F5 Silverline Managed Services vs Fastly comparison

F5 and Fastly are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. F5 is ranked #21 with an average rating of 9.0, while Fastly is ranked #18 with an average rating of 9.0. Additionally, 100% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Fastly users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Fastly and F5 Silverline Managed Services are competitors in cloud-based security and delivery solutions. Fastly holds an edge with competitive pricing and support, while F5 Silverline offers superior features justifying its higher cost, appealing to users seeking robust feature sets.

Features: Fastly includes real-time logging, video streaming optimization, and customizable caching. F5 Silverline provides advanced threat intelligence, comprehensive DDoS protection, and extensive load balancing capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Fastly could enhance its feature set to match security offerings of F5. Further development on intricate security features would increase competitive viability. Expanding managed service options could also be beneficial. F5 Silverline might improve integration flexibility since it follows a more hands-off approach. Expanding transparent pricing options could make it more accessible. Enhancing self-service tools would aid in reducing dependency on personalized support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fastly's integration is straightforward with its flexible API, ensuring swift deployment and responsive customer support simplifying implementation. F5 Silverline offers a managed service approach, providing a hands-off deployment process and personalized support that prioritizes user experience.

Pricing and ROI: Fastly's transparent pricing model offers effective ROI through quick content delivery. F5 Silverline, despite higher initial setup costs, delivers substantial ROI via enhanced security and reduced downtime, appealing for those prioritizing security and stability.

To learn more, read our detailed F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. Fastly Report (Updated: November 2025).

Buyer's Guide

F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. Fastly

November 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility

I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.

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Ricky Makkar

Senior Network Security Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Manages network threats and supports application control with ease

The best advantage of F5 Silverline Managed Services is that it is easy to use. The admin guide they provide is easy to understand and allows for implementation within a few days. The traffic manager and the monitoring tool are valuable as well. The monitoring tab displays GET and POST requests in a readable format, making it accessible even to non-tech-savvy individuals. It offers effective reports and monitoring capabilities.

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Patel Parth

Technical support engineer at Adobe

Optimized ecommerce performance and improved access control through image handling and IP filtering

I believe that Fastly should provide guidelines for their WAF blocking rules. It should be public what the rules are that are blocking their contents. I believe Fastly should provide regional IP addresses instead of POP IPs. Fastly should provide features similar to Cloudflare regarding a block list. Additionally, a POP address should be there with a wide range of IP addresses provided, public static IP addresses, so customers can integrate egress IPs. Fastly should provide WebP image processing on the backend instead of on the fly. It would be a very useful feature to avoid unnecessary time for browser to browser and local cookies. I believe that Fastly service has a few gaps. We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers. There should be transparency.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloudflare makes it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple users and multiple clients, and basically go in and access their account, make the changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."

"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"

"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."

"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."

"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."

"What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool."

More Cloudflare pros

"It's a good front end for public infrastructure"

"The initial setup is very straightforward."

"The stability of the solution is very good."

"The most valuable feature is flexibility."

"Most vendors fulfill the requirements for standard DDoS protection, but F5 Silverline Managed Services has a better understanding of defending web applications like HTTP and can mitigate more bot activity than any other vendor."

"The most valuable feature of F5 Silverline Managed Services is the benchmark performance."

"F5 Silverline offers load balancing, flexibility, and reliability."

"We have a lot of businesses that we put behind this solution, and it has really helped us in terms of monitoring the logs and incidents."

More F5 Silverline Managed Services pros

"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."

"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."

"Fastly provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."

"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."

"Fastly combines both the CDN side and the Signal Sciences next-generation WAF, which is closely integrated with the CDN, allowing us to use both products seamlessly."

"Support is good; the product works as advertised. We have a Slack connection with them. So we can basically ask for help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly."

"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."

"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."

More Fastly pros

Cons

"Technical support is lacking."

"The analytics, basically the dashboard, doesn't have much to it."

"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."

"Technical support is not well developed. While there are good engineers, Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model."

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."

"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."

"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."

More Cloudflare cons

"The navigation is difficult to use."

"We need to have support for cloud protection, which is not offered by this solution."

"Automating processes could enhance F5 Silverline Managed Services."

"Sometimes tech support can be slow. They take more time assigning engineers to complex issues, however, they resolve the issues by joining me to fix them."

"F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, being a new product in the market or comparatively related to a new product, currently supports less number of PoPs. They should introduce more PoPs. The current number of PoPs that they have is around 10 or 12, which is still relatively less as compared to 2,400 plus PoPs that Akamai offers. The user latency or the number of hops a user needs before reaching the actual web application is less in Akamai because it has its internal fabric to route the traffic. They need to spin up more data to increase its traffic handling capability. They can also include the bot detection capability, though it is a pretty advanced functionality. If they could include DataDome like functionality, that is, bot prediction, then F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall will be top-notch in the market."

"F5 Silverline Managed Services can improve by adding features that Palo Alto has."

"F5 Silverline Managed Services can improve by reducing the price."

"You need to have Linux knowledge in order to use the shell."

More F5 Silverline Managed Services cons

"Stronger analytics would be helpful, like showing configurations that haven't served a certain amount of traffic in a while. With many properties, things can get lost track of - duplicates or unused configurations not properly decommissioned."

"The solution's pricing could be better."

"Support is not that great."

"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."

"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."

"We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers."

"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."

"It is missing a "staging" platform to deploy a test configuration with all of the real settings, which would allow us to properly test before putting it into production."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"I give the price a five out of ten."

"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."

"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The product’s pricing is reasonable."

"F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall works based on your bandwidth. They look at the clean bandwidth and do the pricing. 20% of a total pipe would be a clean bandwidth. The list price or a non-negotiated price for F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall would be around $2,200 per application per year for everything that you need. When you get into an enterprise kind of a setup, they negotiate this to the last bit. I would easily take 20% on that, which would be the cost, but it should cover all your Advance WAF features, bot protection, tech campaign, etc. It is built as a package and gives you most of the capability. You don't get the mobile SDK, which is an additional license. Mobile SDK is required only if you're buying or if you have a mobile application, and you are going to instrument F5 or Imperva into your mobile appliance. This anyways would be an additional module. It doesn't come within the WAF, but it is a WAF feature."

"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be reduced."

"The price of F5 Silverline Managed Services could be better, they are not very flexible. The price of the solution is based on the requirements of the enterprise."

"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."

"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."

"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."

"The pricing has been very competitive."

"It is an expensive solution."

"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."

"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Insurance Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	25

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	5

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...

See all answers

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...

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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.

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 hav...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Silverline Managed Services?

The solution is quite reasonably priced, with costs being lower in comparison to competitors. On a scale where ten is...

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What needs improvement with F5 Silverline Managed Services?

Automating processes could enhance F5 Silverline Managed Services. For example, introducing preemptive support prompt...

See all answers

What do you like most about Fastly?

Support is good; the product works as advertised. We have a Slack connection with them. So we can basically ask for h...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fastly?

You need to pay a premium price for the tool.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Fastly?

I believe that Fastly should provide guidelines for their WAF blocking rules. It should be public what the rules are ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 52% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Myra Security DDoS Protection vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

Google Cloud DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

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F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs F5 Silverline Managed Services

Compared 21% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs F5 Silverline Managed Services

Compared 8% of the time

NSFOCUS Web Application Firewall vs F5 Silverline Managed Services

Compared 7% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs F5 Silverline Managed Services

Compared 6% of the time

Prolexic vs F5 Silverline Managed Services

Compared 5% of the time

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Akamai vs Fastly

Compared 22% of the time

Imperva Application Security Platform vs Fastly

Compared 6% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Fastly

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Fastly

Compared 5% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Fastly

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

November 2025

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Buyer's Guide

F5 Silverline Managed Services

November 2025

Download F5 Silverline Managed Services product report

Buyer's Guide

Fastly

November 2025

Download Fastly product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, F5 Silverline DDoS Protection

No data available

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

F5's Silverline Managed Services is a SaaS solution delivering DDoS protection, managed Web Application Firewall (WAF) services, and managed Shape Security Fraud and Anti-bot solutions.

Silverline services include 24x7 access to F5's Security Operations Center (SOC). F5's expert security professionals use F5 products with state-of-the-art security tools to ensure the best protection possible. As an add-on to Silverline DDoS or WAF services, Silverline Threat Intelligence integrates dynamic lists of threatening IP addresses to give context for policy decisions.

Fastly helps the world’s most popular digital businesses keep pace with their customer expectations by delivering fast, secure, and scalable online experiences. Businesses trust Fastly’s edge cloud platform to accelerate the pace of technical innovation, mitigate evolving threats, and scale on demand.

Fastly

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office

Twitter, Airbnb, Alaska Airlines, Pinterest, Vimeo, The Guardian, The New York Times, Ticketmaster, The Drupal Association, Opera, about.com, imgur, Etsy, Foursquare, GitHub, New Relic, shopify, Shazam, Firebase

Buyer's Guide

F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. Fastly

November 2025

Free Report: F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. Fastly

Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. Fastly and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.

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