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F5 Advanced WAF vs SiteLock comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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 Web Application ...
Sponsored
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 Advanced WAF
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SiteLock
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
38th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (46th), CDN (15th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (26th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 3.8%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Advanced WAF is 3.9%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SiteLock is 1.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Advanced WAF3.9%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall3.8%
SiteLock1.8%
Other90.5%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. 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. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
reviewer2797602 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Granular security policies have protected critical applications and ensure safe user and admin access
Improvements could be made regarding the log information from the backend CLI. There are enhancements needed; if a request gets blocked on the TCP layer, there should be traces or data to verify which source generated these requests, including the source and port information for initiation. These data are missing from F5 Advanced WAF. Besides that, 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. Overall, I find everything else good. A wish list feature I have is for the Technical Assistance Center (TAC) to respond more promptly. Their response time needs improvement; while they do not take excessive time, it can be enhanced, especially given it is a security product.
it_user723534 - PeerSpot reviewer
Guitarist at a media company with self employed
It's not easy to get out once you're in
Sitelock may perform a useful service, but be wary of giving them your credit card information. When you sign on for the paid service, Sitelock: * Hides (makes it difficult to find) that they default the auto-renew (you can't sign up without agreeing to have them automatically bill your credit card every year). * Hides (makes it difficult to find) how to stop auto-renew: * You can't just stop auto-renew from your billing panel, the way you can with reputable businesses. * You have to hunt their website for a link (in extremely small font) to the page which contains instructions for cancelling. * When you get to that page, turns out it's the 5000+ word "Terms of Service" document, which you have to scour to find a phone number. Then, you have to call and get put on hold (or if you like, they will call you back three days later). Once you finally get through, you have to jump through a lot of security hoops. All of the above, just to cancel the service. Their product may or may not be OK, but be forewarned that with Sitelock, it's not easy to get out once you're in.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The setup process is very simple for me."
"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."
"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."
"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."
"The most valuable part of the solution for us overall is exactly that it is a Software-as-a-Service product."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."
"Despite a few issues, F5 Advanced WAF is performing well for me."
"It protects and mitigates damage in the network."
"It is easy to obtain dashboard compliance because security policy views are included."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the WAF protection, Data Safe, and the seven-layer DDoS."
"Good dashboard and reporting."
"Overall, I believe it has been a good decision to switch because I do not think any other product available on the market can compete with F5 at this time."
"Identification, ease of use, and ease of modifying it to most of our needs are valuable."
"F5 helped to meet compliance and regulatory requirements."
"It seems to provide a bit of useful information on website health."
"Not only did SiteLock's website scanner find the issue with my website, but with SiteLock I was able to implement a security system to prevent future breaches."
 

Cons

"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."
"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"The platform's control features related to real-time authentication and response time need improvement."
"WAF doesn't directly affect bandwidth costs. It saves costs on protection. However, with the correct setup, it's difficult to determine if it saves costs overall due to the fixed enterprise plan fee."
"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"I would not expect traffic details to pass through the web application firewall across the length of the whole application. I think that there is a web application where it can let the application function without traffic going in into the WAF."
"The solution is tedious. It takes a lot of discrete settings so one needs to get detailed and granular when they use the solution. It takes you a whole lot of energy and concentration to configure. It needs to be much more straight-forward, like other web solutions."
"I think the deployment templates can be better."
"The DDoS capabilities should be enhanced."
"F5 Advanced WAF could improve the precision of the scanning. There are many false positives. They should improve their threat database."
"My advice to future customers of F5 Advanced WAF or to people thinking of using it is that there is a much better product in the market."
"F5 Advanced WAF sells perpetual licenses as perpetual assets during sales without informing me that support ends after a few years."
"F5 Advanced WAF needs better integration within the application, like remote dashboards."
"Sitelock may perform a useful service, but be wary of giving them your credit card information."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"It is not too pricey."
"I don't have any issue with the pricing of this solution."
"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."
"The pricing for F5 Advanced WAF is comparable to a Rolls-Royce. Its price is a bit high when you compare it with other vendors. F5 Advanced WAF is a bit expensive. The customer was on a three-year plan and it was around $560,000."
"F5 Advanced WAF technical support comes at a cost, and it's expensive."
"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."
"There is a perpetual license that comes with your hardware. There is also an additional fee for support."
"It's more expensive than other solutions and depending on the modules, there can be additional fees."
"The pricing is too high."
"You can't just stop auto-renew from your billing panel, the way you can with reputable businesses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
8%
Construction Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Transportation Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise31
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Advanced WAF?
F5 Advanced WAF is somewhat costly compared to other vendors, but it is worth the investment due to the stability it ...
What needs improvement with F5 Advanced WAF?
Improvements could be made regarding the log information from the backend CLI. There are enhancements needed; if a re...
What is your primary use case for F5 Advanced WAF?
My main use case for F5 Advanced WAF is to protect external and internal applications from cyber attacks and to preve...
What do you recommend for a securing Web Application?
That's one of the most critical questions any development team faces! Securing a web application requires a layered a...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
MAXIMUS, Vivo, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office, City Bank
galaxyguitar.com, robertasinc.com, indiarunning.com, comprarenpr.com, idbasolutions.com, newgrip.com
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Advanced WAF vs. SiteLock and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,647 professionals have used our research since 2012.