Fortinet FortiWeb vs Symantec Web Application Firewall comparison

Fortinet FortiWeb vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall

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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 Web Application ...

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 5.4%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiWeb is 7.5%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Web Application Firewall is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiWeb	7.5%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall	5.4%
Symantec Web Application Firewall	0.6%
Other	86.5%

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Featured Reviews

Dean Barisic

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.

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HameedAhmed

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.

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Vatsal Mehta

Director, Co-Founder & CEO at HEDEHI Solutions Pvt. Ltd.

Boosts Security Measures with Easy Deployment and Implementation

Regarding areas for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall, I think they can enhance the features they currently focus on, as there are various types of web applications, and it would be great if they could develop features to cater to all these types. For example, a feature to scan for unauthorized plugins or extensions could let us know if those extensions are authorized, unauthorized, or malicious. There's room for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall by introducing AI into their dashboard so that we can query the dashboard and fetch data insights, similar to querying ChatGPT for answers. They currently have this feature but can make improvements for better querying to get insights.

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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

"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."

"Cloudflare has positively impacted my organization by making it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple clients; I can easily go in and access their accounts, make changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."

"The setup process is very simple for me."

"For us, the key feature of Cloudflare is DDoS protection and IP hiding, especially since we are a crypto company."

"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."

"It's pretty convenient and pretty easy to set up and run. And then kind of for static content, it also offers caching."

"The rate limiting features and customizations in terms of URL match and applying policies are valuable to me."

"Very glad the WAF rulesets works out of box, and requires very little tuning or maintenance."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

"The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiWeb is the reports and the AI-based features."

"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."

"I believe it is the best option on the market."

"Technical support is very good."

"The most valuable features in Fortinet FortiWeb are sandboxing and threat prevention."

"Our customers find Fortinet FortiWeb much better than other solutions."

"The reason I recommend this product is because it guarantees that your network will be safe if it is set up properly and you fully utilize most of the functions."

"Provides good vulnerability scanning, IPS, and geolocalization."

More Fortinet FortiWeb pros

"The interface is user-friendly."

"This product is doing what it should and what we are expecting from it."

"The best feature of Symantec Web Application Firewall is that it is very easy to use, and the deployment and implementation processes are really easy."

"The setup was straightforward."

"The solution has an up-to-date data repository to deal with external threats."

"The best feature of Symantec Web Application Firewall is that it is very easy to use, and the deployment and implementation processes are really easy."

"The setup was straightforward."

"It provides us with a sense of security."

Cons

"I have experienced some difficulties with Cloudflare's support as a customer based in India."

"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."

"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."

"The platform's control features related to real-time authentication and response time need improvement."

"The accuracy of the Cloudflare Web Application Firewall could be improved by reducing the number of false-negative alerts."

"The reporting could be improved if it were more granular."

"The reporting could be more granular."

"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"Fortinet's customer support needs improvement. The expertise of engineers varies across different time zones, affecting the effectiveness of the support provided, especially during our daytime."

"Describing security rules should be improved. It's tricky to define new feature tools when you want to describe an attack pattern and want to block it."

"The solution is not very scalable, to scale up would require another deployment with a new appliance and a change to the network."

"We had one stability issue when I ran it once with Wireshark; it froze."

"In terms of performance, it needs to be more robust."

"We would like the interface to be easier to use and more user-friendly. The interface needs to be enhanced."

"The Layer 7 DDoS attacks need improvement, it could be better."

"Fortinet WAF came out recently, and there is not much feedback about customer experience. For each project, customers ask about the scenarios and references of the customers who have implemented this solution, which we don't have. They need to simplify the customer experience and provide more information so that we can propose Fortinet Fortiweb as a WAF solution to customers and convince them. They need to improve their service and training. We need good training to implement and use it properly and know more about it. We still don't know much about Fortinet WAF. We didn't get any proper training sessions. Other vendors like Cisco, Palo Alto, Check Point, and Barracuda provide such sessions. Whenever we receive a request from a customer for this solution, we just give the price. We don't propose this solution because we don't know much about it. We propose whatever we are familiar with and what is supported."

More Fortinet FortiWeb cons

"On a scale from one to 10, I would give it a five. I'm not convinced that it's necessarily the best solution going forward in the future."

"It would be an improvement if the management dashboards were not reliant upon Java."

"One of our issues is that sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."

"I'm not convinced that it's necessary the best solution going forward in the future."

"There's room for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall by introducing AI into their dashboard so that we can query the dashboard and fetch data insights, similar to querying ChatGPT for answers."

"Sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."

"It would be an improvement if the management dashboards were not reliant upon Java."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"

"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."

"It is not too pricey."

"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."

"The solution is expensive."

"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."

"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

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

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

"FortiWeb Web Application Firewall's pricing is suited for small or medium organizations."

"The solution is very inexpensive when compared to F5 Advanced WAF and Avi Networks but offers the same benefits."

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

"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."

"The tool is really expensive."

"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."

More Fortinet FortiWeb pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	60
Midsize Enterprise	27
Large Enterprise	36

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

The price of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is reasonable.

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 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?

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 needs improvement with Symantec Web Application Firewall?

Regarding areas for improvement in Symantec Web Application Firewall, I think they can enhance the features they curr...

What is your primary use case for Symantec Web Application Firewall?

Our use case for Symantec Web Application Firewall is primarily for security purposes as we develop web application s...

What advice do you have for others considering Symantec Web Application Firewall?

I would recommend Symantec Web Application Firewall to other users due to all the benefits I mentioned earlier, such ...

Check Point CloudGuard WAF vs Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Comparisons

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Compared 10% of the time

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Fortinet FortiOS vs Fortinet FortiWeb

Compared 5% of the time

Barracuda Web Application Firewall vs Fortinet FortiWeb

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Fortinet FortiWeb

Download Fortinet FortiWeb product report

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Download Symantec Web Application Firewall product report

Symantec Web Application Firewall report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Symantec WAF, Blue Coat Protecting Web Applications

Overview

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's intuitive dashboard enables users to build powerful rules through easy clicks and also provides Terraform integration. Every request to the WAF is inspected against the rule engine and the threat intelligence curated from protecting over 27 Million websites. Suspicious requests can be blocked, challenged or logged as per the needs of the user while legitimate requests are routed to the destination, agnostic of whether it lives on-premise or in the cloud. Analytics and Cloudflare Logs enable visibility into actionable metrics for the user.

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

The Symantec Web Application Firewall (WAF) enables you to secure and accelerate your web applications.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG

Information Not Available

Fortinet FortiWeb vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall