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F5 Silverline Managed Services vs FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.6
F5 Silverline Managed Services offers effective cybersecurity solutions, with variable ROI perceptions and appreciation for time and cost savings.
Sentiment score
7.3
FortiWeb enhances security, cuts costs, saves resources, offering a 70% ROI and improving financial and operational efficiency.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
F5 Silverline's customer support is responsive but varies; users praise personalization but note challenges with escalations and response times.
Sentiment score
6.7
FortiWeb's customer service is inconsistent, with varied experiences in responsiveness, regional support, and subscription cost concerns.
Their support team is responsive, and they deliver timely updates, addressing any glitches promptly.
They resolve the issues by joining me to fix them.
The back-end development team is available, and if any issue arises, they will help us immediately by providing solutions when contacted.
Their support is truly exceptional when I compare it with similar large-sized companies.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
F5 Silverline offers scalable managed services, efficiently handling enterprise demands with flexible expansion and seamless capacity management.
Sentiment score
7.2
FortiWeb WAF is scalable, supporting diverse users, with high ratings but some licensing flexibility challenges noted.
F5 Silverline Managed Services is scalable enough without observed limitations.
The solution is fully scalable, and I would give it a rating of ten on a scale of one to ten for scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
F5 Silverline delivers stable performance with strong monitoring, minimal downtime, effective support, and high stability ratings despite occasional issues.
Sentiment score
8.1
FortiWeb is seen as stable, routinely scoring high, but users suggest using FortiAnalyzer for enhanced security management.
They offer regular updates, and overall, I would rate the stability of the solution as nine out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

F5 Silverline needs improved pricing, integration, user interfaces, automation, API, and enhanced features like AI and bot detection.
FortiWeb WAF requires improvements in integrations, performance, support, scalability, and more enterprise features to compete with competitors.
Introducing preemptive support prompts would reduce the manual effort required for creating policies or blocking specific IPs.
Improvements could include the creation of highly optimized profiles.
If inbuilt larger logging capability is added, it would enhance usability, and features like clickable options to unblock or create exceptions would greatly assist customers in managing their websites.
If some of my customers want to migrate from F5 to Fortinet Firewall, or the Fortinet WAF solution, there are some migration issues.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users view F5 Silverline pricing as competitive but costly, with room for negotiation and flexible licensing options.
FortiWeb Web Application Firewall offers flexible pricing, core and advanced features, and scalable licensing for cost-efficient protection.
On a scale where ten is very expensive, I would rate the pricing as three.
The solution is expensive
When going for multiple websites, the price also reduces.
 

Valuable Features

F5 Silverline Managed Services provides easy setup, robust security features, excellent scalability, and effective DDoS protection with comprehensive reporting.
FortiWeb Web Application Firewall provides user-friendly setup, protection against attacks, scalability, and cost-effective security features like machine learning.
The monitoring tab displays GET and POST requests in a readable format, making it accessible even to non-tech-savvy individuals.
It allows for centralized management of certificates, protecting applications from top ten attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
Fortinet's pricing is way more competitive than Cisco or Palo Alto.
If any user tries to input any text format in a web form mistakenly using SQL queries, the web solution detects the input, checking whether it's impacting or analyzing queries in the database.
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 Silverline Managed Services
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
22nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (13th)
FortiWeb Web Application Fi...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
15th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of F5 Silverline Managed Services is 1.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) is 1.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

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.
Martin Ellmann - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides users with ease of policy configuration and good integration capabilities
The solution helps protect our company's web applications against common threats up to 99 percent. We feel very safe with the tool. Speaking about how the tool has effectively mitigated web security threats for an application, I would say that it is an application behind the web portal, so there are about a hundred or thousand people who can access a website. If it is a sensitive application, and we have to watch every access to it to make it really safe, that is the reason why we need WAF on the application. My company doesn't use AI with the tool. I recommend the product to others. I would say that others need to have it if they have a shopping website or something similar. I know it is hard to sell because we find it quite hard whenever my company tries to do so. The solution offers 100 percent integration with other Fortinet security products. The ease of policy configuration in the tool is okay. I rate the tool a nine to ten out of ten.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

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...
What do you like most about FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtration, web filter, application filter, and IPS.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
The pricing for FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) is reasonable. That said, it depends on how many websites we need to protect. The licensing is based on the number of websites or individuall...
What needs improvement with FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
Their AI technology is good. Overall, Fortinet is only good. The improvement needed is in their response time. In the past three to four years, whenever we called for support, they responded quickl...
 

Also Known As

F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, F5 Silverline DDoS Protection
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.