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Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Imperva Web Application Firewall 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
7.1
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)
Cloudflare Web Application ...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th)
Imperva Web Application Fir...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (7th)
 

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.
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.
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

"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."
"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."
"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."
"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."
"The initial setup process is simple."
"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"The setup process is very simple for me."
"It is configurable via API."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"Technical support has a very fast response time and they are helpful."
"The compliance is the most valuable aspect."
"I am impressed with the product's scalability, availability, easy management, and security. We were able to integrate the product with Azure and Sentinel."
"The most valuable features of the Imperva Web Application Firewall are performance and flexibility. We can extend or customize the box itself."
"It has fewer false positives"
"The tool's profiling feature maps all the web application directories and related components on the profile directory. It has improved the security of my client's website applications."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is stable."
"Very intuitive and granular configuration - It does not require much time, or advanced knowledge, for configuration and maintenance."
"It has threat intelligence and we are using Incapsula. With threat intelligence, we can separate HTTP and HTTPS traffic. We can use Incapsula to send all the threat intelligence to the WAF."
 

Cons

"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."
"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."
"Latencies are always a problem."
"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."
"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."
"Support can be challenging at times."
"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"
"The reporting could be more granular."
"I'd like the option to pick your bot protection."
"Some of the features should be included in the next release is a file integrating monitoring tool. This feature should be improved."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is very expensive."
"The user interface could be better."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is a good system, but we found that the visibility of the diverse-path server, e.g. where the traffic is coming from, the different IPs, etc., needs improvement."
"The only disadvantage of Imperva is that it is a pretty costly solution."
"It's a complicated tool to keep."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"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."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"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."
"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."
"It is not too pricey."
"The solution is expensive."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."
"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."
"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."
"Imperva’s pricing is a bit higher in the market since it offers a full-blown WAF."
"It is a very affordable solution."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall price is higher compared to other solutions. However, everything is included in the price."
"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
8%
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 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 d...
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...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Cloudflare WAF
No data available
 

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
BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
863,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.