


Fastly and F5 Advanced WAF are competitors in the web application security market. Fastly has an edge with its superior performance scalability and intuitive integrations, while F5 Advanced WAF leads in offering comprehensive security features.
Features: Fastly offers real-time insights, robust CDN capabilities, and seamless platform integration. F5 Advanced WAF provides extensive security features like enhanced bot protection, DDoS mitigation, and advanced threat detection.
Room for Improvement: Fastly could enhance its zero-trust security solutions and introduce more robust security features. F5 Advanced WAF could improve its deployment speed, ease of use, and expand its configuration options to reduce complexity.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fastly provides an efficient deployment process and offers responsive customer support, making it easy for organizations to start quickly. F5 Advanced WAF, though rich in security features, requires a more complex deployment process that can demand more resources and technical expertise.
Pricing and ROI: Fastly offers a competitive pricing model, emphasizing CDN and scalability, delivering good initial setup value and ROI for performance-focused businesses. F5 Advanced WAF entails a higher initial investment due to its extensive features but provides long-term ROI for companies seeking deep security insights and comprehensive threat management.
My experience with the pricing or licensing of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is that many features can be accessed for free, so the pricing is definitely reasonable.
Time savings in daily operations come from the automatic learning and signature update reducing the need for constant manual rule management, allowing the security and network teams to spend significantly less time handling false positive application-related escalations.
Subscription models offer clearer ROI due to a more competitive pricing scheme.
The amount of attacks it protects against is immense, more than F5 Advanced WAF itself costs.
Realizing a 30 to 50% reduction in latency and page load time, ensuring users experience a seamless workflow.
I have seen a return on investment, particularly in time savings, especially regarding the changes.
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to contact them.
The technical support of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between five and seven at maximum.
Both response time and availability need to be improved.
While they resolve issues well, the time taken for responses to non-critical issues should be shorter.
If there is a bug, the support is usually understanding and resolves issues.
demonstrating the team's technical expertise in CDN and Edge architecture
We have SLAs defined because we opted for enterprise support pricing.
We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers.
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.
If you need to scale up, such as moving from a lower model to a higher one, the configuration from the lower model can be migrated easily without issues.
I can run it in HA mode or even divide the traffic volume to the number of instances that I have based on their resource sizing.
Seamlessly handling massive traffic without requiring backend changes due to its globally distributed Edge network and stateless API-driven design.
The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10.
F5 Advanced WAF has been very reliable and consistent for us; in our on-premise enterprise setup, it has been stable and predictable in day-to-day operations without any unexpected crashes or WAF-related downtime in production.
F5 Advanced WAF is stable, and there is no doubt it is one of the best WAFs in the market.
F5 Advanced WAF is pretty stable.
Highly reliable for enterprise-scale applications with high uptime guarantees.
The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available.
I think they're doing a good job with DNS and as support for any domains that I create or that my clients create, it's mandatory for me to ensure they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider.
And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network.
Deployment training for F5 Advanced WAF is lacking and restricts growth by being inaccessible and costly for partners.
Overall, these are not blockers, merely enhancement opportunities, and once tuned, F5 Advanced WAF is very stable and reliable; improving usability, reporting, and onboarding would make it even more effective for larger environments.
Another improvement could be refining the bot detection to minimize false positives; it should be able to verify more granularly between legitimate and non-legitimate clients.
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.
Fastly could improve by improving the documentation and having some code examples.
Fastly should provide features similar to Cloudflare regarding a block list.
Licensing is capacity-driven, so you need careful planning based on traffic volume and use cases, and adding features such as Bot Protection impacts costs; once licensing is clear and sized correctly, there are no surprises.
Subscription models have competitive pricing, while perpetual licenses involve an upfront higher cost.
The price is affordable and satisfactory.
It operates on a pay-as-you-go structure, but costs scale with traffic, requiring monitoring to avoid unexpected spikes based on data transfers and the number of requests handled.
In terms of price, I find it good.
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.
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools add a layer that we're able to visualize and see before it actually hits the local firewall.
The Advanced Attack Signature database is very strong and regularly updated, effectively blocking SQL injections, cross-site scripting, command injections, and file inclusion attacks while allowing selective enabling or disabling of signatures to avoid blocking genuine traffic.
The perpetual license, despite an initial higher cost, lacks transparency regarding support expiration.
It contains the logic of both negative and positive security combined.
The best feature that Fastly offers is the Edge location, which reduces latency, making our applications work smoother because we do not have to constantly call the backend.
Fastly has a wide number of configuration features that can be performed, and I emphasize that they can be done from code, which makes it much more traceable.
In this project, it is working as a reverse proxy for CDN and WAF, web application firewall, additionally image optimization.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| F5 Advanced WAF | 4.7% |
| Cloudflare Web Application Firewall | 4.5% |
| Fastly | 1.7% |
| Other | 89.1% |

| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 16 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 6 |
| Large Enterprise | 6 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 27 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 16 |
| Large Enterprise | 31 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 6 |
| Large Enterprise | 7 |
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall integrates DDoS protection, load balancing, and firewall capabilities. Its ease of use, configurability, and robust security measures make it a versatile choice for protecting web applications.
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall provides a comprehensive defense against threats with advanced reporting and robust security measures. It includes DNS integration, rate limiting, and extensive rule sets, all within a SaaS model that allows API configurability. Users value its caching, scalability, and pricing, although enhancements are needed in rate-limiting and third-party integration. Improvements in customer support, especially in India, real-time controls, and user documentation are also desired. Users seek a more intuitive dashboard, better log management, and improved alert systems, along with multitenancy capabilities and enhanced reporting.
What are the key features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?Cloudflare Web Application Firewall finds application in industries like banking and retail by acting as a comprehensive security gateway, managing authentication and authorization while protecting web applications from malicious Layer 7 traffic. It also implements load balancing, CDN, and zero-trust policies, supported by advanced reporting, analytics tools, and threat scoring to meet specific industry needs.
F5 Advanced WAF delivers robust web security with features like signature-based threat protection and behavior analysis, ensuring app stability and security.
F5 Advanced WAF integrates advanced security with functionalities such as SQL injection defense and real-time threat intelligence. It enhances security for applications with load balancing, bot detection, and DDoS protection alongside comprehensive attack monitoring capabilities. Popular among diverse sectors, its usability and easy integration make it a practical choice by providing a stable security infrastructure across both on-premises and cloud environments.
What are the key features?Particularly relevant in banking and financial services, F5 Advanced WAF safeguards applications from threats like SQL injections and DDoS attacks, ensuring compliance and API security. Its capabilities are leveraged for both load balancing and application defense, offering a versatile deployment model suited for protecting critical infrastructure in competitive and demanding industries.
Fastly is a leading provider of content delivery network services that enhances website performance through efficient caching and real-time architecture capabilities.
Fastly integrates CDN technology with advanced web application firewall for comprehensive security. Its global infrastructure supports performance enhancement, rapid deployment, and rollback capabilities. Utilizing the VCL language allows custom caching solutions. Compute@Edge provides extensive architectural flexibility, aiding in HTML manipulation and script execution. Users benefit from its stability and reliability features for seamless network protection, log management, image optimization, and A/B testing. Challenges include limited support in mainland China, inadequate WebSocket protocol implementation, and complex pricing structures.
What are the key features of Fastly?Fastly is widely implemented in industries needing robust content delivery and security capabilities. Companies use it as a reverse proxy for media delivery, ensuring availability and optimized performance. Its rapid deployment and rollback features are particularly beneficial in technology sectors requiring agile responses to demand shifts.
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