F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Imperva Web Application Firewall comparison

The compared F5 and Imperva solutions aren't in the same category. F5 is ranked #2 in ADC , with an average rating of 8.9, and holds a 15.3% mindshare in the category. Imperva is ranked #7 in WAF , with an average rating of 8.8, and holds a 5.6% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Imperva users who would recommend it.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Read 122 F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) reviews

7,891 Views
5,760 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Imperva Web Application Fir...

Read 52 Imperva Web Application Firewall reviews

4,782 Views
4,495 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Imperva Web Application Fir...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and Imperva Web Application Firewall based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall Report (Updated: September 2020).

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

September 2020

Download the complete report

Helped 861,390 peers since 2012

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

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

122

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd)

Imperva Web Application Fir...

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF) (7th)

Mindshare comparison

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and Imperva Web Application Firewall aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is designed for Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) and holds a mindshare of 15.3%, up 15.4% compared to last year.
Imperva Web Application Firewall, on the other hand, focuses on Web Application Firewall (WAF), holds 5.6% mindshare, down 6.6% since last year.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Bonieber Orofeo

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

Identifying compromised traffic and securing data has been a significant advantage

One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) ( /products/f5-big-ip-local-traffic-manager-ltm-reviews ) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication. Additionally, the security aspect of it provides a significant advantage as it helps us secure our data, which is a major investment and benefit for us. Before using this system, we had difficulties in storing our data and managing the traffic that comes in and out.

Read full review

Mitesh D Patel

Senior Technical Consultant- Cyber Security at Ivalue Infosolution

Effectively defends against threats like cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and others

It does bring value. For example, consider a BFSI customer. Their application is critical and represents their brand. Without a WAF, an attack could take their application down, harming their reputation. It leads to hampering the customer's workflow. With an Imperva WAF, they protect against attacks like DDoS or SQL injection, ensuring their application remains available and customers are happy. That's the main benefit for both the customer and the organization. The impact depends on the customer's use case. If their business primarily operates online, a CDN is beneficial for traffic optimization. Moreover, the integration options depend on the specific use case of our customers. Generally, integration capabilities are good with SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) parts.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is robust and reliable."

"The solution's stability is pretty good."

"Bandwidth optimization and capacity awareness of the bandwidth are valuable features. Its video streaming capabilities are also very useful."

"The feature I find the most valuable is the support infrastructure."

"It is an easy way to build application policies (graphical)."

"I have Big-IP change and control manager, which give me the roll back option. Therefore, I can view the last things which happened on the device."

"There were a lot of good features. The most beneficial for maintaining server health included the algorithms for the virtual IP, which segment traffic between servers, authentication profiles, and many other things."

"It offers features Kemp doesn't provide. For example, there are predefined templates for handling Office 365. You can download them for automatic configuration."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pros

"There are a number of features that are valuable such as the account takeover and various antivirus features."

"The most valuable features of Imperva Web Application Firewall are the monitoring of databases and the dashboards are easy to understand."

"Imperva is a Gartner leader, so its scalability, performance, and features are excellent."

"It works right out of the box once you integrate the application."

"Very scalable and very stable firewall for web applications, with a good interface in its cloud version. Mitigation is its most valuable feature. The technical support for this product is also good."

"The most important feature I have found to be the ease in how to do the backup and restores."

"We can prevent attacks or issues even before they happen."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is a highly stable solution and is very mature."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pros

Cons

"We would like to have integration into encryption and PKI integration with SafeNet. That is probably the key component in using External PKIs, letting people bring their PKIs with them."

"In the LTM solution, it would be beneficial to have more algorithms for traffic segmentation or the ability to create user-defined algorithms rather than being restricted to predefined ones."

"The pricing could always be better. It's a bit expensive."

"If we decide to migrate to the cloud, I don't think that BIG-IP is a good solution and we probably won't use it."

"The pricing of the product is a bit too high."

"Currently, the product offers everything we need. I can't recall any features that may be lacking."

"F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is sometimes a bit cumbersome to deal with some builds, although that's gotten significantly better over the years."

"Logging is a bit of a problem. Logging and monitoring are only in plain text. You have to search and you have to know what you are searching for to find anything. So of course, monitoring and getting alerts for abnormal situations is hard. There are no tools for monitoring and alerts"

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) cons

"There could be some limitations that from the converged infrastructure perspective: when you want to converge with everything and you want Imperva to get there easily because it's not a cloud component. For example, when you want to build servers and you're using OneView to manage your software-defined networks, implementing Imperva right away is not that simple. But if you're doing just a simple cloud infrastructure with servers in there, you're good to go. Also, we are not able, with Imperva, to block by signatures. Imperva by itself needs to be complemented with another service to do URL filtering."

"The user interface could be better."

"Sometimes, support tickets don't get addressed quickly."

"I don't really use it and therefore can't speak to areas of improvement."

"There is nothing specific where the application firewall is falling short."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by adding more features to the dashboard. increasing the visibility of the real-time events, besides configuring the administration itself."

"Support is one thing I wish Imperva could improve."

"The UI interface needs improvement."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"LTM is a good product, but it's expensive. They should make it more competitive because cloud providers offer free load balancing. Cloud providers can't cover all the security aspects of F5, but you get a decent amount of security. Cloud environments are becoming the norm across the IT industry. Many of the larger companies that previously used on-prem infrastructure are switching to the cloud, so companies like Fortinet and Palo Alto are reducing their prices. Otherwise, they can't compete in the cloud."

"Compared to using open-source products, the prices are not cheap."

"The price is little bit on higher side compared to the cost of NGINX."

"BIG-IP LTM is considered a premium product, so it's quite expensive and isn't affordable for all customers."

"It is a bit expensive product. Kemp Loadmaster is much cheaper than F5. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It can be for one year or three years."

"It is sort of a commodity product. A load balancer is a load balancer. What will be, at the end of the day, the cheapest option or have the best performance, that is what it will come down to."

"You can buy it on a yearly basis, or you can go for a subscription. For on-premise boxes, it is just the RMA."

"The solution is quite expensive if we compare it with the competition."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pricing and cost advice

"Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well."

"It is a very affordable solution."

"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."

"The price of this solution is a little bit high compared to competitors."

"Imperva’s pricing is a bit higher in the market since it offers a full-blown WAF."

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."

"The solution's pricing is an issue."

"The tool is expensive."

More Imperva Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Insurance Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?

The price needs improvement as it is quite costly.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?

We're using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) ( /products/f5-big-ip-local-traffic-manager-ltm-reviews ) for our applications and for managing our incoming and outgoing traffic.

See all answers

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)?

The solution is robust and reliable.

See all answers

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

My recommendation is Imperva.

See all answers

Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?

For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc.

See all answers

DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DDoS Protection Service and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?

You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot of DDoS attacks that were well managed (even not seen by the customer) by Imperv...

See all answers

Comparisons

Fortinet FortiADC vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 8% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 8% of the time

NetScaler vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 8% of the time

HAProxy vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 7% of the time

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 15% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 9% of the time

AWS WAF vs Imperva Web Application Firewall

Compared 7% of the time

More Imperva Web Application Firewall Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

July 2025

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

Download F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) product report

Buyer's Guide

Imperva Web Application Firewall

June 2025

Download Imperva Web Application Firewall product report

Also Known As

F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP

No data available

Overview

F5 BIG-IP LTM optimizes the speed and reliability of your apps via both network and application layers. Using real-time protocol and traffic management decisions based on app and server and connection management conditions, and TCP and content offloading, BIG-IP LTM dramatically improves application and infrastructure responsiveness. BIG-IP LTM's architecture includes protocol awareness to control traffic for the most important applications. BIG-IP LTM tracks the dynamic performance levels of servers and delivers SSL performance and visibility for inbound and outbound traffic, to protect the user experience by encrypting everything from the client to the server.

BIG-IP LTM provides enterprise-class Application Delivery Controller (ADC). You get granular layer 7 control, SSL offloading and acceleration capabilities, and advanced scaling technologies that deliver performance and reliability on-demand. The highly optimized TCP/IP stack combines TCP/IP techniques and improvements in the latest RFCs with extensions to minimize the effect of congestion and packet loss and recovery. Independent testing tools and customer experiences show LTM's TCP stack delivers up to a 2x performance gain for users and a 4x increase in bandwidth efficiency.

Imperva Web Application Firewall is a versatile solution that protects web applications and databases from various attacks, including DDoS, cross-site scripting, and SQL injection attacks. It offers data security, availability, and access control and can be deployed on-premises or on the cloud.

The solution has good security against web attacks and offers advanced bot protection, API security, and mitigation features. Imperva WAF is easy to configure and deploy; it has good customer service and an excellent user interface.

Imperva

Sample Customers

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.

BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

September 2020

Free Report: F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall

Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: September 2020.

DOWNLOAD NOW

861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall report.

We monitor all Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.