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

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 25, 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
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (27th)
NetScaler
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st), Network Management Applications (5th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (11th)
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Lilian Blaitt - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently identifies and addresses vulnerabilities while providing robust protection
It is a secure tool. It is user-friendly and easy to work with. It is possible to easily find vulnerabilities with the WAF. I understand that the return is good since I haven't had any significant attacks. The vulnerabilities I found were easy to close. I think the return is good. It is a good tool.
DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU - PeerSpot reviewer
A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking
Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"The tool is user-friendly."
"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."
"Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."
"I rate the overall solution ten out of ten."
"The company provides technical support, and they are mostly available 24/7."
"It is user-friendly and easy to work with."
"The stability of the solution is excellent."
"Fortinet FortiWeb offers a variety of protections, including machine learning that helps protect web applications."
"The technical support is really good."
"It is a secure tool."
"My customers have told me that the performance of this solution is good."
"Enables a Web service that offers persistent client-server connections, IP restriction, URL rewrite (such as remove "/assets/" path from client-side URL path), and cache for CSS or JS files... You can easily use the GUI to set up all these requirements on the same network device within 20-30 minutes. (If you do the same steps on CLI, it might take less time.)"
"We use the solution's IP Reputation and bot protection features."
"From a security standpoint, It is a comprehensive solution in a single box."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is its load balancing."
"Its customer support service is good."
"SSL Offload"
"It has helped us to increase the resiliency of the application and the performance."
 

Cons

"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"The pricing could be improved."
"The only thing I encountered was related to integration, mostly concerning translation."
"The usability of the interface could be improved as it is not user-friendly."
"I do not have any notes on improvement."
"The usability of the interface could be improved as it is not user-friendly."
"Native integration needs to be improved. You cannot build ISE codes natively. For DevOps, integration would be very helpful because it would be a lot simpler from an operational standpoint."
"Citrix should offer a demo or free-trial version of NetScaler. Several other vendors do, but Citrix does not. Pricing should also be more readily available."
"There are some features which are missing.​"
"I feel that Citrix NetScaler's customer support needs to improve."
"Technical support could be improved."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the user interface because sometimes it can be complicated."
"The user interface could be more friendly. Some wizards and other documentation for administrators, as well as some use cases, helps us to understand the solution."
"I am not an expert in this solution, but simplicity and user-friendly interfaces are crucial for me. I would appreciate advice from Citrix, particularly in the form of an interactive guide for API protection. It would be helpful if they could provide specific points and recommendations for cybersecurity, indicating areas that need attention or improvement. I find such interactive guidance valuable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"We are using the free version."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
Information not available
"Citrix NetScaler's pricing is slightly above average but not overly expensive. I would consider F5 BIG IP to be the most expensive, Citrix NetScaler to be the second most expensive, and then Kemp Load Balancer to be the third."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight or nine out of ten."
"Its licensing cost is much higher than other products, but it is acceptable because it is a one-time investment, and we are getting our requirements fulfilled when we buy this product. So, there is no issue with the pricing."
"The solution is undoubtedly very good, but it is expensive."
"We have a yearly licencing fee, and there are no additional costs."
"For the specific use case that my customers primarily engage with, I would give the pricing a rating of seven out of ten."
"The pricing for Citrix Web App and API Protection is unreasonable. I don't know the exact price, but I heard it's tens of thousands and it's a bit too much for the small country I live in."
"Citrix ADM costs us approximately $5000 per month."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
No data available
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise57
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service?
The price is not the cheapest, but it offers great value for money. I would rate it as an eight out of ten for pricing.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service?
While we find the solution to be really good overall, some improvements could be made to the alerting system, specifi...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service?
We use Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service situated in front of our web-facing APIs. This includes everything th...
What do you like most about Citrix ADC?
The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?
After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...
What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?
Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall, NetScaler VPX - Customer Licensed
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Information Not Available
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiWeb Cloud WAF-as-a-Service vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.