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F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs Link11 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 18, 2026

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 Distributed Cloud Services
Ranking in CDN
6th
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
16th
Ranking in API Security
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Link11
Ranking in CDN
19th
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
35th
Ranking in API Security
23rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (23rd), Bot Management (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 2.4%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Link11 is 1.9%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 Distributed Cloud Services2.4%
Link111.9%
Other95.7%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

Mohan Janarthanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions
Centralized security has protected APIs and optimized multi‑cloud traffic management
F5 Distributed Cloud Services has been used for two years for DDoS protection, and there is a particular feature called API protection. Within API protection, there is malicious user mitigation, which is one particular technology that has been implemented. This is a kind of advanced bot attack prevention. Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting. If some users are having anomaly detection or someone is trying to do a bot attack, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge for that particular user alone and not for all users. For example, if someone is trying to act as a rogue, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge in the backend system on that particular system, so they cannot try again and again at the same time. It is for a concurrent session, and it will give the CAPTCHA challenge. This MUG, malicious user mitigation, prevents bot attacks. F5 Distributed Cloud Services includes the real-time intelligence feature, which helps with threat response strategies from a threat intelligence perspective. For example, if there are geo-restrictions or geo-based restrictions, sometimes people may come in through proxy-based servers, and it will prevent that. The load balancing feature optimizes application performance. Observability is the basic piece where F5 got introduced. This observability piece provides end-to-end visibility on the application performance. It gives complete end-to-end visibility across network latency and application performance issues. Sometimes when it is getting more than 200 pages, it throws errors such as 300, 400, or whatever has been configured, including 500 errors. F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve traffic management efficiency. Most applications are hosted in the Check Point and F5 firewall, F5 web application firewall, where applications and traffic management can be accessed in a single dashboard. Automated threat detection is a basic feature of F5 Distributed Cloud Services meant for that purpose. There are two scenarios with automated threat detection, which is provided by F5. It is a completely machine learning solution that came from the bot defense, and it automatically protects against sophisticated attacks.
PF
Chief Architect (Consultant) at Personal Consultant
Exceptional resilience and protection well-suited for medium to large businesses
The initial setup process is quite straightforward. Its complexity largely depends on the intricacies of your platform. If your platform spans multiple sites across the globe, requiring configuration of multiple instances and traffic routing, it can become more intricate. From our experience, even in companies with extensive platforms, the configuration process remains relatively simple. Once the instances are spun up and the initial configurations are in place, you can use their console application to set up your site or sites for traffic management. This involves configuring the sites and uploading SSL certificates. Even for those not well-versed in the intricacies of networking layers and rules, the out-of-the-box configurations already provide solid protection.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support from F5 is good compared to Cisco and HP."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well."
"I appreciate the UI of F5 Distributed Cloud Services and the backend cost, alongside the actual value proposition that they provide with the load balancer, which is excellent."
"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."
"Elastic environments are the most valuable features because I can pull these apps and migrate the on-premises environment to the Distributed Cloud environment, and this capability is very strong and the security regarding the apps is really very powerful."
"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."
"F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments."
"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."
"The main feature is using the rules and being able to see the traffic. It helps us find malicious traffic."
"I very much like the elastic search and reports, allowing us to have a 360-degree view of the customer's activities and enabling us to track down any suspicious bots."
"Reblaze knows how to manage security. For me as, someone who knows little about security, it's good that I have a firm that optimizes everything according to their standards. It's their responsibility and they are fully hands-on."
"Reblaze has saved us money by optimizing server usage and blocking malicious bots."
"It saved us a lot of time and money and we were able to use fewer resources on our side, saving about $15,000 to $20,000 a year in computing resources because we had the reverse proxy and the caching mechanism and used the platform as a CDN as well."
"Reblaze provides us with a solution we can count on."
"Provides mobile app security."
"Reblaze has definitely saved us money; we have estimated that it saves up to €500,000 a year."
 

Cons

"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."
"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."
"For small players, it is completely not worth it."
"The worst experience is that with so many solutions available, it is very complicated to know all of the solution modules, and the offers from F5 Distributed Cloud Services are vast."
"One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced."
"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."
"Perhaps the automatic reporting could be better. I would like to have seen more automated reports."
"I would like to have seen more automated reports. Maybe it has been improved in the last year and I'm just not aware of it. But from a managerial point of view, you want a summary report, a weekly report: How many attacks were blocked? How much bandwidth was saved due to the caching mechanism? What were the top-ten attacks that were tested on the network, etc? I could most likely have found all that data if I logged in to the system and ran different reports. It would be very helpful to get a management report on a weekly basis."
"There is room for improvement in helping us understanding session management... We want Reblaze to catch and identify everything. We want to see the various devices doing one activity and to see, in a timeline, what's happened. We would like to see a more human-readable display to understand what's happening in the web app."
"We have multiple products behind different instances of Reblaze. We have one instance for staging and then we have a production instance for multiple products. One of the things that we have requested is a unified view panel, so that we can see each of the instances in a unified view. That way, we won't have to go bouncing from instance to instance."
"There is room for improvement in helping us understand session management."
"Up to now the only cons I could find is sometimes getting change management back on track, because it's a company that evolves, and sometimes I don't have the same needs that they have. But besides that, up until now, I am really pleased with their service and I've also recommended them to some of my clients."
"The WAF features are not as granular as we would expect from a WAF system. There should be more granularity and in-depth rules, out-of-the-box."
"Some of the settings on the dashboard are confusing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"There is still some room for improvement when it comes to bot management from Reblaze because they are relatively new compared to other vendors in the town."
"I believe that for the six instances we have right now, it's costing us $16,000 per month."
"We found the cost to be a bit on the higher side, starting at approximately three to four thousand dollars for a small configuration."
"On a monthly basis we pay $750."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
F5 Distributed Cloud Services is affordable. I think it is very affordable. I do not think it is expensive.
What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
One area where F5 Distributed Cloud Services can be improved is in API security, which can be enhanced.Specifically, the confidence level on API security that F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides...
What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?
My main use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services is WAF protection.I am using F5 Distributed Cloud Services primarily for securing my infrastructure with layer 7 protection, which F5 provides. Th...
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Also Known As

No data available
Reblaze
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
CBC, Hermes, Gartner
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs. Link11 and other solutions. Updated: July 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.