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Imperva DDoS vs NGINX App Protect comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.3
Imperva DDoS ROI is complex, influenced by compliance, mitigation, cost savings, and service availability, enhancing financial efficiencies.
Sentiment score
6.9
Organizations saw positive ROI with NGINX App Protect during COVID-19, improving security and integration, anticipating future benefits.
They know how much money they are losing while the system is down, so by increasing the possibility of not having a down website or web application, return on investment can be calculated easily.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Imperva DDoS support receives mixed reviews but is praised for fast resolutions, 24/7 availability, and improved quality.
Sentiment score
6.3
NGINX App Protect support is praised for promptness and helpfulness but inconsistencies and costs affect user satisfaction.
I would rate the technical support of Imperva DDoS as ten.
They were quick and efficient when we had issues.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Imperva DDoS efficiently scales in cloud environments, though licensing costs and transitions from on-premise can pose challenges.
Sentiment score
6.5
NGINX App Protect is scalable with diverse options but faces deployment, traffic, and configuration centralization challenges noted by users.
99% of customers are using the cloud version of Imperva DDoS protection, so they just purchase the new license and scale as needed.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Imperva DDoS is highly stable with few incidents, rated 8-9 for performance despite occasional cloud-related content delivery issues.
Sentiment score
8.4
NGINX App Protect is praised for stability and integration, outperforming competitors, though minor improvements in HTML5 are needed.
The stability of Imperva DDoS is very good, as it seems they have a lot of servers around the world.
It is a quality solution, and I would rate its stability as eight out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Imperva DDoS needs interface improvements, reliable support, pricing transparency, enhanced features, and better global integration for reduced latency.
NGINX App Protect requires improved flexibility, UI, API, automation, network support, pricing, integration, and feature enhancements like security and documentation.
Maybe Imperva DDoS could use endpoints to get information about the attacks before they commence from the endpoint level or establish cooperation with endpoint vendors to share this information.
There was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users find Imperva DDoS competitive, with zero setup costs; prices range $200-$10,000/month, offering valuable protection.
NGINX App Protect costs $3,000-$400,000 annually, considered expensive but competitive, with no hidden fees and strategic cost management possible.
I would rate the pricing of Imperva DDoS as five, where one is very cheap and ten is very expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Imperva DDoS provides robust, cloud-based security with ease of use, real-time monitoring, and comprehensive protection against attacks.
NGINX App Protect provides comprehensive security features including automation, containerization, and flexible API connectivity for robust application protection.
Imperva DDoS has User Behavior Analytics and Threat Intelligence on its board, and this helps us to be protected proactively.
The most valuable feature is the ability to operate in a DevOps environment and to be configured through API and pipeline by the developers themselves.
Detecting bots and blocking IPs have proven effective for securing applications.
 

Categories and Ranking

Imperva DDoS
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
21st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
CDN (6th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (8th)
NGINX App Protect
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
15th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (21st), API Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Imperva DDoS is 1.9%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX App Protect is 1.8%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

DerrickAkankwasa - PeerSpot reviewer
Provide DDoS protection and better security at effective rate
It is expanding its number of data centers for scrubbing traffic. Currently, there is only one POP for cleaning in South Africa. They might add another POP in North Africa, possibly in Nigeria or Egypt. Latency concerns customers, especially in regions like East and West Africa, where traffic has to travel to South Africa before returning. Increasing the number of POPs across the continent would help address these latency issues and improve overall service. While the platform is already quite strong, there’s always room for improvement, especially in keeping up with emerging trends and new types of attacks. Enhancing security capabilities could be beneficial. Integrating more advanced AI features could significantly improve its effectiveness and help customers leverage these tools more effectively. It would be great to see more focus on AI integration to handle and analyze data more efficiently.
Tomaz Sobczak - PeerSpot reviewer
Signature-based detection, DOS protection, and bot protection
NGINX App Protect is easier to automate and configure, or manage from an API. This is good for securing applications. However, it's not suitable for more complex tasks. NGINX App Protect positively impacted performance changes. There's a cache or it works like a proxy, so it can speed up applications. It can also offload some functions from servers, which NGINX can handle faster.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 DDoS?
The pricing is rated a ten on a scale where ten is very expensive. The solution is only cloud-based and does not provide on-premises services.
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
Pricing can be improved, as it is quite expensive. Additionally, support response times for emails can sometimes be delayed, which is an area that could use improvement.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX App Protect?
I don't know the pricing yet because in my other project, I was not part of the buying side and I was just starting to look at options.
What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?
It would be better if it were easier to implement and if there was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service, to avoid disruptions after impl...
 

Also Known As

Imperva Incapsula
NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva DDoS vs. NGINX App Protect and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.