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Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) 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)
Microsoft Azure Application...
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd)
The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (po...
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (28th)
 

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.
Bonieber  Orofeo - PeerSpot reviewer
Application gateway optimizes performance and simplifies cloud transitions
There are a lot of things I appreciate about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is beneficial for us as it helps in publishing our website, providing us comfort when it comes to the availability of our applications. The autoscaling feature in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is very obvious, and I have no issues with it; it is well planned and organized. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway impacts our cost savings while maintaining higher performance. The Web Application Firewall (WAF) in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has been very effective in protecting applications from security threats. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway helps us manage our AI-driven applications by enabling faster transactions, improving our work.
Shashank N - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good stability, but the agent-based approach could be more convenient
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. Additionally, the agent-based approach presents challenges with managing agents across versions and dependencies on specific application platforms like Apache or NGINX, leading to compatibility issues and complexity in integration. This agent-based system proved particularly difficult to manage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"The tool is user-friendly."
"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"The solution is stable, and the DNS servers are simple to use."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"I find Application Gateway’s WAF module valuable because it helps prevent layer 7 attacks."
"We can control what rules should be used and what should be disabled."
"The pricing is quite good."
"I like the tool's stability and performance."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway gives us a lot of benefits, including domain mapping."
"The most valuable feature is WAF."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway are the policies, the data store they are using, and the cloud platform it operates on."
"The simplicity of the solution and its ability to integrate easily with others are its most valuable aspects."
"When configuring a web application firewall using Signal Sciences, we configure a rule whereby no one except a few people can access the application."
"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

"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"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."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."
"Technical support is lacking."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"The tool's pricing could be improved."
"For the first-time user, it is difficult to understand so the user-interface needs to be improved."
"The user interface could be better."
"One of the challenges we faced was the solution does not support any other PCP protocols apart from HTTP and HTTPS."
"The product could be easier to use and implement."
"Scalability can be an issue."
"It does not have the flexibility for using public IPs in version 2."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."
"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."
"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

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"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 product's pricing is cheap."
"The price is reasonable."
"It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The solution is cheaper than Imperva. I rate it four to five out of ten."
"We use the tool's basic subscription. Its licensing costs are monthly."
"The pricing is based on how much you use the solution."
"I would rate the pricing a three out of ten, with ten being cheap and one being expensive."
"There is a need to pay a fixed price per month to use the product. There are no additional payments to be made to Microsoft apart from the charges paid towards the monthly licensing costs attached to the solution."
"It is not expensive."
"The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has less price than other application gateway solutions."
"The product has an affordable cost."
"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."
"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

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.
What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the...
What do you like most about Signal Sciences?
The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily.
What needs improvement with Signal Sciences?
Fastly don't support caching for China users. That's the only feature lacking compared to Akamai.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway
Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP
 

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.
Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell
Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs. The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.