Fortinet FortiWeb vs NetScaler comparison

Fortinet and NetScaler are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. Fortinet is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.4, while NetScaler is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.2. Additionally, 89% of Fortinet users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of NetScaler users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

NetScaler and Fortinet FortiWeb compete in the application delivery controller category, each with unique strengths. Based on available data, Fortinet FortiWeb appears to have an edge due to its cost-effectiveness and comprehensive security integration.

Features: NetScaler offers a flexible deployment model with TriScale architecture, SSL offload, and robust traffic reporting. These features enhance resource efficiency and are well-suited for enterprises needing comprehensive networking capabilities. Fortinet FortiWeb provides strong integration within the Fortinet ecosystem, effective threat detection, machine learning, and particularly excels in web application protection with its robust security capabilities.

Room for Improvement: NetScaler can improve its innovation in asymmetric content optimization, ease of customization, and smoothness in the upgrade process. Fortinet FortiWeb could enhance its threat intelligence, expand support for advanced web application technologies, and improve integration with third-party services and documentation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetScaler supports robust hybrid and on-premises deployment options. Fortinet FortiWeb offers deployment flexibility across hybrid, cloud, and on-premises environments. NetScaler receives mixed reviews on customer service, with room for improvement in response times and technical support understanding. Fortinet FortiWeb is generally responsive but can be slow at times.

Pricing and ROI: NetScaler is on the expensive side and has a complex licensing model, although it offers substantial functionality. Its pricing model is perceived as less competitive. Fortinet FortiWeb is considered cost-effective, especially for mid-sized enterprises, and is recognized for its good price-performance ratio. Both products deliver a positive ROI, with customers acknowledging their long-term security benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed Fortinet FortiWeb vs. NetScaler Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiWeb vs. NetScaler

April 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

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.

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Kacem CHAMMALI

IT Infrastructures Administrator at Esprit

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.

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DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."

"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."

"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."

"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."

"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."

"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 its global reach and it is always evolving."

"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."

More Cloudflare pros

"It's the extra security that is the most valuable feature. You have insight into your traffic. There are some great insights into what utilities hackers are trying to exploit. It blocks a lot of stuff from the internet."

"Fortinet FortiWeb is priced well."

"It helps us prevent attacks on servers."

"The deployment was very easy."

"FortiWeb offers machine learning in the latest product. This fixed many problems. There are no false negatives."

"Auto Learn feature: Makes policy additions or deletions for my customers very simple"

"It's easy to use and allows us to integrate solutions together."

"Built-in security templates, AV integrated, strong threat intelligence."

More Fortinet FortiWeb pros

"Content filtering, security layer, and application customization features are the most valuable."

"The program is easy to install and to set up."

"Provides resiliency for applications that reside on servers, as well as connectivity to remote applications."

"The analytics are a great feature."

"The maintenance of the solution is not complex."

"An 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."

"I can turn on features without actually owning a license. I can test them out, I can use them for a while, and then I can be licensed up. That's awesome. I don't have to have a license immediately before I can start to deploy things rapidly, rapid deployment is a plus."

"The feature that I have found most valuable is its load balancing."

More NetScaler pros

Cons

"Cloudflare's free plan is limited to 5,000 records for their free plan. They should increase that. For example, if I create a domain called abc.com and a subdomain called a.abc.com, my record count will be two. I can make a maximum of 5,000 subdomains. However, if we use our own DNS hosted on another provider, there is no limit. Their free plan also lacks name server customization."

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."

"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."

"It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal."

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."

More Cloudflare cons

"Maybe the load balancing options could be enhanced."

"In my experience, Fortinet FortiWeb could improve the intelligent features to acknowledge whether any threat or incident that's running happened. Then give us the ability to escalate it to layer 2 or layer 3 in the network operations."

"Though the reporting is a nice aspect associated with the tool, I feel that it has certain shortcomings and can be made better."

"The solution could improve by providing more integration with solutions other than the Fortinet family."

"Most of the deployment is done by our development team because they have some parameters that match the configuration. However, when we initially did the deployment we used a consultant company."

"The memory use in each of the appliances is problematic."

"F5 and some other firewalls are easier to customize. FortiWeb could be more flexible and customizable. The documentation could also be improved because many of the advanced features aren't fully documented."

"It costs too much."

More Fortinet FortiWeb cons

"Citrix ADM needs to improve on its additional features and reduce the communication ports."

"The interface needs to be improved because the competition is coming up with ones that are more eye-catching, straightforward, and sophisticated."

"ADC from Citrix has added functionalities from other products and the usability is very difficult for someone who is used to a simpler user interface, it's a little bit of a mess to use."

"The GUI should be improved."

"The only thing customers told me that could be improved is that they would like to be able to purchase and receive the products in one box, rather than two boxes. This is something related to marketing, though."

"Quality assurance could improve by ironing out security vulnerabilities before releasing upgrades."

"I feel that Citrix NetScaler's customer support needs to improve."

"Some of our customers have questioned the security of this solution lately, wondering whether it is safe or not, so enhancements in this respect would be good."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."

"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."

"The price is reasonable."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."

"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"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."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"The solution is cheaper compared with other solutions. It has a yearly license."

"Due to the situation in Iran with the sanctions, the price of this solution is very expensive."

"The solution gives us the best price to performance ratio."

"The pricing is average; the product is neither particularly expensive nor affordable."

"The pricing is pretty good. We do pass a lot of traffic through our API servers. Something like 100 gigs of web traffic is a fair amount for reduced JSON API calls, but the cost is $50. For that peace of mind, we have thousands and thousands of customers that are protected by that $50, so it's a no-brainer."

"We are on an annual license for this solution and the price is approximately €100."

"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"It keeps changing, but it's based on the size of the VM you buy and also the traffic throughput you want from it, whereas what we have on Azure is just the traffic throughput. You can also pay on a monthly basis from Azure. During each part of the project, it's okay to get Azure-based licensing or AWS-based licensing for FortiWeb, but over time, you would want to go with the perpetual license. You should go to Fortinet and buy the license from them. So, there is a two-step process there."

More Fortinet FortiWeb pricing and cost advice

"I do not have any experience with the pricing of the product."

"The license for Citrix NetScaler is on an annual basis and it is reasonably priced."

"It is true that it is a bit pricey compared to newer technologies coming to the market. For example, A10 is a load balancer that does everything that Citrix can and it does a lot more than what NetScaler does when it comes to the security space, and their prices are so cheap. Every box comes with its own license and support built into it. When you compare that with NetScaler, you have to buy licenses separately, you have to buy a support agreement that is going to be separate. A small NetScaler, even if it is a VPX which is a virtual server, could cost you close to $150,000 to $200,000 dollars. So the pricing is really high."

"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."

"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."

"We are quite happy with price. It's not too high."

"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 have been evaluating F5, Citrix, and other ADC products. Citrix is the most expense of all of them."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

42%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiWeb?

The WAF profiles has been effective at mitigating web-based threats.

See all answers

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...

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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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 50% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 3% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Cloudflare

Compared 2% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

F5 Advanced WAF vs Fortinet FortiWeb

Compared 22% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs Fortinet FortiWeb

Compared 15% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Fortinet FortiWeb

Compared 10% of the time

Azure Web Application Firewall vs Fortinet FortiWeb

Compared 5% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Fortinet FortiWeb

Compared 2% of the time

More Fortinet FortiWeb Competitors

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler

Compared 2% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

May 2025

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiWeb

May 2025

Download Fortinet FortiWeb product report

Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

April 2025

Download NetScaler product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“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. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very
well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

Cloudflare

Fortinet FortiWeb is a Web Application Firewall (WAF) that protects your web applications and APIs from attacks targeting known as well as unknown vulnerabilities. As the surface of your web applications evolves with each change of existing features and deployment of new features, your APIs are left exposed. Fortinet FortiWeb provides the board protection capabilities required to protect web applications without sacrificing performance or manageability.

Fortinet FortiWeb is an automatic, advanced multi-layer solution that provides secure protection by discerning irregular behavior and distinguishing between malicious and benign anomalies. In addition, the approach delivers powerful bot mitigation capacities which authorize harmless bots to connect while blocking malicious bot activity securely. Regardless of where an application is hosted, Fortinet FortiWeb will safeguard business applications by providing deployment options, such as virtual machines, hardware appliances, and containers that can be deployed in the data center, cloud environments, or in the cloud-native SaaS solution.

Fortinet FortiWeb Features and Benefits

APIs and web applications have become integral to the rising demand for business-critical applications. Now more than ever, businesses are in need of an automatic firewall that will provide them with security, without sacrificing performance or reliability. Fortinet FortiWeb offers a variety of features and benefits, including:

Security fabric integration: FortiWeb integrates with other Fortinet solutions to provide advanced protection from persistent threats.
Proven web application and API protection: FortiWeb safeguards applications from all DDOS attacks, malicious bot attacks, and OWASP Top-10 threats.
Advanced visual analytics: FortiWeb offers a unique visual reporting tool that other WAF solutions don’t by providing a detailed analysis of attack elements and sources.
Hardware-based acceleration: With fast and secure traffic encryption and decryption, FortiWeb provides best-in-class WAF protection.
ML-based threat detection: FortiWeb delivers multi-layer machine learning defense protection to defend against zero-day attacks and reduce false positives.
False positive mitigation tools: Reduce daily management of policies through advanced tools to guarantee only unwanted traffic is blocked.

Reviews from Real Users

Fortinet FortiWeb offers an industry-leading Web Application Firewall, and users are satisfied with it for a number of reasons, including the ability to control everything from the dashboard and the PCI-compliant reports it offers.

Carlos P., director of business and digital transformation at SERNIVEL3, notes, "You have the ability to control everything from one single dashboard."

A director at a tech service company, says, "Banks have to be compliant with PCI and other things, and FortiWeb is absolutely amazing in terms of providing these reports. Otherwise, they will have to spend a lot of time on them."

Fortinet

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

NetScaler

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

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiWeb vs. NetScaler

April 2025

Free Report: Fortinet FortiWeb vs. NetScaler

Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiWeb vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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