F5 Advanced WAF vs Indusface AppTrana comparison

F5 and Indusface are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. F5 is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6, while Indusface is ranked #29 with an average rating of 9.0. Additionally, 98% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Indusface users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between F5 Advanced WAF and Indusface AppTrana based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), F5, Microsoft and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF).

To learn more, read our detailed Web Application Firewall (WAF) Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

March 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

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.

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Richard Polyak

Sr. Architect at NBC Universal

Easy event identification, highly stable, and customizable

Generally, F5 Advanced WAF initial setup is straightforward. However, our environment was more complex and it took us a little more time to customize the solution to where we needed it to be. Additionally, the customization didn't rectify everything. We had to do customization to a certain event to prevent attacks that it wasn't catching, but that might not necessarily be the solutions' fault. It could be more of our setup than the solution's fault and not being able to run the latest version or the newer version could be more of a limitation on our ability to put it in the right place. The whole implementation to have the solution run at the level we wanted it to take approximately five months. Our company's environment is one that we can't put a canned solution in front of. Our environment, cannot have a canned solution that might fit everybody else because of how customized this environment is. It does need a lot of tuning to meet our environment's requirements. I rate the initial setup of F5 Advanced WAF a three out of five.

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Arinze Anakwue

Cyber Security Engineer at Uniccon Group of Companies

Cost-effective and used as an effective firewall

We use Indusface AppTrana as a firewall The solution should add an enhanced dashboard to make it easy to navigate. I have been using Indusface AppTrana for a few months. Indusface AppTrana is a stable solution that doesn't break down. Around 100 users are using the solution in our…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."

"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."

"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."

"The most valuable feature is its usability."

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."

"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."

More Cloudflare pros

"The whole mechanism of F5 Advanced WAF is effective."

"I like them because I like the security solution. They get extra marks compared to other solutions or competitors. There are more features than any other product I can think of. They're always monitoring, and the security features offer more than other, lesser products."

"The web application firewall itself is most valuable. It provides positive security and negative security. In negative security, it blocks a task such as cross-site scripting, code injection, etc. In positive security, it lets you specify and enforce things, such as the parameters allowed in username and password fields and the number of characters allowed in a field."

"I definitely recommend this solution because of the time you save on analysis."

"I appreciate the way F5 Advanced WAF builds policies by configuring a basic policy and queuing it in learning mode."

"It can scale."

"The bot defense capability, as well as protection from brute force attacks and OWASP Top Ten, are notable features."

"I like all of the features, but the main one is the attack signatures."

More F5 Advanced WAF pros

"We use Indusface AppTrana as a firewall."

Cons

"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."

"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."

"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."

"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."

"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."

"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."

"The solution could be more user-friendly."

"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."

More Cloudflare cons

"You have to buy another module with an extra license, to have the authentication feature."

"The solution should include RASP for another level of protection at the code itself."

"The Sandbox integration feature could be improved."

"We get false positives sometimes."

"There is a gap in report management."

"F5 Advanced WAF could improve the precision of the scanning. There are many false positives. They should improve their threat database."

"More legacy protocols should be added to the solution."

"F5 Advanced WAF sells perpetual licenses as perpetual assets during sales without informing me that support ends after a few years."

More F5 Advanced WAF cons

"The solution should add an enhanced dashboard to make it easy to navigate."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

"We are using the free version."

"We are using the free tier of the solution."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"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 price is reasonable."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"There is an annual subscription for this solution."

"There are various plans available for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF as a Service, including a trial version."

"As far as the pricing of F5 Advanced WAF I would rate it a four out of five depending on what features I am looking for. Imperva is more expensive."

"I rate F5 Advanced WAF's pricing a three out of ten."

"I think the price is very high."

"Pricing for this solution is higher than average."

"F5 Advanced WAF pricing structure should be adjusted to meet the need of small to medium-sized companies."

"F5 Advanced WAF is not a cost-effective solution. Although they are attempting to reduce prices with their VE and cloud options, they are more expensive than other solutions. The solution is more expensive on average."

More F5 Advanced WAF pricing and cost advice

"Indusface AppTrana is an affordable and cost-effective solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Comms Service Provider

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

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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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about F5 Advanced WAF?

It's a fairly easy-to-use and user-friendly tool. My administrators and team also like its ability to customize the r...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced WAF?

Subscription models have competitive pricing, while perpetual licenses involve an upfront higher cost, leading to amb...

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What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?

F5 Advanced WAF sells perpetual licenses as perpetual assets during sales without informing me that support ends afte...

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What are some best practices for AppTrana?

One of the best practices is to educate employees on how to avoid becoming a bot, so to speak. Attackers often use c...

See all answers

What are AppTrana's self-managed rules and how do they work?

The self-managed rules feature offers a lot of flexibility in defining the trigger conditions for activating rules wi...

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How exactly does a Web Application Firewall work?

Two of the advanced techniques that a WAF employs are geo-fencing and geo-blocking to further enhance security. Geo-...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Fortinet FortiWeb vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 22% of the time

AWS WAF vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 12% of the time

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Front Door vs F5 Advanced WAF

Compared 5% of the time

More F5 Advanced WAF Competitors

Radware DDoS Protection Service vs Indusface AppTrana

Compared 37% of the time

AWS WAF vs Indusface AppTrana

Compared 32% of the time

More Indusface AppTrana Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

April 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

F5 Advanced WAF

April 2025

Download F5 Advanced WAF product report

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

March 2025

Download Indusface AppTrana product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

AppTrana

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

F5 Advanced WAF is a web application security solution for financial and government sectors, e-commerce, and public-facing websites. It offers protection against various attacks, including botnets, web scraping, and foreign entities. The solution can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud and is often used with other security tools. Its most valuable features include DDoS and DNS attack protection, SSL uploading, anomaly detection, and the ability to input custom rules.

F5 Advanced WAF has helped organizations to expose more services to the public while providing an extra layer of protection, preventing revenue loss, and securing connectivity.

AppTrana is designed to address the shortcomings in existing cloud security solutions which claim to provide comprehensive protection using only technology based cookie cutter solutions. Welcome to the new world of AppTrana where your entire application security is custom built by experts based on your existing risk posture.

Indusface

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank

Shoppers Stop, TCS

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

March 2025

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