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F5 Silverline Managed Services vs Fortinet FortiDDoS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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 Silverline Managed Services
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (23rd)
Fortinet FortiDDoS
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of F5 Silverline Managed Services is 1.2%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiDDoS is 2.8%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Archana Heeralal - PeerSpot reviewer
A reasonably priced product with a good UI, but the navigation is difficult, and the support team takes a long time to respond
Since we use the solution’s cloud, the product has more control over the back end. The customer will not have control. It is part of the product’s feature. When we get more complex requirements or if we want to write more complex tools, the support team will have the visibility to write them because they have control. The navigation is difficult to use. The navigation should be improved. Other products are quite straightforward. If I try to implement a new application and do an onboarding, it is not very easy. We must go to one feature, inside which there will be more features. It should be simplified, and a menu should be provided.
Yazan Omar - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-use tool with great GUI
The product's initial setup phase was really easy. There is a lot of time involved in the testing phase and other processes related to the area of deployment, so it may take up to two weeks to deploy the solution. The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. One person is enough to take care of the deployment phase of the product. The person involved in the deployment phase needs to better understand topologies when dealing with Fortinet.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 is flexibility."
"F5 Silverline offers load balancing, flexibility, and reliability."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"F5 technical support is really good."
"The most valuable feature of F5 Silverline Managed Services is it becomes similar to a distributed architecture."
"Its flexibility is the most valuable because it is a managed service. The good part is that you don't need to set it up. It just needs DNS routing, which is the easiest thing. Our client had Akamai for certain websites because they were using CDN features. They had NetScaler on the internal zone, F5 AWAFs on the data centers, and no WAF at all in the cloud. One of the main activities of the project was to move all these policies into a single WAF so that we could control and use that as a choke point. That exercise itself was very easy because it was a managed service and F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall does that for you. That's the best thing about F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall. It is easy to apply policies on-premises. If you have AWAF on-premises and you want to replicate some policies on F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, other than the policies that it applies by itself, it is easy because you have a team that supports it. F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall works perfectly fine. It pretty much does everything that an Advanced WAF on-premises should do."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Packet inspection has been effective for mitigating DDoS attacks."
"This solution can protect Layer 3, Layer 4 and Layer 7 attacks of applications for us."
"The equipment works very well, and I have not encountered any issues with it."
"The product's initial setup phase was really easy."
"The solution is very user-friendly and very easy to use."
"It allows me to see all the traffic on my network."
"The solution already has security profiles and it can protect from DDoS attacks and other kinds of attacks."
"The product allows the users to adjust the thresholds."
 

Cons

"There is a lot of room for improvement with their tech support. I am not sure F5 Silverline Managed Services can be classified as having tech support."
"F5 Silverline Managed Services can improve by adding features that Palo Alto has."
"The product could be improved on the global load and the integration with the other solution like Cisco and Dell. As a representor of the operation, we prefer to have one platform which can accommodate all type of integration. We are also looking for more improvements in the security policy configuration."
"The navigation is difficult to use."
"You need to have Linux knowledge in order to use the shell."
"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."
"Improvements could include the creation of highly optimized profiles, optimization deployments, and compression profiles for better performance."
"There is room for improvement in the stability of the solution."
"I find that there have been issues in the past year with the solution hanging. It freezes often."
"The primary area for improvement is the on-premises capacity limit, currently fixed at 10 GB."
"The challenge lies within the customer environment, particularly in Brazil, where companies have stringent security requirements for implementing solutions."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"I would like to see analytics, big data."
"The web interface could be much better."
"Alerts and reporting features must be improved."
"The tool needs to focus more on the area of application traffic management, where it currently has some shortcomings."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 product’s pricing is reasonable."
"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."
"It's quite pricey."
"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"The solution is reasonably priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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 very expensive, I would rate the pricing as three. It offers cost savings and i...
Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would prefer Arbor.
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiDDoS?
The product's initial setup phase was really easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiDDoS?
Fortinet FortiDDoS offers lower costs compared to other solutions. The licensing costs are annually renewed.
 

Also Known As

F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, F5 Silverline DDoS Protection
Fortinet DDoS, FortiDDos
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. Fortinet FortiDDoS and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.