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Kemp LoadMaster vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Kemp LoadMaster
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
27th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (12th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (17th)
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
34th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Kemp LoadMaster is 1.3%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is 1.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kemp LoadMaster1.3%
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences)1.2%
Other97.5%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

IshtiaqKhalil - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Engineer at BOK
Displays flexible, user-friendly interface with minor licensing challenges
The product could be improved with a more intuitive interface for complex configurations and more advanced analytics. Additionally, enhanced security features, like a more robust Web Application Firewall, and stronger APIs for better automation would be beneficial. Overall, the main areas for improvement are in strengthening the advanced features to better meet the demands of large-scale enterprise environments. key features for the next release should focus on three areas. First, an enhanced, next-generation security suite with a more powerful Web Application Firewall (WAF) and integrated bot protection. Second, more advanced and customizable analytics dashboards to provide deeper insights into application performance. Finally, greater support for modern, cloud-native environments, including better APIs for automation and seamless hybrid-cloud traffic management
reviewer2161107 - PeerSpot reviewer
Staff Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Room for improvement with user interface while competitive pricing impresses
It is managed through Infrastructure as Code, so all configurations can be managed in the code itself, which is beneficial. Because it uses rules, it is easy to set up, and we have many different sites where the configurations are straightforward. Though the UI is not very interactive, which is a downside, we can manage many things. The UI is not very intuitive and could be better. However, we manage all the configurations through code, which is easy to maintain. It has extensive anomaly detection capabilities, so the traffic is classified into several categories where thresholds can be defined and customized based on false positives and false negatives. This is advantageous because you do not need to tweak it very often. Once you set it up, an audit once a quarter would suffice. Because The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is API-driven, we have integrations with the CI/CD pipeline through GitHub Actions, making it easy to integrate.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is very good. They are quick to answer questions and provide online help."
"Kemp Loadmaster gives our customers an easy and cheap way of load-balancing their workloads and adding reverse proxy for added security."
"Edge Security Pack is valuable because of the way it separates between critical infrastructure and the public internet."
"It's been a great reliable product for us, and I would recommend it to anyone!"
"Once we implemented Kemp and shared our new security scorecard, our projects got extended, so I believe that Kemp has helped to bring us more business."
"It help to provide efficiently and robust load balance of Exchange servers when one or more server/service failure occurs."
"It has greatly fortified the performance and uptime of our front-door email ingress, simplified and segmented mail routing, and reduced admin overhead for mail issue resolution and troubleshooting."
"We really like the performance of this solution."
"When configuring a web application firewall using Signal Sciences, we configure a rule whereby no one except a few people can access the application."
"Because The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is API-driven, we have integrations with the CI/CD pipeline through GitHub Actions, making it easy to integrate."
"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily."
"Fastly (Signal Sciences) integrates and tags the intermittent traffic based on patterns. It generates signals and provides them in a dashboard where we can view them and decide whether to allow or deny traffic. It's a more advanced and easy-to-navigate dashboard."
 

Cons

"The auth website of ESP is really lacking. It’s not responsive (mobile friendly) and the procedure of changing the website is difficult. We tend to avoid using pre-auth for that reason."
"It would be helpful if there were a way to incorporate tooltips on the fields so that we don't have to dig through documentation."
"The configuration of basic services is pretty straightforward but when you want to configure more advanced settings like the Edge Security Pack feature, it can be somewhat challenging."
"So far, the only hitch we have run into is that would have been nice to have an easier method to add allow/whitelist entries into the Access Control lists for virtual services."
"The only thing that I miss is that the TMG server was giving me live information about who is connected and what is the request about."
"Obviously, there are a lot of moving parts and fieldssettings on Kemp LoadMaster. Not all the settings are easily understandable."
"I would say overall improvement of the solution features"
"When we go serverless, we may again have to revisit this because the configuration needs to be changed, and with this change, we can run into a lot of other configurations that we haven't got into, which involve additional expenses."
"The areas that could be improved in Signal Sciences include the effectiveness of rules, as many didn't function optimally and required custom rule-writing to address bypasses for WAF."
"The UI is not very intuitive and could be better."
"Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai."
"Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product definitely provides what the organization needs and its cost is reasonable considering the value it brings."
"Licensing is yearly and I am going to guess that it is CAN $2000.00."
"Currently, no cost is involved with a virtual load balancer. They have used open source. We did not pay for software. We paid for the expertise. We are only paying the consulting charges, which are very reasonable, that is, around a thousand dollars."
"The price of the solution is cheap."
"Any decent product will cost money and if you want great support and a great product, then you will want to spend the money on it."
"Less expensive than Citrix."
"This is a cost-efficient product."
"KEMP gives away free trials for 30 days. This can be stretched if you want. During the test, you will have access to KEMP support.​"
"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."
"The product has an affordable cost."
"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."
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915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Retailer
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise16
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kemp LoadMaster?
My primary advice is to carefully analyze your total cost of ownership (TCO) rather than just the initial purchase price. Kemp LoadMaster is highly competitive on price and often provides a much be...
What needs improvement with Kemp LoadMaster?
The product could be improved with a more intuitive interface for complex configurations and more advanced analytics. Additionally, enhanced security features, like a more robust Web Application Fi...
What is your primary use case for Kemp LoadMaster?
Our primary use case was traffic load balancing and distribution. The solution was essential for managing all inbound client traffic, including HTTPS and DNS requests, by routing it through our fir...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Signal Sciences?
The pricing is very competitive compared to other providers. The pricing is definitely a factor in our decision-making process.
What needs improvement with Signal Sciences?
We do use it, but the UI can be improved as we mostly work through the CI/CD. It provides support, but sometimes it is hard to navigate unless you are very familiar with it.
What is your primary use case for Signal Sciences?
The CDN is for caching and The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) is for protecting the servers from malicious traffic. They both perform different jobs and serve different purposes, ...
 

Also Known As

LoadMaster Load Balancer
Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Kent County Council, KEMP, SMA Solar Technology AG, RT€ Player , Victrix (Quebec, Canada), Texas A&M, Macmillan Cancer Support, Cisco, Austin Bank
Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus
Find out what your peers are saying about Kemp LoadMaster vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.