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Fastly vs Symantec Web Application Firewall comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare Web Application ...
Sponsored
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fastly
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
24th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
CDN (7th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (11th)
Symantec Web Application Fi...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
31st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 3.8%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fastly is 2.2%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Web Application Firewall is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall3.8%
Fastly2.2%
Symantec Web Application Firewall0.8%
Other93.2%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
Pranay Jain - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior software engineer at Simplifyvms
Edge caching has transformed response times and delivers faster candidate data globally
Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users. A more user-friendly, UI-based configuration could simplify the experience, alongside better templates for common use cases and dashboard improvements, as the current dashboard feels complex for beginners, and pricing can be hard to predict for smaller companies. I chose 8 out of 10 because it has excellent performance and low latency delivery, making it suitable for larger applications, with strong Edge Caching and instant purging capabilities. However, VCL complexity and pricing predictability, especially for smaller companies, along with a user-friendly dashboard are areas impacting my score.
Vatsal Mehta - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There is a huge signature repository"
"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."
"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."
"I'm highly satisfied. It's remarkably user-friendly, enabling me to quickly identify issues, and deploy solutions, and it offers the necessary features."
"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."
"The solution protects our application, which runs on the HTTP protocol, from DDoS attacks."
"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."
"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"Initially, we faced load time issues, but after deploying Fastly and optimizing our queries, we achieved a response time cut to less than 1 millisecond from an initial 3 to 4 seconds."
"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."
"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."
"Fastly has positively impacted my organization by helping to obtain better solutions in less time and in a much more traceable way."
"Fastly provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."
"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."
"This product is doing what it should and what we are expecting from it."
"The solution has an up-to-date data repository to deal with external threats."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"It provides us with a sense of security."
"The setup was straightforward."
"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."
 

Cons

"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."
"Cloudflare should update the version of the ModSecurity core rule set that they run on."
"The learning curve was steep initially."
"The notification part could be improved. It's very much connected to Web Application Firewall, rate-limiting, and DDoS protection."
"The platform's control features related to real-time authentication and response time need improvement."
"Its stability could be better."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."
"We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers."
"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."
"Fastly can be improved in certain areas such as VCL, which is powerful but has a steep learning curve for normal users."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."
"Support is not that great."
"On a scale from one to 10, I would give it a five. I'm not convinced that it's necessarily the best solution going forward in the future."
"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."
"One of our issues is that sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."
"It would be an improvement if the management dashboards were not reliant upon Java."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"It is not too pricey."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"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."
"It is an expensive solution."
Information not available
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908,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise7
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fastly?
In terms of price, I find it good, and as I mentioned, the implementation cost had some difficulty at the beginning d...
What needs improvement with Fastly?
I think Fastly could improve by improving the documentation and having some code examples so that it is easier for de...
What is your primary use case for Fastly?
My primary use case for Fastly is using it as a CDN to speed up my customers' access to the applications. A specific ...
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...
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...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
No data available
Symantec WAF, Blue Coat Protecting Web Applications
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Fastly vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.