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Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.2
Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service reduces security incidents and costs, offering effective protection and noticeable returns on investment.
Sentiment score
7.2
HAProxy boosts efficiency by reducing costs and staff needs, offering speed, reliability, and enhanced scalability for traffic management.
Operational efficiency has improved; we no longer have staff consistently monitoring backend servers during deployment or scaling events, as HAProxy's health checks and hitless reloads allow us to push changes with minimal manual intervention.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
This resulted in a drastic decrease in costs and, at the same time, the accuracy of the hits coming on HAProxy was almost around 100% or 99.99%.
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
I estimate seeing a return on investment with HAProxy, as it significantly reduced staff requirements and enhanced scaling capabilities, particularly when transitioning from NGINX, which faced issues.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud support is praised for fast, knowledgeable service, with minor delays manageable and high overall satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.3
HAProxy's support is praised for responsiveness and skill, though some suggest improved documentation and communication for better efficiency.
The company provides technical support, and they are mostly available 24/7.
Pre sale engineer at Harnssen Group Limited
The proximity of Fortinet with customers ensures quick issue resolution.
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sometimes it could be faster, but generally, their support is reliable.
Principal Network Architect at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Since we are utilizing the open-source edition, community forums, mailing lists, and GitHub have been invaluable, with typically someone having encountered the same problems we faced.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
My interactions with HAProxy's customer support were limited, but the feedback from my team indicated satisfactory service.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.2
Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service is scalable, efficient in handling traffic, easy to deploy, and highly rated.
Sentiment score
7.7
HAProxy is highly scalable, adaptable for small to medium businesses, efficiently handling substantial connections and diverse user volumes.
It auto checks everything, and you need to install the certificate.
Pre Sales Architect at network techlab
In my experience, Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service's scalability is quite good, and I would rate it at eight point five out of ten.
Network and Security Engineer (Contractor) at Clymora Technology Limited
We are purchasing Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service from the distributor side, who have provided support and a price discount.
Owner at IT CARE
We manage an automatic load balancing feature where we add HAProxy servers dynamically behind the application load balancer to handle more traffic.
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
HAProxy's scalability is excellent; as our traffic expands, it handles load increases effortlessly.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
For scalability, HAProxy meets my needs, supporting our initial horizontal scaling and then adapting to vertical scaling in a VMware environment.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Users highly praise Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service for its stable and reliable performance, rating it highly.
Sentiment score
8.1
HAProxy offers high stability and reliable performance, enhancing system uptime with minimal downtime and frequent functionality updates.
The stability of the solution is excellent.
Principal Network Architect at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
This reliability serves as a key reason for our choice, providing us with confidence even when faced with heavy traffic.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The hot reload feature of HAProxy also really helped us so that we never had to shut it down to reload it.
CEo at CloudPositive
We have reduced a lot of servers, replacing them with one or two HAProxy servers which deliver better performance, accuracy, and an almost 100% success rate with requests.
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
 

Room For Improvement

Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service needs improved features, security measures, AI, pricing, integration, and reporting enhancements.
Users recommend improved HAProxy documentation, management tools, dynamic configuration, cloud integration, APIs, and enhanced load-balancing and clustering capabilities.
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.
Network and Security Engineer (Contractor) at Clymora Technology Limited
The utilization of AI in Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service still needs to be upgraded and improved.
Assistant Technical Director at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
I want them to provide SAML authentication.
Pre Sales Architect at network techlab
The configuration syntax is powerful yet can become overwhelming for newcomers; a more beginner-friendly interface or a native GUI without relying on third-party tools would ease the onboarding process.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
An easier desktop interface to connect to a remote server and make changes on my PC would be beneficial.
DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The reloading functionality is effective as it allows soft reloads without interrupting traffic patterns.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud offers cost-effective WAF services with flexible payments, appealing to large enterprises despite not being the cheapest.
Enterprise buyers find HAProxy cost-effective, with free open-source options and a pricier Enterprise Edition offering enhanced features.
It is twice cheaper.
Pre sale engineer at Harnssen Group Limited
I just recommend Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service because it is very expensive.
Pre Sales Architect at network techlab
The price is not the cheapest, but it offers great value for money.
Principal Network Architect at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Since we use the open-source edition, there are no licensing fees, with the main cost being the infrastructure running on EC2 instances in AWS, which helps maintain low expenses.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Setting up HAProxy didn't cost anything for me.
DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The pricing remains competitive compared to other vendors.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service offers AI-driven security, easy integration, and adaptability with robust threat protection and reporting.
HAProxy offers high performance load balancing with customization, scalability, and support for diverse environments, enhancing user experience and flexibility.
It is possible to easily find vulnerabilities with the WAF.
IT Specialist at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
It effectively mitigates web attacks, provides virtual protections, and handles large traffic with minimal processing effort.
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Its usability is a key aspect as it is very easy to use and deploy in front of new APIs.
Principal Network Architect at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
By moving all SSL termination to the load balancer, I now manage certificates in a single place, and I can also utilize Let's Encrypt with HAProxy's built-in ACME support, making renewal automatic.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
HAProxy positively impacted our organization by exceeding scalability expectations, initially projected at 200k requests but ultimately handling over 15 million transactions per second without any issues.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
As a production engineer at that time, I definitely wanted to ensure that the system could handle massive connections, especially since we operated an e-commerce platform where we could not lose any customer calls.
CEo at CloudPositive
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
21st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HAProxy
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (6th), Bot Management (6th), Service Mesh (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. 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 FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service0.8%
Other97.3%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
10%
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
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

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 always choose the enterprise because it is expensive. I just recommend Fortinet ...
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 want them to provide SAML authentication. If it gets SAML authentication or some...
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 users require security via SSL, so I recommend Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Serv...
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 FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.