Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

HAProxy
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (3rd), Service Mesh (4th)
Imperva DDoS
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
CDN (6th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (18th), Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 14.1%, up from 13.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva DDoS is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
Unique Categories:
Service Mesh
10.6%
CDN
6.5%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
2.1%
 

Featured Reviews

Tomislav Horvatović - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 18, 2023
A versatile tool for load balancing and traffic management in different environments
The main use cases are for load balancing and limiting traffic. It is utilized as a front-end server for balancing HTTP traffic, as well as for balancing traffic between application servers and database servers like Redis and Elasticsearch. HAProxy is employed for both HTTP and TCP load balancing…
ST
Jun 4, 2024
Helps to automate production but needs to improve its compliance and customer support
My use case involved handling specific web applications for our operations team Imperva DDoS helps us automate production. The client had specific requirements for a cloud project in the financial sector. We faced issues regarding compliance with client procedures. The client had strict…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"HAProxy Enterprise Edition has been rock solid. We have essentially had no downtime caused by our load balancers in the last 10 months, because they’ve worked so well. Previously, our load balancers caused us multiple hours per year in downtime."
"Scalable and inexpensive."
"We were able to use HAProxy for round robin with our databases, or for a centralized TCP connection in one host."
"I am also able to make configuration changes during the day, in production, with no worries of problems and/or downtime occurring."
"I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good."
"We did not need technical support because the documentation is good."
"We use it as a load balancer for our application servers."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is that it works for my use case of application load balancing. I'm using it for PeerSense, and it's easy enough for PeerSense."
"There are quite a few useful Imperva Incapsula features. For example, one of them is the reports. The graphics are very good and it's easy to configure. The whole process is very fast and reliable too. They have good tech support as well."
"We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping."
"It is an effective threat mitigation tool."
"It's very pretty easy to onboard the URL."
"On the real time, you can see live traffic, which is flowing into our website."
"I like the user-friendly interface."
"The most valuable features for us are the DDoS and Bot."
"Its unique interface for managing security performance and ease of use are the most valuable features of this solution."
 

Cons

"The logging functionality could use improvement, as it is a little cryptic."
"The configuration should be more friendly, perhaps with a Web interface. For example, I work with the ClusterControl product for Severalnines, and we have a Web interface to deploy the HAProxy load-balancer."
"If nbproc = 2, you will have two processes of HAProxy running. However, the stats of HAProxy will not be aggregated, meaning you don't really know the collective status in a single point of view."
"HAProxy could improve by making the dashboards easier to use, and better reports and administration tickets."
"The visibility could be improved."
"HAProxy is very weak in the logging and monitoring part and requires improvement."
"The only area that I can see needing improvement is the management interface, since it is pretty much all through the CLI or configuration. A GUI/web interface could be helpful for users who are not as experienced in the Linux shell. However, HAProxy does have another product that we evaluated called ALOHA, which has a web front-end, but we found it did not meet our needs."
"I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit"
"Some maintenance must be performed by our IT team."
"It would be beneficial to include vulnerability management in the solution, similar to what they have for their on-premise solution."
"Incapsula services also provides load balancing services for their service IP address environment. So far, with monitoring their services, the IP address was only changed once."
"The salespeople tend to exaggerate its capabilities, which can cost you money if you don't verify the information."
"Users would benefit from better documentation. There is official documentation, but sometimes we need more detail. We have some use cases that are not so run of the mill. It would be great if there was a knowledge base that we could go to for more answers."
"A limited tool if you're looking to customize."
"We faced issues regarding compliance with client procedures. The client had strict compliance rules, and Imperva needed to be on a VM, while the client required containerization, causing a conflict. They went with Imperva for the on-premise version but shelved the cloud project due to too many blockers."
"Imperva always needs to adjust to new versions of cyber attacks, it needs to be faster, improve the resiliency of the software of the solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible​."
"It is free of cost."
"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."
"The price is well worth it. HAProxy Enterprise Edition paid for itself within months, simply due to the resiliency it brings. It was a bit more expensive than we were originally interested in paying, but we are thankful we chose to go with HAProxy."
"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."
"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."
"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
"The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."
"​Although the pricing can be a little high, it is worth the protection and security that it offers.​"
"Pricing could be more competitive."
"There is a license or subscription renewal that our customers pay."
"The cost is on par with other solutions such as Cloudflare and Akamai."
"It is expensive."
"It is not expensive compared to the other similar solutions in this category."
"The cost is somewhere around $10,000 a site. For every site, you pay individually. For every DNS entry, you have you pay."
"We have an issue with Imperva Incapsula in the Iraqi market because of the high price."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Do you recommend HAProxy?
I do recommend HAProxy for more simple applications or for companies with a low budget, since HAProxy is a free, open-source product. HAProxy is also a good choice for someone looking for a stable ...
What do you like most about HAProxy?
The solution is effective in managing our traffic.
What do you like most about Imperva Incapsula?
We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva Incapsula?
The solution is very affordable. It's based on the traffic utilization, the average traffic utilization, not the DDoS traffic. Therefore, if you're being DDoSed, you don't pay extra for the absorpt...
What needs improvement with Imperva Incapsula?
It’s hard to think of an improvement. The three-second service level agreement is already better than the competition. You would ordinarily say something like API protection. However, they've got t...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
Imperva Incapsula
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5, Citrix, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC). Updated: June 2024.
793,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.