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Imperva Web Application Firewall vs Symantec Web Application Firewall comparison

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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
Imperva Web Application Fir...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
52
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (7th)
Symantec Web Application Fi...
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (27th)
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Mitesh D Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively defends against threats like cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, and others
It does bring value. For example, consider a BFSI customer. Their application is critical and represents their brand. Without a WAF, an attack could take their application down, harming their reputation. It leads to hampering the customer's workflow. With an Imperva WAF, they protect against attacks like DDoS or SQL injection, ensuring their application remains available and customers are happy. That's the main benefit for both the customer and the organization. The impact depends on the customer's use case. If their business primarily operates online, a CDN is beneficial for traffic optimization. Moreover, the integration options depend on the specific use case of our customers. Generally, integration capabilities are good with SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) parts.
Vatsal Mehta - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."
"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"Cloudflare has many features."
"We can prevent attacks or issues even before they happen."
"There are some features that are configured by default, so even without doing much, it can still provide a level of protection."
"Configuration for different application sources is most valuable. We can segregate the traffic that an application is carrying and identify the sizing in Imperva."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is stable."
"It has fewer false positives"
"The valuable features of Imperva WAF include its effective security breach prevention through automatically updating rules."
"The solution is very scalable. It is one of the most important features. You can also expand resources and features as well."
"Very scalable and very stable firewall for web applications, with a good interface in its cloud version. Mitigation is its most valuable feature. The technical support for this product is also good."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"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 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."
 

Cons

"Technical support is not well developed. While there are good engineers, Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"Latencies are always a problem."
"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"An integrated SSO feature would be useful for Cloudflare DNS."
"There is nothing specific where the application firewall is falling short."
"It is complicated to integrate the solution's on-cloud version with other platforms."
"Sometimes our web application firewall will slow down."
"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."
"An improvement for Imperva WAF would be to reduce the number of false positives and create more strong use cases based on AI/ML or behavioral analytics."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall can improve by adding more features to the dashboard. increasing the visibility of the real-time events, besides configuring the administration itself."
"Some of the features should be included in the next release is a file integrating monitoring tool. This feature should be improved."
"The only disadvantage of Imperva is that it is a pretty costly solution."
"I'm not convinced that it's necessary the best solution going forward in the future."
"Sometimes scanning slows down the endpoints."
"It would be an improvement if the management dashboards were not reliant upon Java."
"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."
"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

"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"We are using the free version."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"The pricing is somewhat expensive. It is actually a huge investment when compared to other countries."
"Imperva’s pricing is a bit higher in the market since it offers a full-blown WAF."
"Everybody complains about the price of this solution."
"It's an excellent product, but it can be very costly."
"Imperva Web Application Firewall is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is an issue."
"The cost of this solution depends on the platform."
"We sell three-year licenses for Imperva Web Application Firewall to our customers. The price is a little expensive."
Information not available
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?
For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you hav...
DDoS solutions: Any other solutions to consider aside from Radware DDoS Protection Service and F5 Silverline DDoS Protection?
You can have a look to Imperva Cloud WAF, the anti-DDoS mitigation is under 1s and works very well. I observed a lot ...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Symantec WAF, Blue Coat Protecting Web Applications
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
BlueCross BlueShield, eHarmony, EMF Broadcasting, GE Healthcare, Metro Bank, The Motley Fool, Siemens
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva Web Application Firewall vs. Symantec Web Application Firewall and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,484 professionals have used our research since 2012.