

Find out in this report how the two Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
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.
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.
We have not received technical support from Kemp LoadMaster without a license.
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.
Kemp LoadMaster is a scalable solution.
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.
With the license purchase afterwards, if it expires, it begins dropping the HTTP traffic, also the DNS traffic.
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.
After that, they said if it was good, we could purchase the license, and while we found it very good, the license cost was too high.
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.
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.
We had some issues in patching management, so we deployed this product for virtual patching, the IPS rule, and it gives us very good results because we have very critical servers.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| F5 Advanced WAF | 3.9% |
| Kemp LoadMaster | 1.3% |
| Other | 94.8% |

| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 27 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 16 |
| Large Enterprise | 31 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 24 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 13 |
| Large Enterprise | 16 |
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.
Kemp LoadMaster enhances server performance by providing secure, intuitive load balancing solutions with easy deployment. It supports high availability, integrates seamlessly with IT infrastructure, and ensures optimal traffic distribution for critical applications.
Kemp LoadMaster is known for its ease of use and high-level security capabilities, making it ideal for managing multiple servers. Its intuitive interface simplifies configuration for load balancing and reverse proxy across multi-site Exchange, while the Edge Security Pack distinguishes between critical infrastructure and public internet. Supporting seamless service continuity and effective traffic distribution, it significantly boosts server performance through SSL offloading and intelligent monitoring. However, improvements are desired in stability and reporting, as well as in security features such as a robust Web Application Firewall and more intuitive logging and monitoring.
What are Kemp LoadMaster's Key Features?Kemp LoadMaster is implemented across industries that require robust IT infrastructure management. Organizations use it for load balancing in Exchange environments, securing web servers, and maintaining high availability for public sector services. It supports applications like RDP, SQL, DNS, SharePoint, Citrix, and VoIP, ensuring security and high performance.
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