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F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition vs Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF 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 Virtual Edition
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
30
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (5th)
Imperva Managed Rules on AW...
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Business Rules Management (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition and Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is designed for Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) and holds a mindshare of 1.7%.
Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF, on the other hand, focuses on Business Rules Management, holds 0.9% mindshare, up 0.2% since last year.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition1.7%
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)12.4%
NetScaler11.5%
Other74.4%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
Business Rules Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF0.9%
Pega Platform27.7%
FICO Blaze Advisor25.9%
Other45.5%
Business Rules Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2800392 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Cloud deployment has simplified traffic distribution and now supports flexible multi-zone DR
Regarding F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's improvement areas, the current dashboard is very useful, but I believe the registration process should be simplified in the virtual edition. Especially in the Azure environment, many features are not currently aligned and working with Azure. We need to make efforts to ensure it is well integrated with Azure. Currently, if we want to integrate route tables with the virtual F5 edition, we need to deploy scripting inside the virtual F5 instances, and then that script performs the virtual IP route table changes in the Azure environment. This feature should be auto-configured, and efforts are needed to ensure the virtual edition is very much aligned with the Azure environment. I am expecting this improvement in the next edition. The failover capability is also not as good as it should be. We have tested the failover functionality, and sometimes we have observed that failover fails. F5 does not successfully fail over to other instances perfectly, so that also needs to be improved. Security should also be enhanced, as in the past I have seen some security loopholes. Tightening of security should be included in the new software. These improvements should be present in near future editions.
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Edge protection has reduced junk traffic and now safeguards APIs with automated threat intelligence
The best feature I would say is the compliance. It satisfies enterprise audit criteria for web application profiling that is required by PCI DSS and HIPAA. Also, it aligns fully with my security compliance matrices, the OWASP Top 10 alignment, and standard core rules to defend against injection attacks, cross-site scripting, and path traversal. These are the major features. The managed rule set proves that modern security does not have to be slow or complicated. It turns threat intelligence into a utility function that I can enable with a few clicks. It has eliminated the heavy operational burden of threat research. Instead of my internal security engineers spending hours tracking new malicious IPs or writing custom regex signatures to deal with emerging exploits, Imperva automatically updates the rule set in the background.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Compared to our physical environment, with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition we have saved approximately one hundred thousand dollars, reduced our team from five people to two, and achieved an overall cost reduction of twenty-five to thirty percent, with some areas reaching forty percent."
"Since we implemented F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we have experienced better application performance and lower costs compared to hardware appliances, along with flexibility in deploying F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition across multiple hybrid clouds."
"Overall, the application stability and performance are all at par."
"The features that I like include LTM and Global Traffic Manager (GTM)."
"F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has positively impacted my organization in all three aspects: saving time, improving security posture, and complementing our appliances on our F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition."
"The tool's investment is less than a physical device."
"F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has impacted my organization positively because we use it for all our on-premises network related setups, such as load balancing for all our application traffic."
"My advice to others looking into using F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is to definitely go with the full potential of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition LTM, as it is a great product that will make your life easier and reduce costs, and they provide great support with a TAC team that is there whenever needed."
"Automatic updates are the best features Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF offers."
"The managed rule set proves that modern security does not have to be slow or complicated."
"Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF offers continuous threat intelligence updates as the best feature, as they have a rapid response to newly discovered attack techniques and base their detection logic on real-world threat data with easy integration with AWS."
"Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF has positively impacted our organization because we were able to protect our websites and rectify the open attack and abuse attack that was occurring."
"Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF has impacted my organization positively to a very good extent, as along with the default AWS WAF rules, Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF is giving more edge on layer seven security for protecting the applications at the organization, making them good-to-go rules."
"Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF has positively impacted my organization by addressing trust issues my customer had regarding security configuration for their application."
 

Cons

"I believe that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, whether virtual or hardware, needs improvement in the logging module."
"Improvements for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition could include a more straightforward process for major updates where we could pre-schedule upgrades to avoid downtime."
"F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has limited resources for SSL Orchestrator and other technologies."
"BIG-IP could improve in supporting microservices, for example, in Docker and Kubernetes environments."
"I find it too complex to assess the impact of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's automated deployment and integration with container orchestration platforms, such as Kubernetes and OpenShift, on my applications delivery speed and reliability."
"The improvement points I can suggest are that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition tends to be highly resource-intensive, as we often encounter issues with high CPU, RAM, and storage utilization, particularly with ASM and LTM modules."
"In terms of improvements for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, I encountered issues with load management when multiple modules such as AFM, APM, LTM, and GTM are handled together."
"Improvements for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition should include training for newcomers."
"Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF can usually have false positives sometimes, blocking legitimate traffic and struggling with complex search queries, particularly with large JSON requests and certain GraphQL requests, which makes us initially deploy the rules in monitoring mode before switching to blocking mode to ensure all our use cases are supported."
"For improvement, it would be better to have access to deeper configuration levels in Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF."
"Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF keeps updating its rule sets, but the company could increase the number of rules on a yearly basis and incorporate more rules aligned with artificial intelligence security."
"Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF could improve by adding more parameters. There are other add-on features that come with it, such as advanced bot protection, because the normal feature does not provide good fingerprinting for bots."
"Sometimes the rules act as a black box with Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF because you cannot see the underlying rule logic or regular expressions, which can be challenging when troubleshooting false positives on complex API payloads."
"Other issues include that the marketplace sellers do not allow me to modify individual parameters inside the vendor's compiled rule set, meaning any false positive must be handled by a custom override rule."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing a three out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"My company's customers need to make payments for the licensing charges attached to the product. It is an expensive product."
"The pricing is standard."
"F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is an expensive solution, but it's worth the price."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
35%
University
29%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise20
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
Improvements for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition could include a more straightforward process for major updates where we could pre-schedule upgrades to avoid downtime.
What advice do you have for others considering F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition did not impact anything positively, as during core network activities, backend servers stopped responding due to being legacy servers, which may create issues. F5 BIG-IP V...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
Regarding pricing, I believe it is high, but the setup cost is low and licensing is fine, though I do not have the complete analysis from our sales team. I understand that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF?
The experience was very efficient. The product uses a transparent, pay-as-you-go consumption-based pricing model that is billed through the AWS Marketplace. It eliminates heavy upfront contract cos...
What needs improvement with Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF?
For improvement, it would be better to have access to deeper configuration levels in Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF. For example, if my application is using Nginx or a certain middle-level applic...
What is your primary use case for Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF?
My main use case for Imperva Managed Rules on AWS WAF is using Layer 7 particular OWASP 10 and SP10 based security rules. I had to enable the Layer 7-based attacks by setting up bots and related co...
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about F5, HAProxy, NetScaler and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC). Updated: July 2026.
903,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.