No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway comparison

Why PeerSpot?
Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 4, 2024

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

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (6th), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (7th)
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Man...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
19th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (11th), SSL VPN (7th), Remote Access (16th), Access Management (13th)
Netskope Next Gen Secure We...
Ranking in Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Secure Web Gateways (SWG) category, the mindshare of iboss is 3.2%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is 1.3%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway is 2.1%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
iboss3.2%
Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway2.1%
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)1.3%
Other93.4%
Secure Web Gateways (SWG)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
SÜ
Senior Cyber Security Consultant at KoçSistem
Has provided reliable policy controls and secure web access for large enterprises
I consider Cloudflare when evaluating centralized access control features; Cloudflare utilizes multi-factor authentication and full API support, while F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) needs to enhance its API support. I recommend F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) for large companies such as Tüpraş and Ford. Tüpraş is one of the biggest companies in Turkey, along with other customers such as Tofaş, Euroko, Koç Holding, and more. For on-premises deployment, I would rate it a 10. For cloud deployment, I would rate it a seven. I primarily use it on-premises. I rate F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) eight out of ten.
BT
Experto de Seguridad Informática at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Granular web controls have improved user-specific access and reduced security incidents
For the moment, the solution is going quite well, and I cannot think of anything specific we could improve at the moment.Perhaps in file control, the maximum size of the files that can be analyzed is a negative aspect or an improvement that I consider necessary in Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would say iboss is a very good product; its scalability is very good, and it's seamless for the user."
"We chose iboss for both zero trust and proxy (SWG) because their SWG was superior."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"Deploying iboss leads to good return on investment, estimated around 70% to 80%."
"This product is solid, fairly easy to use, and reliable."
"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device. It operates on the network side and is not device-based. This feature was one of the main reasons why we stayed with them for so long."
"The students were always protected, and the content filtering worked very well, seeming to work better than other products we had tried previously."
"I recommend F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) to others due to its reliability, and it is perceived as critical to security infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature is the virtual IP creation. It's our most frequently used feature."
"F5 is great for handling complex issues, and most of our big customers, including banks and insurance companies, like it because it's such a robust platform that enables them to do almost anything."
"This is a product that is easy to install and integrate, and it is simple to use."
"On a scale from one to ten for stability, I would rate F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) a ten."
"The product is stable, I haven't noticed any bugs or glitches, and I haven't seen it crash or freeze, so it seems to be reliable and the performance is good."
"In my opinion, the GUI is perfect with the configuration options provided. F5 BIG-IP has given customization options and policy configuration tools in the GUI. It's good and good enough to work."
"F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) provides excellent WAF and bot defense solutions."
"My advice for others looking into implementing the solution it is easy to use, and it is one of the best solutions on the market."
"It is for secure web trafficking, and it is doing what it needs to do. It allows customers to consolidate and eliminate multiple technologies onto Netskope and just kind of turn the dial and use more features, such as CASB, VPN. SWG is another feature. You can monitor and govern all the traffic."
"All our customers use multiple data and want to protect that by preventing data leakage and that's what it does."
"We've found the solution to be quite stable."
"Prevents data leakage and protects data."
"Overall, the product is nice, and I like the URL filtering, CASB, and other security stacks like threat prevention."
"There are a lot of features, but the groups that are created for the policy groups available with Netskope are already relevant to any industry. So grouping the policies is the easiest part and a valuable feature."
"The solution is reliable and has high availability."
 

Cons

"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"If they could implement an extra security layer preventing access to iboss from the open internet, it would be great."
"Fold that in with the risk intelligence they're getting from all of the different subscriptions they are a part of. Now, these security companies subscribe to things like emerging threats, databases, etc. You can fold all this intelligence to decide what's happening on an endpoint. I would love to see them start moving into that space. That would compete directly with Microsoft. Maybe that's why they haven't. Having that ability native within the solution would be great. The other area in which I would love to see improvement is more detailed descriptions of why they block websites."
"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."
"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."
"The reporting feature needs improvement. It doesn't give you the expected results. It is quite difficult to get the specific reports needed, and it is not as intuitive as the rest of the platform."
"iboss can be improved because the integration could be better; you need to import all the sites that you access today, and there are a few problems whenever you import thousands of websites, making the integration process messy for the users."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"The solution is quite costly."
"The main improvement needed for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is to integrate into the cloud-delivered services from F5."
"The stability of the F5 BIG-IP APM could be better."
"The initial setup was not easy."
"The operational deployment is not great and can be improved."
"The solution is pretty technical. The initial setup is complex."
"The solution’s GUI looks very old."
"I have had a lot of issues in the past few months with the agents, which was disappointing."
"The stability of the solution to be very good. It is not the best and could improve but it is better than other solutions, such as Forcepoint."
"The solution lacks a good reporting feature."
"The solution could improve the features for Zero Trust Network Access. They should add more security components to that module."
"The solution needs to improve its on-premise detection technique."
"Since they have the Netskope client, adding some functionality in the endpoint would be good."
"Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway needs to integrate IoT, which can help to control devices."
"Netskope can only provide the high level related to threats."
"There is room for improvement in streamlining policies. So what happens is that when you apply a specific Netskope policy, you never know the kind of content it will automatically block, or it will allow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"The product is very expensive."
"The tool is a little bit expensive."
"Recently, they have simplified the licensing"
"The license model is based on the number of users. You have the possibility to have 10,000 users if you wish."
"The solution's overall cost is cheaper than regular web security solutions."
"The product is cheap."
"The price is average. Because the license is user-based, you can increase it as per the user quantity."
"We pay a licensing fee of $10,000 on a yearly basis."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Secure Web Gateways (SWG) solutions are best for your needs.
914,938 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
I think iboss could be improved by making reporting and dashboard customization more flexible, and simplifying troubl...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
I use iboss as a cloud-based secure web gateway to provide secure internet access, web filtering, and protect remote ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
My experience with iboss's pricing structure, setup cost, and licensing model has been positive, straightforward, and...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
F5 products are more expensive than other solutions but are valued for their quality and reliability, akin to purchas...
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is not user-friendly and operates slowly. Additional features for architecture ...
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
I am using F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) along with Bot Management, API Gateway, API Security, and F5 Cloud. ...
Which lesser known firewall product has the best chance at unseating the market leaders?
Netscope, Zscaler if they continue route they are on now. FIrewalls needs great deal of automation on each end, datac...
Which lesser known firewall product has the best chance at unseating the market leaders?
Those firewalls that allow extend the perimeter. Nowadays, there is a issue with the static perimeter and all is goin...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
F5 Access Policy Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by global enterprises and government agencies.
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Arrow, Cloudrise, Sainsbury, Evalueserve, Stroock, Apria, Ather Energy, CSA, AVX Corporation Nuna, City of San Diego Case, Genomic Health Case Study, Oak Hill Advisors, MaRS Discovery District.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs. Netskope Next Gen Secure Web Gateway and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,938 professionals have used our research since 2012.