Imperva Application Security Platform vs Symantec Web Application Firewall comparison

Imperva Application Security Platform 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 February 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is 5.6%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva Application Security Platform is 7.8%, up from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Web Application Firewall is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Imperva Application Security Platform	7.8%
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall	5.6%
Symantec Web Application Firewall	0.5%
Other	86.1%

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.

Solution ensures website availability and proactive threat mitigation

reviewer1247523

Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

Over the seven years, the most valuable features of Imperva DDoS that I have found are related to DDoS attacks, which are a group of attacks, and not all of them can be resolved on the endpoint level before the website. Using the web firewall before the website is a common use case to protect against malicious requests to the website. I have utilized Imperva's Intelligent Traffic Filtering feature. This feature helps me understand how the attack is progressing and what is happening inside the requests to our website. It allows me to granularly grant or deny access to certain parts of our website. This helps when we know our customers and the types of requests that can be sent from them, enabling us to block some malicious requests. Imperva DDoS has User Behavior Analytics and Threat Intelligence on its board, and this helps us to be protected proactively. Imperva DDoS connects to its database of threats, storing whole information about attacks all over the world in one simple engine. Everyone can use this feature, which can connect to this engine and get information about what is going on at the world level. That is the way to be protected at the company's level. The integration capabilities of Imperva DDoS are very easy and simple. We can run it in 2 hours.

Boosts Security Measures with Easy Deployment and Implementation

Vatsal Mehta

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

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.

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pros

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."

"Someone with a basic understanding of networking and security will be able to implement the firewall's basic features within 15 minutes."

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

"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."

"Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before."

"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."

"The Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's most valuable feature is its ease of configuration."

"It is configurable via API."

"An improvement has been to our website: It increases the speed of our response, the capacity of the site, and optimizes the bandwidth."

"It is an effective threat mitigation tool."

"There are some features that are configured by default, so even without doing much, it can still provide a level of protection."

"The most valuable features of the Imperva Web Application Firewall are DDoS, malware, and the other malicious threat prevention it provides. Additionally, third-party integration is available. You can forward the log for further analysis."

"Scalability is pretty easy on the base platform. You just add another, and you're ready to go."

"The solution has been quite stable. I have not seen any bugs at all."

"Imperva Incapsula has many valuable features. One, it protects the top 10 OWAS vulnerability, the open web application software platform, this is standard. Secondly, it protects against broken authentication. As well, it has remote execution of code."

"Imperva DDoS is fairly stable, and its availability is quite high."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pros

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

"The setup was straightforward."

"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 interface is user-friendly."

Cons

"The ModSecurity core rules need to be updated."

"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."

"It would be ideal if the solution offered better log integration and more integration with different platforms."

"The blocked logs are difficult to read at times."

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

"We have noticed some latency when the call goes through the firewall. That could be improved."

"The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced"

"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall cons

"I'd like the option to pick your bot protection."

"There's always room for improvement. Occasionally, there might be false-positive alerts."

"The product's customization capabilities are a bit problematic, requiring support cases for backend modifications."

"It needs to be improved every time there are new attacks."

"I would like to see automated reporting to improve visibility."

"Certificate management could be improved."

"The signature updates could be faster. Sometimes we have to upload signatures to the Imperva portal for checking and analysis before we can use them."

"I loved the approach of the cloud. The cloud has a lot of new features, like advanced web protection and DDoS protection. If those could also be on-boarded onto the on-prem versions, that would be ideal. They need to pay attention to both deployment options and not just favor one."

More Imperva Application Security Platform cons

"Sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."

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

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."

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

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

"The pricing model is very straightforward compared to the competition. You just pay per month for the product and usage."

"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 solution is expensive."

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

"It is not too pricey."

More Cloudflare Web Application Firewall pricing and cost advice

"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."

"It is expensive."

"It is very costly, but the return on investment is very high. Its cost was around $70,000, and we got it back in just six months."

"It is a very expensive solution. The price is very high. A lot of customers tell us that they would love to use Imperva more. I have some customers who have 50 websites, but they have only 10 websites on Imperva because of the price. They would love to have all their websites running through Imperva, but they can't. They have to choose the more critical websites to protect because the price is very high. It is a very good product, but it is too expensive. If you buy a plan for 20 megabytes and you don't consume all of your 20 megabytes, it is okay, but if you consume more, you are charged for the superior traffic."

"It is a very affordable solution."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."

"The license is on a yearly basis."

"The data packages are higher than our needs so we end up paying for data that we don't use."

More Imperva Application Security Platform pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Comparison Review

it_user68487

Security Expert with 51-200 employees

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…

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

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

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	83
Midsize Enterprise	25
Large Enterprise	61

No data available

Questions from the Community

The price of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is reasonable.

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?

I don't really use the rule-based logic feature or utilize the WAF's ability to scale as a cloud-based service. I don...

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

I'm using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall on all my domains and any client domains I have; I set them up with a C...

Which Web Application Firewall (WAF) would you recommend? R&S or Imperva?

Imperva is a strong choice, given their security focus and ongoing R&D into the product in areas such as bot mana...

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, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provi...

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 ...

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Comparisons

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Akamai App and API Protector vs Imperva Application Security Platform

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Product Reports

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall

Download Cloudflare Web Application Firewall product report

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall report

Imperva Application Security Platform

Download Imperva Application Security Platform product report

Imperva Application Security Platform report

Web Application Firewall (WAF)

Download Symantec Web Application Firewall product report

Symantec Web Application Firewall report

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF

Imperva Bot Management, Imperva Web Application Firewall, Imperva API Security

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

Imperva Application Security Platform delivers comprehensive and continuous web threat protection. Renowned for its ease of use, it shields web applications and databases from various cyber threats while integrating seamlessly with cloud and on-premises environments.

Imperva Application Security Platform protects web environments by offering advanced security measures against threats like DDoS attacks, SQL injections, and cross-site scripting. As a robust web application firewall, it provides extensive monitoring and bot management capabilities. The platform integrates content delivery networks for enhanced performance and scalability, while real-time traffic analysis ensures consistent protection. Despite its strengths, improvements can be made in policy management and customization options. Users seek better integration with third-party tools and more competitive pricing models. The inclusion of AI for enhanced analytics is also anticipated.

What are the key features of Imperva Application Security Platform?

Correlated Attack Validation: Enhances threat assessment by linking related security events.
Threat Radar: Offers visibility into potential and ongoing threats.
Virtual Patching: Provides protection against vulnerabilities without immediate code changes.
IncapRules: Allows creation of custom security policies.
DDoS Protection: Defends against large-scale distributed denial-of-service attacks.
CDN Integration: Improves content delivery speed and reliability.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

User-Friendly Administration: Simplifies setup and ongoing management tasks.
Seamless Integration: Ensures smooth operation with existing infrastructure.
Comprehensive Threat Protection: Shields digital assets from a wide range of threats.
Hands-On Support: Provides timely and effective customer service assistance.

Imperva Application Security Platform is implemented in industries needing strong database and application protection. Companies use it to enforce geolocation restrictions and manage bots, benefiting sectors like finance and e-commerce where data security and threat monitoring are critical. Its ability to protect and ensure data accessibility makes it integral to business operations prioritizing cyber resilience.

Imperva

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

Broadcom

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk

Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.

Information Not Available

Imperva Application Security Platform vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall