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Fortinet FortiWeb vs NetScaler 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
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th)
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 (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (12th)
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
Kacem CHAMMALI - PeerSpot reviewer
Even if an attacker detects the IP address, they can't connect directly to the server due to FortiWeb
The xFF, or X-Forwarded-For feature, IP reputation, and protected hostname. We can block access using the IP address, so no one can connect to our web server or website using the real IP. They need to use the FQDN instead. Even if an attacker detects the IP address, they can't connect directly to the server due to FortiWeb and the option to protect the hostname. All traffic passes through FortiWeb. Machine learning capabilities in FortiWeb: I don't use machine learning all the time. In the initial phase of FortiWeb deployment, we use the learning process to detect the traffic passing through FortiGate to our website.
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

"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."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."
"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"It helps us prevent attacks on servers."
"SSL Offloading simplifies the public certificate handling and brings additional protection features."
"The valuable feature of Fortinet FortiWeb vulnerability scanner"
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"Fortinet FortiWeb has improved my organization by protecting our customer's web infrastructure environment."
"The product's initial setup phase was straightforward, and since our company didn't have any problems with it, we didn't encounter many problems with the tool."
"The GUI makes it easy to scale in terms of learning and utilization."
"The reporting and token system is good."
"I like app flows and custom flows. They integrate with multiple flows."
"Load Balancing and SSL offloading are key features."
"It allows students to access required software for their studies."
"Available on any device and can be accessed on a wide area network."
"The solution can be configured very granularly and has good control over security."
"The solution is very stable."
"Its customer support service is good."
"I would say the rewriting and redirection functions are must-have's for us."
 

Cons

"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"Technical support is not well developed. While there are good engineers, Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model."
"Integration involving API with other products could be more user-friendly."
"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."
"There are some issues with the CDN services."
"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."
"HA Architecture needs improvement. I would improve it by working on AP HA."
"FortiWeb does not exist in a cloud-based form. Its only available for deployment as a virtual appliance on AWS and Azure IaaS platforms. Because of the trend to WAF environments, it would be good to have it as a SaaS. Also, FortiWeb would be more competitive if it combined WAF and DDoS protection."
"I would like to see the Application Delivery Control (ADC) and Web Application Firewall (WAF) combined in one device."
"Sometimes, even if you follow the documentation, it doesn't work as expected."
"Maybe the load balancing options could be enhanced."
"In terms of performance, it needs to be more robust."
"The product's scalability could be better."
"The false positives are annoying.​"
"The interface needs to be improved because the competition is coming up with ones that are more eye-catching, straightforward, and sophisticated."
"Development team's response time could be better."
"Getting to use some of the advanced tools, even with the assistance of Citrix support, can be challenging."
"They can improve the scalability and the multi-tenancy feature. We recently tried to configure an authentication, and we ran into some issues while using the web-based GUI. It was very slow when you log in with your credentials in the web-based GUI. Each time we clicked on the menu, it tried to do the authentication. It works properly in the console."
"Their upgrades are not very backward compatible, and sometimes they mess up."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the user interface because sometimes it can be complicated."
"There are some drawbacks, such as using EUG for specific configurations. It could be improved."
"I would like to see multifactor authentication added to this solution to improve the security."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"It should be somewhere about 36,000 Euros. That's the cost for three years. It's moderately priced."
"The pricing is average; the product is neither particularly expensive nor affordable."
"Keep a loose margin between your actual bandwidth and the product sizing when using hardware appliances. Only virtual machines are upgradable to larger sizes."
"The price of Fortinet FortiWeb is expensive in our Ethiopian currency."
"The cost isn't expensive."
"The solution is a bit expensive when compared to other products."
"It is not a cheap product. It is not like a Linux or a Genex that you can deploy. It is a hardware appliance, and it is built for a specific reason and reliability. It is an enterprise-class solution. You wouldn't find an SMB investing in something like this."
"The license to use Fortinet FortiWeb is approximately $14,000."
"Its price is comparable to others and affordable."
"The licenses for this product are payable as a yearly subscription, and carry a high price-point. The subscription scheme is quite complicated, and costs will increase with each additional feature that is required, outside of the basic setup."
"We get value for money. Its price is fair. I don't think it is overpriced."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is very high compared to its competitors."
"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten since it is expensive."
"Price-wise, I feel that the solution is a little bit expensive."
"After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
42%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about Fortinet FortiWeb?
The WAF profiles has been effective at mitigating web-based threats.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb?
Fortinet FortiWeb is cost-effective compared to solutions like F5. It offers strong performance for the price, provid...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?
The cloud-based security service of Fortinet FortiWeb could be enhanced to match the level of providers like Cloudfla...
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
 

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.
Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
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 vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.