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Fortinet FortiWeb vs SonicWall Web Application Firewall [EOL] comparison

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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

Cloudflare Web Application ...
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Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (6th)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (2nd)
SonicWall Web Application F...
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
HameedAhmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Joint Director at PAA
Security threats have been reduced through seamless deployment and strong integration with other tools
I have used Fortinet FortiWeb's integration features. We have easily integrated all of the applications with the product. Most of the applications we are using are in-house built. My technical team is looking after the best features. I have not used it extensively for maybe two and a half years. I have been involved in the installation, but I am not actually using the product. I work with it from time to time but not extensively. I would assess Fortinet FortiWeb's adaptive machine learning and artificial intelligence as having new patches installed regarding artificial intelligence, but when we bought it, I think the learning feature was there. Now they have installed artificial intelligence features through patches. We have a complete portfolio of Fortinet in our organization, including FortiMail, Fortinet FortiWeb, and FortiGate, along with multi-factor authentication. All of the products are from Fortinet. Fortinet tools integrate with each other and work in conjunction. I think Fortinet FortiWeb has helped us meet regulatory compliance because we are not a regulatory organization, but our sister organization is regulatory. We have regulatory compliance with the International Civil Aviation Authority, whose audit teams have checked our data center and these security products, and they are satisfied with us. The question about leveraging Fortinet FortiWeb's automated policy management does not pertain to my domain because I am not so technical, but I am in a management role now. My engineer is more technical than me. I would rate this product an eight point five out of ten.
Narender Reddy - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at iLenSys Technologies Pvt Ltd
A stable and durable solution that can be used for security and tunneling
We use SonicWall Web Application Firewall for security and tunneling We should get the logs from the solution, and it should communicate with the local DNS. There is some lag in the solution's technical support response time. I have been using SonicWall Web Application Firewall for one year.…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I'm highly satisfied. It's remarkably user-friendly, enabling me to quickly identify issues, and deploy solutions, and it offers the necessary features."
"The stability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall deserves a perfect 10 out of 10."
"The impact of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's integration with existing web technologies on our site's performance and security measures is quite great, actually."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"There is a huge signature repository"
"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"It protects web applications efficiently."
"This is a good product; it's reliable and scales well."
"Pricing and licensing are USP of this solution; deploying an appliance provides in-house control and flexibility."
"One of the big advantages of using Fortinet FortiWeb is all the Fortinet family solutions use the same user interface and logic, which makes it easy to use, configure, manage, and understand if you have used one of their solutions before or are wanting to implement other Fortinet solutions in the future, and additionally, all Fortinet solutions can be managed with one application called FortiManager."
"We have found something that can adapt to our environment and that we can use for a long period of time."
"In terms of functionality, it does a perfect job, however, when you have to integrate with third-party tools, that's where you might have issues."
"With the fear of cyber attack, the most important thing we can do is protect the web application, and FortiWeb helps us protect it from attacks like DDoS while maintaining our cyber security posture."
"The reporting and token system is good."
"Technical support is very good. they are quite helpful and responsive."
"I would definitely recommend it, primarily on value for money."
"SonicWall Web Application Firewall is very smooth and cool, and a very user-friendly firewall."
"Capture ATP is a good additional feature in the latest version."
"We use SonicWall Web Application Firewall for security and tunneling."
"The solution offers better data protection than competitors."
"The solution is more advanced and efficient than its competitors such as Meraki."
 

Cons

"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall should improve visibility for a customer."
"The user interface is very simple and straightforward, but users need knowledge about DNS to accomplish tasks."
"The platform's control features related to real-time authentication and response time need improvement."
"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."
"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."
"A key challenge arises when dealing with numerous integrations with HVAC systems. Depending on the specifics, there might be some configuration mismatches, which necessitate specific support."
"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."
"The product's scalability could be better."
"A better load balancer is needed when multiple servers are used for the same website."
"I see no room for improvement at the moment."
"When you compare it with the F5 solution, FortiWeb is weak in detecting the Layer 7 DDoS attacks."
"Technical support is average; it could improve."
"Sometimes, even if you follow the documentation, it doesn't work as expected."
"We use Kubernetes, so I would like to have a plugin to configure FortiWeb Cloud automatically using Kubernetes Ingress. That would reduce the complexity of setting up an Ingress object in Kubernetes. Some competing solutions help you configure Ingress and Kubernetes automatically."
"The product lacks features offered by enterprise-level firewall tools."
"The latest version needs a lot of work because it's not yet as stable as the previous versions. We're getting a lot of unknown errors popping up."
"We have a lot of unknown errors popping up in the latest version."
"We should get the logs from the solution, and it should communicate with the local DNS."
"The solution needs an access management feature with API integration so we can assign certain levels of access within groups."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"It is not too pricey."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"The solution is expensive."
"The maintenance fee for this product could be improved."
"It is fine now. We had to earlier negotiate the price."
"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."
"The solution gives us the best price to performance ratio."
"The pricing is in the middle. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten. It feels like a justified cost for the features."
"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The pricing is average; the product is neither particularly expensive nor affordable."
"The tool is really expensive."
"The pricing is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business60
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise37
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb?
The pricing for Fortinet FortiWeb varies with different models having different prices. It depends on the requirement...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?
There is room for improvement in Fortinet FortiWeb. The team was only from FortiGate itself. They are making new firm...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiWeb?
Fortinet FortiWeb is very good as a web application solution. I have been working with Fortinet FortiWeb since 2020.
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Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
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