is reasonable."
"F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall works based on your bandwidth. They look at the clean bandwidth and do the pricing. 20% of a total pipe would be a clean bandwidth. The list price or a non-negotiated price for F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall would be around $2,200 per application per year for everything that you need. When you get into an enterprise kind of a setup, they negotiate this to the last bit. I would easily take 20% on that, which would be the cost, but it should cover all your Advance WAF features, bot protection, tech campaign, etc. It is built as a package and gives you most of the capability. You don't get the mobile SDK, which is an additional license. Mobile SDK is required only if you're buying or if you have a mobile application, and you are going to instrument F5 or Imperva into your mobile appliance. This anyways would be an additional module. It doesn't come within the WAF, but it is a WAF feature."
"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be better, they are not very flexible. The price of the solution is based on the requirements of the enterprise."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Insurance Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

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 Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
The product has a valuable security control functionality.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before.
What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available. This improvement wo...
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 hav...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Silverline Managed Services?
The solution is expensive, however, the quality and performance are good.
 

Also Known As

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

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.
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: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.