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Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud vs HAProxy comparison

 

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

Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
26th
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
18th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
CDN (11th), API Security (17th), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (9th)
HAProxy
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
15th
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd), Bot Management (6th), Service Mesh (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is 1.4%. The mindshare of HAProxy is 1.9%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HAProxy1.9%
Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud1.4%
Other96.7%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

OE
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.
Shrinivas Devarkonda - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
Handles high traffic efficiently and simplifies complex routing with rule-based logic
I think HAProxy is good as it stands now, but I believe there could be improvements. gRPC has recently been implemented, which is great, along with TLS 1.2 and 1.3 support, and HTTP 2.0 is also available. However, I'm unsure about the benchmark of those HTTP 2.0 requests on HAProxy. If there were any other protocol with better performance than HTTP 2.0, or perhaps mTLS and other similar features, including that in HAProxy would be really great. For improvements, I think that during setup and configuration, the steps provided are neat and clear. Anyone can easily install and configure it. There are many kernel tuning parameters also available, which is great. For specific improvement, in terms of logging, I think printing the full object of the request may help, or if there's a way to reference two requests, it would be beneficial to find a complete session history from a logged-in customer, as it would help analyze customer and user analytics.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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%."
"The most valuable feature of HAProxy is that its open source."
"There are no issues when it is running; it is stable and very good."
"With each new release, I find very useful features and love each addition."
"It is stable. Period. Will not fail unless you do something wrong."
"I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good."
"I have found HAProxy very helpful in replicating production environment architecture in a development and testing environment."
"We don't have a problem with the user interface. it's good."
"​It has allowed us to evenly distribute the load across a number of servers, and check their health and automatically react to errors."
 

Cons

"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."
"While troubleshooting, we are having some difficulties."
"The only area that I can see needing improvement is the management interface, since it is pretty much all through the CLI or configuration."
"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."
"The configuration should be more friendly, perhaps with a Web interface. For example, I work with the ClusterControl product for Severalnines, and we have a Web interface to deploy the HAProxy load-balancer."
"There are three main areas to improve: 1) Make remote management more modern by adding API. 2) Propose a general HA ​solution for HAProxy (no I'm using keepalived for this). 3) Thread option should be a bit more stable."
"An alerting system would be better as I need to check log files if any backend is down."
"The basic clustering is not usable in our very specific setup. The clustering is mainly a configuration replication and is great in a case of active-passive usage. In the case of an active-active (or with more than two nodes) where the configuration is not fully identical, it cannot be used as-is."
"While the product is quite perfect, it could use more supervision and be more active. Also, more simplicity, more peripherals, and more scalability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price is well worth it. HAProxy Enterprise Edition paid for itself within months, simply due to the resiliency it brings. It was a bit more expensive than we were originally interested in paying, but we are thankful we chose to go with HAProxy."
"The tool is open-source."
"It is free of cost."
"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."
"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible​."
"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."
"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
"HAProxy is free in the initial offer. However, pricing can be improved."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud?
Real-time traffic analysis has posed an issue for us because we did not see logs for legitimate traffic. A separate license is needed for Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud to send logs to other cloud serv...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud?
Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud is used as a WAF solution.
What advice do you have for others considering Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud?
We are a customer running Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud for both our organization and one for our customer. Three users use Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud. As administrators, it is easy to maintain. Using...
Do you recommend HAProxy?
I do recommend HAProxy for more simple applications or for companies with a low budget, since HAProxy is a free, open-source product. HAProxy is also a good choice for someone looking for a stable ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HAProxy?
Since we used the open-source version, we were not concerned about pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
What needs improvement with HAProxy?
For the limited use that I have of HAProxy, I don't have any points to improve. I think I need more time with this tool, or perhaps I simply don't have areas that need to get better. I don't have a...
 

Also Known As

No data available
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiAppSec Cloud vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.