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Cloudflare vs Fastly vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

 

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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 14.0%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 3.5%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 8.5%, up from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare14.0%
Imperva Application Security Platform8.5%
Fastly3.5%
Other74.0%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.
Pranay Jain - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior software developer at Simplifyvms
Edge caching has transformed response times and delivers faster candidate data globally
Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users. A more user-friendly, UI-based configuration could simplify the experience, alongside better templates for common use cases and dashboard improvements, as the current dashboard feels complex for beginners, and pricing can be hard to predict for smaller companies. I chose 8 out of 10 because it has excellent performance and low latency delivery, making it suitable for larger applications, with strong Edge Caching and instant purging capabilities. However, VCL complexity and pricing predictability, especially for smaller companies, along with a user-friendly dashboard are areas impacting my score.
reviewer2818155 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Application protection has improved and reporting and dashboards still need refinement
I believe Imperva Application Security Platform should have a more interactive wizard. While the dashboard is good, it could be more eye-catching. Based on my perspective, I recommend modifying the dashboards, especially the main dashboard where I can see the traffic hit count, alerts, and other latest information. In terms of reporting, I find it challenging to create reports; in my earlier days, it was difficult. Over time, I have learned how to create reports, but it should be easier to do so. I have used other tools such as firewalls or SolarWinds, where creating a report is straightforward and does not take much time, unlike in Imperva, where I have to add many elements. Modifications in the integration aspects would also be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CloudFlare's caching brings the load speed down from 4.32 seconds to 2.45 seconds."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"If you don't want to spend too much time hosting your own DNS server or managing the domain, Cloudflare is a great way to rapidly get websites and services online."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"Cloudflare has positively impacted our organization by giving us flexibility to manage the DNS part, being quite fast, and allowing us to manage everything from a single dashboard, which is quite handy."
"Initially, we faced load time issues, but after deploying Fastly and optimizing our queries, we achieved a response time cut to less than 1 millisecond from an initial 3 to 4 seconds."
"Support is good; the product works as advertised. We have a Slack connection with them. So we can basically ask for help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly."
"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."
"Fastly provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."
"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."
"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."
"Fastly combines both the CDN side and the Signal Sciences next-generation WAF, which is closely integrated with the CDN, allowing us to use both products seamlessly."
"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."
"Imperva solutions are the best in terms of stability."
"Basic setup is simple but, as with any caching/WAF setup, there are tricks you need to learn, but it works really nice out of the box!"
"As a system, it's very effective at blocking potentially malicious items."
"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."
"We have seen a return on investment with Imperva Application Security Platform, as we started with a few devices and gradually increased the number of on-premises devices for Imperva Application Security Platform."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is stable."
"After moving to Imperva Application Security Platform, these attacks have been prevented significantly, and the attacks on the initial level have been considerably reduced."
"The availability of our sites, thanks to the load balance functionality, has improved, and it enables the site to be available all the time, despite people trying to attack it."
 

Cons

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"It looks like they don't support as many TLDs as other registrars, but since they are very new as a registrar, I expect this may improve soon."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"The product support needs to be accessible from more places, a wider area of coverage."
"The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cloudflare are a bit on the higher side overall."
"However, what I still fail to understand is that why aren't they offering domains themselves."
"Support response time could be improved."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"It's not easy to start with Fastly if you don't have VCL knowledge, so it appears very complex at the beginning."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."
"Support is not that great."
"It is missing a "staging" platform to deploy a test configuration with all of the real settings, which would allow us to properly test before putting it into production."
"Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users."
"Stronger analytics would be helpful, like showing configurations that haven't served a certain amount of traffic in a while. With many properties, things can get lost track of - duplicates or unused configurations not properly decommissioned."
"It's a complicated tool to keep."
"At that moment, I miss being able to integrate the dashboard with other BI tools we are using. We have to export and import data to be able to present it, and doing so is a lot of work."
"I miss being able to integrate the dashboard with other BI tools we are using. We have to export and import data to be able to present it, and doing so is a lot of work."
"The cost could be lower; our end clients need to have a high budget to purchase this solution."
"It should be more user-friendly. Like other web solutions, it would be helpful to be able to easily do policy configuration and identification inside the application. Understanding the in-depth configuration of a policy is somewhat difficult for an engineer, and they can improve that."
"Some maintenance must be performed by our IT team."
"This is a very limited tool if you're looking to customize."
"I think the pricing needs some tweaks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The price is reasonable."
"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."
"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."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."
"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."
"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"For enterprise contracts you will be in touch with a dedicated account manager who will guide you regarding licensing."
"​Although the pricing can be a little high, it is worth the protection and security that it offers.​"
"Imperva charges us based on bandwidth, which is better than other vendors that charge us according to data transfer."
"It is very costly, but the return on investment is very high. Its cost was around $70,000, and we got it back in just six months."
"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."
"The solution's price is high for small companies."
"It is a very affordable solution."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall's pricing is expensive."
report
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Expert with 51-200 employees
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business88
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise70
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare?
The tool's pricing is moderate. I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expens...
What needs improvement with Fastly?
I believe that Fastly should provide guidelines for their WAF blocking rules. It should be public what the rules are ...
What is your primary use case for Fastly?
I am using Fastly in the Adobe Commerce Cloud project. In this project, it is working as a reverse proxy for CDN and ...
Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot mana...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provi...
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators o...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
 

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.
Twitter, Airbnb, Alaska Airlines, Pinterest, Vimeo, The Guardian, The New York Times, Ticketmaster, The Drupal Association, Opera, about.com, imgur, Etsy, Foursquare, GitHub, New Relic, shopify, Shazam, Firebase
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Radware, NETSCOUT, Cloudflare and others in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection. Updated: April 2026.
895,399 professionals have used our research since 2012.