Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 17, 2025

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
Sponsored
Ranking in CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
F5 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in CDN
10th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.4
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (21st), API Security (8th)
Imperva Application Securit...
Ranking in CDN
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
133
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (20th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 21.8%, up from 22.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 1.4%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 6.2%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudflare21.8%
Imperva DDoS6.2%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services1.4%
Other70.6%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
FM
Protects web applications with comprehensive security features
All features are valuable. In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation. This is a comprehensive package for web application security. The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation.
Bhupesh-Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced network security with effective threat filtering and good bot managing features
We use Imperva DDoS protection to safeguard our network from multiple attacks. It is especially useful to protect websites or applications by redirecting traffic to eliminate threats Imperva DDoS increases our uptime to 99.99% by filtering and managing traffic to ensure only genuine traffic…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare has many features."
"It's a great product because it's scalable, has great coverage, and is mature with good defenses against DDoS attacks."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"It's very user-friendly."
"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."
"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."
"F5 is known for being the best load balancer in the market. Customers with an existing module can easily adopt additional modules without investing in new hardware."
"Gives us the ability to trace each connection, and to have logs to be able to differentiate between a positive and a false-positive intruder action."
"DDoS protection and WAF are the most valuable features. It is easy to deploy a service. It is easy and quick to deploy to a new website."
"They're quite easy to install and quite easy to set up. Clients really like that. Especially when you're dealing with the cloud, it's really easy."
"The setup of Imperva DDoS was easy."
"It works right out of the box once you integrate the application."
"The solution is very scalable. It is one of the most important features. You can also expand resources and features as well."
"There are some features that are configured by default, so even without doing much, it can still provide a level of protection."
"The dashboard is good and user-friendly."
 

Cons

"I believe they currently have this feature, but there will most likely be integration with APIs so we can control some features through API."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."
"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."
"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."
"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the perspective of implementation and customer expectations, which sometimes differ from reality."
"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF."
"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."
"I miss being able to integrate the dashboard with other BI tools we are using. We have to export and import data to be able to present it, and doing so is a lot of work."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by providing better features, such as improved prevention of zero-day attacks. Additionally, it should include a VR meta-analysis."
"They recently separated the WAF and the DAM management gateways in order for each of these to be managed from different areas, so I believe it now requires additional investments for what was previously a single complete solution."
"One potential improvement for Imperva is enhancing its alert system."
"I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators of compromise."
"It would be helpful to have a "recommended deployment", or even a list of basic features that should either be used or turned on by default."
"Pricing can be improved, as it is quite expensive."
"It would be better if we were able to manage and apply changes to multiple websites/web applications, and search WAF logs for multiple websites, via the Incapsula dashboard."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The price is reasonable."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
Information not available
"There are some licenses that you have to buy to use some features. Its price could be better. Price is always important because, at the end of the day, customers have a budget. If you can meet the budget, you can sell, and if you don't, you cannot sell."
"We have an issue with Imperva Incapsula in the Iraqi market because of the high price."
"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."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
"The solution's price is high for small companies."
"There are a couple of different licensing models."
"We are satisfied with the pricing."
"The cost is somewhere around $10,000 a site. For every site, you pay individually. For every DNS entry, you have you pay."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which CDN solutions are best for your needs.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business83
Midsize Enterprise25
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
I am not involved in sales, so I do not deal with the pricing aspect directly. I give the cost of the solution a four...
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
It's a long way to be perfect, of course, as with all solutions. The main issue is integration with other parts or pr...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
There are two main use cases for Distributed Call Services: DDoS or Distributed attacks protection and WAF web applic...
Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?
Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot mana...
What do you like most about Imperva Incapsula?
We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provi...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Information Not Available
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Imperva Application Security Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.