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Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud vs Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 ...
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Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
41st
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
CDN (33rd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (37th), API Security (33rd), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (15th)
Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
18th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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.
reviewer2812593 - PeerSpot reviewer
CIO at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Advanced threat protection has reduced financial risk and improves application security visibility
The issue I have with Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is that the real-time analysis is not robust; I am unable to see all the logs of everything that happened, including what is passive. It only logs when there are suspicious activities, which means if something is not considered suspicious by Fortinet, I will not see the full picture. That is a disadvantage because it will not log unless it identifies an IOC or attacks, meaning I cannot see traffic information in a way that helps build more intelligence. The biggest issue I have with Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is that the logging is not as extensive as I would prefer. For instance, if there was an issue two days ago and Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud did not mark it as a concern, I will not see any information about that, making it challenging to explain to customers if their request did not reach us. It hampers visibility from an API perspective. They need to enhance monitoring and logging to be more extensive and capture even passive activities. The AI integration in Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is still new. The generative models are good, but there is much work left to improve. It is not as intelligent as it could be; thus, enhancements around the AI co-assistant would be beneficial. Additionally, logging and monitoring need improvement as I can capture traffic and investigate offline on my Fortinet firewall, including full traffic view, but Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud currently focuses only on security concerns, which does not give the complete picture.
NiteshSharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Pre Sales Architect at network techlab
Comprehensive web protection has secured public apps and supports advanced audit requirements
Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service has multiple valuable aspects. The WAF solution secures whatever public domains have been published by the public platform or internal servers exposed to public users. Firewalls have limitations, which is why I suggest using a WAF solution. The firewall provides the same features but in a limited edition. When discussing the SaaS platform or Layer 7 layer of security, you will receive multiple benefits. Firewalls have limitations with signatures, bot protection, and DOS protection. Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service is a dedicated WAF product that handles all DOS protection, bot protection, API security, endpoint connectivity, signature-based support, and top 10 OWASP support. Multiple features are available. AI and ML-based technology is available in almost every tool today. When discussing troubleshooting, there are AI models that will solve your problem and provide information. AI is helpful because it will give you proper information regarding errors and troubleshooting.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product has a valuable security control functionality."
"The initial setup process is simple."
"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"In general, it's a very good product: the solution is very stable, the performance is great, the product offers very good scalability, the pricing is very reasonable, the installation is very straightforward and quite simple, and technical support has a very fast response time and is helpful."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"This solution does a good job of preventing web application attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting attacks."
"We extensively use the solution every day. The solution is very stable; we haven’t seen any glitches."
"My favorite Fortinet device is the FortiGate next-gen firewall itself; it is a complete suite with intrusion prevention, intrusion detection, anti-malware, anti-DDoS, and SD-WAN functionalities."
"We have seen a reduction in incidents and a good return on investment from Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud, with our return on investment around 60%."
"Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service is a dedicated WAF product that handles all DOS protection, bot protection, API security, endpoint connectivity, signature-based support, and top 10 OWASP support."
"Fortinet has created a holistic product that integrates features including AI and API protection, with straightforward automation and articulate reporting that even less experienced engineers can use easily."
"I utilize Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service's AI-driven analytics, which is in the sixth generation of AI, and this is helping us protect against AI-based attacks, API-based attacks, and bot attacks."
"It is a secure tool."
"It is more efficient and very helpful to everyone regarding future updates of Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service, and I do not currently face any issues and have good experience with the product."
"It is user-friendly and easy to work with."
"The company provides technical support, and they are mostly available 24/7."
"The technical support is really good."
 

Cons

"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."
"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well."
"They need to improve their support because getting a response for basic requests took around 48 hours, which is too long."
"The learning curve was steep initially."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"The rate limiting functionality could be enhanced, as we find it somewhat limited."
"Their documentation could be better. They don't have documentation that explains everything well. They have documentation for everything you're looking for, but they lack a single piece of documentation to tie everything together. As a new user or beginner, it took us a little bit of time to figure out how to put all these things in place."
"Real-time traffic analysis has posed an issue for us because we did not see logs for legitimate traffic."
"The issue I have with Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is that the real-time analysis is not robust; I am unable to see all the logs of everything that happened, including what is passive."
"I do not have any notes on improvement."
"Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service could be improved with better logging capabilities, as many come with less spacing, necessitating a FortiSIM for enhanced functionality."
"The usability of the interface could be improved as it is not user-friendly."
"To measure the success of Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service's services and reporting capability, there is one drawback."
"The usability of the interface could be improved as it is not user-friendly."
"The only thing I encountered was related to integration, mostly concerning translation."
"The utilization of AI in Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service still needs to be upgraded and improved."
"It is expensive. Actually, it is expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not too pricey."
"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."
"The solution is expensive."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
23%
Healthcare Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
 

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service?
It is expensive. Actually, it is expensive. When discussing small organizations, I would not recommend it to them. I ...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service?
Currently, I want to add that Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service is offering only two-factor authentication. I ...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service?
When discussing Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service, I always recommend it. Either I can recommend F5. Most user...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
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Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, F5, Imperva and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.