Fastly vs Imperva Application Security Platform comparison

Fastly and Imperva are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Fastly is ranked #10 with an average rating of 9.0, while Imperva is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.4. Fastly holds a 2.7% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Imperva’s 7.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Fastly users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Imperva users who would recommend it.

Fastly

Read 9 Fastly reviews

2,044 Views
818 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Imperva Application Securit...

Read 133 Imperva Application Security Platform reviews

9,706 Views
3,106 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Fastly

Imperva Application Securit...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 21, 2025

Imperva Application Security Platform and Fastly compete in application security. Imperva is favored for its in-depth security features, whereas Fastly is preferred for speed and adaptability due to its edge cloud platform.

Features: Imperva provides advanced web application firewall, threat analytics, and threat radar, all crucial for protecting sites from various attacks. Fastly's strengths lie in its content delivery network, edge computing capabilities, and real-time traffic analysis, offering scalability and performance.

Room for Improvement: Imperva could enhance its deployment process and improve user interface intuitiveness. Fastly might benefit from expanding its security feature set and offering more robust compliance options. Documentation could also be clearer for both tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fastly simplifies deployment with its quick setup and responsive support. Imperva, while having a more detailed setup procedure, provides strong security assurances backed by dependable customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Imperva is a higher-end solution with considerable initial costs, aligning with companies seeking comprehensive security and long-term benefits. Fastly offers flexible pricing options that attract businesses focused on scalability and immediate performance gains.

To learn more, read our detailed Fastly vs. Imperva Application Security Platform Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. Imperva Application Security Platform

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

Fastly

Ranking in CDN

8th

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

18th

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

10th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Imperva Application Securit...

Ranking in CDN

4th

Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)

4th

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

133

Ranking in other categories

Bot Management (1st), API Security (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Fastly is 2.7%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 7.8%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform	7.8%
Fastly	2.7%
Other	89.5%

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

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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reviewer1247523

Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

Solution ensures website availability and proactive threat mitigation

Over the seven years, the most valuable features of Imperva DDoS that I have found are related to DDoS attacks, which are a group of attacks, and not all of them can be resolved on the endpoint level before the website. Using the web firewall before the website is a common use case to protect against malicious requests to the website. I have utilized Imperva's Intelligent Traffic Filtering feature. This feature helps me understand how the attack is progressing and what is happening inside the requests to our website. It allows me to granularly grant or deny access to certain parts of our website. This helps when we know our customers and the types of requests that can be sent from them, enabling us to block some malicious requests. Imperva DDoS has User Behavior Analytics and Threat Intelligence on its board, and this helps us to be protected proactively. Imperva DDoS connects to its database of threats, storing whole information about attacks all over the world in one simple engine. Everyone can use this feature, which can connect to this engine and get information about what is going on at the world level. That is the way to be protected at the company's level. The integration capabilities of Imperva DDoS are very easy and simple. We can run it in 2 hours.

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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 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."

"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."

"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."

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

"Its initial setup process is straightforward."

"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."

More Fastly pros

"Imperva WAF's strongest features are the detection of web application threats and vulnerabilities in the source code."

"Its unique interface for managing security performance and ease of use are the most valuable features of this solution."

"Imperva DDoS is fairly stable, and its availability is quite high."

"I have had a positive experience with Imperva Web Application Firewall's tech support so far. They are knowledgeable and respond on time."

"There are quite a few useful Imperva Incapsula features. For example, one of them is the reports. The graphics are very good and it's easy to configure. The whole process is very fast and reliable too. They have good tech support as well."

"Technical support provides good, quick responses."

"The solution's most valuable aspect is that it is easy to configure."

"The bot management features are very effective, as they help filter unwanted traffic using keywords."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pros

Cons

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

"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."

"Support is not that great."

"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."

"The solution's pricing could be better."

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

"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."

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

"Imperva Web Application Firewall could improve the console by making it easier to use."

"Pricing can be improved, as it is quite expensive."

"I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators of compromise."

"I would like the solution to improve its support response time."

"Analytics in the area of risk need to be improved to supply more information to the users for creating better environments."

"Users would benefit from better documentation. There is official documentation, but sometimes we need more detail. We have some use cases that are not so run of the mill. It would be great if there was a knowledge base that we could go to for more answers."

"I am looking for more data enrichment. We should have the ability to add our own custom data to the system, to the live traffic."

"There is nothing specific where the application firewall is falling short."

More Imperva Application Security Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

"The pricing has been very competitive."

"It is an expensive solution."

"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."

"There are some licenses that you have to buy to use some features. Its price could be better. Price is always important because, at the end of the day, customers have a budget. If you can meet the budget, you can sell, and if you don't, you cannot sell."

"Licensing can range from one to twenty thousand dollars annually. Additionally, some features, including software support, require an annual subscription as well."

"There is a license for this solution and we purchase the license annually with no additional fees."

"Imperva charges us based on bandwidth, which is better than other vendors that charge us according to data transfer."

"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."

"There is a license or subscription renewal that our customers pay."

"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."

"The license is on a yearly basis."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user68487

Security Expert with 51-200 employees

Nov 6, 2013

CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall

CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	83
Midsize Enterprise	25
Large Enterprise	61

Questions from the Community

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 help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly.

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?

See all answers

Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?

Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot management.

See all answers

What do you like most about Imperva Incapsula?

We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?

The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provided. I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap a...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 4% of the time

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Fortinet FortiWeb vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 6% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Imperva Application Security Platform

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fastly

January 2026

Download Fastly product report

Buyer's Guide

Imperva Application Security Platform

January 2026

Imperva Application Security Platform report

Download Imperva Application Security Platform product report

Also Known As

No data available

Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security

Overview

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

Imperva Application Security Platform delivers comprehensive and continuous web threat protection. Renowned for its ease of use, it shields web applications and databases from various cyber threats while integrating seamlessly with cloud and on-premises environments.

Imperva Application Security Platform protects web environments by offering advanced security measures against threats like DDoS attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting. As a robust web application firewall, it provides extensive monitoring and bot management capabilities. The platform integrates content delivery networks for enhanced performance and scalability, while real-time traffic analysis ensures consistent protection. Despite its strengths, improvements can be made in policy management and customization options. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and more competitive pricing models. The inclusion of AI for enhanced analytics is also anticipated.

What are the key features of Imperva Application Security Platform?

Correlated Attack Validation: Enhances threat assessment by linking related security events.
Threat Radar: Offers visibility into potential and ongoing threats.
Virtual Patching: Provides protection against vulnerabilities without immediate code changes.
IncapRules: Allows creation of custom security policies.
DDoS Protection: Defends against large-scale distributed denial-of-service attacks.
CDN Integration: Improves content delivery speed and reliability.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

User-Friendly Administration: Simplifies setup and ongoing management tasks.
Seamless Integration: Ensures smooth operation with existing infrastructure.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Shields digital assets from a wide range of threats.
Hands-On Support: Provides timely and effective customer service assistance.

Imperva Application Security Platform is implemented in industries needing strong database and application protection. Companies use it to enforce geolocation restrictions and manage bots, benefiting sectors like finance and e-commerce where data security and threat monitoring are critical. Its ability to protect and ensure data accessibility makes it integral to business operations prioritizing cyber resilience.

Imperva

Sample Customers

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

Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.

Buyer's Guide

Fastly vs. Imperva Application Security Platform

December 2025

Free Report: Fastly vs. Imperva Application Security Platform

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