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

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
52
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 15.9%, up 15.3% compared to last year.
Imperva Web Application Firewall, on the other hand, focuses on Web Application Firewall (WAF), holds 5.3% mindshare, down 5.8% since last year.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)15.9%
NetScaler14.3%
HAProxy11.3%
Other58.5%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Imperva Web Application Firewall5.3%
F5 Advanced WAF9.2%
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway7.8%
Other77.7%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Bonieber  Orofeo - PeerSpot reviewer
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) 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.
Mitesh D Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Where we are finding the AWS version helpful is when we are trying to scale up new environments. AWS Marketplace helps here a lot."
"The solution could improve the ease of use, the management could be simplified. Other solutions are easier to use."
"We always use technical support and the team helps us very well. They're able to effectively find and fix issues and they respond very quickly."
"If I were to choose one key feature in particular, perhaps it would be the iRule feature. It’s a really versatile tool."
"It has so many features. ​First of all, it has a full proxy architecture, it has multiple modules. The best feature is the WAF, the web application firewall module. It also has cashing type capabilities. It has all kinds of load-balancing algorithms based on your IT requirements."
"The F5 interface is easy to use."
"Features such as SSL offloading, various balancing methods, and the ability to work with HTTP, HTTPS, or TCP protocols are beneficial."
"I have never faced any stability issues with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)."
"The tool's profiling feature maps all the web application directories and related components on the profile directory. It has improved the security of my client's website applications."
"I am impressed with the product's scalability, availability, easy management, and security. We were able to integrate the product with Azure and Sentinel."
"The solution is cloud-based and offers us good uptime. It has combined web and API security. Therefore, with one license, you access both application security and also API security."
"The most valuable feature of Imperva, in addition to its strong knowledge base, is its effective protection for web applications."
"The valuable features of Imperva WAF include its effective security breach prevention through automatically updating rules."
"Data masking is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is a highly stable solution and is very mature."
"We can prevent attacks or issues even before they happen."
 

Cons

"There are not very many areas for improvement, but the price is high."
"LTM would be improved with the inclusion of signature-based blocking."
"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"
"F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is expensive. Pricing needs to be improved."
"Native support for containers should be added to future releases, as this is the future of load balancing."
"They need to improve the interface and some of the functionalities."
"Not everything is intuitive."
"We need best-practice information. They have something called DevCentral and a blog. But we want something from F5 itself regarding how to tackle the false-positive configurations. If you go into detail with so many configurations it will find so many false positives from the moment it is enabled that it will quickly impact your applications, and it will not work."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is a good system, but we found that the visibility of the diverse-path server, e.g. where the traffic is coming from, the different IPs, etc., needs improvement."
"One potential improvement for Imperva is enhancing its alert system."
"The solution works for particular zones but isn't always the best solution for all zones."
"It is complicated to integrate the solution's on-cloud version with other platforms."
"It would be useful if the solution used more intelligence in attack protection. For example, firewalls are to be dependent on the configuration, but if they could have some data science around it the solution would be even better. The profiling of the traffic, and making decisions surrounding that should be intelligence-based, instead of being based on the configuration of the firewall itself."
"I am looking for more data enrichment. We should have the ability to add our own custom data to the system, to the live traffic."
"There is nothing specific where the application firewall is falling short."
"The Imperva Web Application Firewall automations are good, but there is still room for improvement with them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you are planning to use security features, better to go for strong hardware and the best bundle license, which is great for web security."
"Great product for the money. But they can get really expensive, so get what meets your needs."
"We have found the pricing and licensing on AWS to be competitive."
"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."
"The solution is quite expensive if we compare it with the competition."
"If your IT budget is good, go for it."
"The price is little bit on higher side compared to the cost of NGINX."
"In my view, the cost is somewhat on the higher side. There are discounts available, but I wouldn't say it's overpriced. It's not cheap either, and the value for money is a bit higher from that perspective."
"Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."
"The price is high compared to other solutions like FortiWeb."
"Make sure you understand the way that Imperva charges. It's very affordable. However, I would like to see a package with the Virtual Patching included. You get to do patching separately."
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."
"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."
"It is a very affordable solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise84
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise19
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?
The GUI of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) could be improved. It's not something regarding how it processes or blocks, as that's perfect. However, it still feels a bit legacy regarding the GU...
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is a perfect product for load balancing and WAF, and I would recommend it far more than any other product. The load balancing capabilities of F5 BIG-IP Local T...
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.
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...
 

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

 

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
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.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.