F5 Silverline Managed Services vs Symantec Web Application Firewall comparison

F5 and Broadcom are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. F5 is ranked #21 with an average rating of 9.0, while Broadcom is ranked #28 with an average rating of 9.0. Additionally, 100% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Symantec Web Application Firewall and F5 Silverline Managed Services compete in the web application security market. F5 Silverline Managed Services has the upper hand due to advanced features and user satisfaction with the investment.

Features: Symantec Web Application Firewall provides real-time threat intelligence, policy customization capabilities, and reliable protection mechanisms. F5 Silverline Managed Services offers cloud-based protection, comprehensive threat management, and strong cloud integration, giving it a feature set advantage.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Symantec Web Application Firewall offers a straightforward deployment process with helpful support options. F5 Silverline Managed Services excels in cloud-based deployment, significantly reducing implementation time and providing managed service options, along with efficient customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Symantec Web Application Firewall involves lower initial setup costs and provides reliable ROI. F5 Silverline Managed Services requires a higher upfront investment but offers considerable ROI through superior features and managed services. Users find the investment in F5 worthwhile for long-term benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall

December 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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Vatsal Mehta

Director, Co-Founder & CEO at HEDEHI Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Boosts Security Measures with Easy Deployment and Implementation

Regarding areas for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall, I think they can enhance the features they currently focus on, as there are various types of web applications, and it would be great if they could develop features to cater to all these types. For example, a feature to scan for unauthorized plugins or extensions could let us know if those extensions are authorized, unauthorized, or malicious. There's room for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall by introducing AI into their dashboard so that we can query the dashboard and fetch data insights, similar to querying ChatGPT for answers. They currently have this feature but can make improvements for better querying to get insights.

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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

"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."

"Centralized, full-featured DNS."

"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"

"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."

"The most valuable feature is its usability."

"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."

"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."

"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."

More Cloudflare pros

"The most valuable features are the configuration and configuring the process."

"The most valuable feature of F5 Silverline Managed Services is it becomes similar to a distributed architecture."

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

"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."

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

"The product’s UI is easy to understand."

"The best advantage of F5 Silverline Managed Services is that it is easy to use."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

More F5 Silverline Managed Services pros

"The best feature of Symantec Web Application Firewall is that it is very easy to use, and the deployment and implementation processes are really easy."

"The setup was straightforward."

"The solution has an up-to-date data repository to deal with external threats."

"The best feature of Symantec Web Application Firewall is that it is very easy to use, and the deployment and implementation processes are really easy."

"The interface is user-friendly."

Cons

"Latencies are always a problem."

"Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud."

"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."

"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."

"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."

"Eventually, things go sideways and require fixes when it would have been easier to prevent the issue initially."

"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."

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

More Cloudflare 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."

"The navigation is difficult to use."

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

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

"Improvements could include the creation of highly optimized profiles, optimization deployments, and compression profiles for better performance."

"Automating processes could enhance F5 Silverline Managed Services."

"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."

"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."

More F5 Silverline Managed Services cons

"I'm not convinced that it's necessary the best solution going forward in the future."

"It would be an improvement if the management dashboards were not reliant upon Java."

"There's room for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall by introducing AI into their dashboard so that we can query the dashboard and fetch data insights, similar to querying ChatGPT for answers."

"Sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."

"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."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."

"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."

"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."

"The product's pricing is cheap."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

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

"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 better, they are not very flexible. The price of the solution is based on the requirements of the enterprise."

"The product’s pricing is reasonable."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Insurance Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

No data available

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

No data available

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 needs improvement with Symantec Web Application Firewall?

Regarding areas for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall, I think they can enhance the features they curr...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Symantec Web Application Firewall?

Our use case for Symantec Web Application Firewall is primarily for security purposes as we develop web application s...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Symantec Web Application Firewall?

I would recommend Symantec Web Application Firewall to other users due to all the benefits I mentioned earlier, such ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% 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

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

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F5 Distributed Cloud Services vs F5 Silverline Managed Services

Compared 17% 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

Akamai App and API Protector vs F5 Silverline Managed Services

Compared 5% of the time

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NetScaler vs Symantec Web Application Firewall

Compared 58% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Symantec Web Application Firewall

Compared 25% of the time

WAPPLES vs Symantec Web Application Firewall

Compared 17% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

F5 Silverline Managed Services

January 2026

Download F5 Silverline Managed Services product report

Buyer's Guide

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

January 2026

Symantec Web Application Firewall report

Download Symantec Web Application Firewall product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, F5 Silverline DDoS Protection

Symantec WAF, Blue Coat Protecting Web Applications

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.

The Symantec Web Application Firewall (WAF) enables you to secure and accelerate your web applications.

Broadcom

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall

December 2025

Free Report: F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall

Find out what your peers are saying about F5 Silverline Managed Services vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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