NGINX App Protect vs Uplynk comparison

F5 and Uplynk are both solutions in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category. F5 is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.5, while Uplynk is ranked #30 with an average rating of 8.0. Additionally, 95% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Uplynk users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 14, 2025

Uplynk and NGINX App Protect serve different areas in the tech industry, with Uplynk focusing on video streaming solutions and NGINX App Protect on web application security. NGINX App Protect appears to have an upper hand in security features, while Uplynk is known for exceptional video performance.

Features: Uplynk specializes in adaptive streaming, content protection, and analytics, providing high-quality video delivery. NGINX App Protect is known for threat defense, high-performance WAF, and seamless integration with DevOps, emphasizing security and flexibility.

Room for Improvement: Uplynk can enhance its offerings by expanding regional service availability, introducing more flexible pricing models, and improving platform customization features. NGINX App Protect could improve documentation, enhance its user interface for better usability, and streamline complex configurations to attract a broader user base.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Uplynk is acclaimed for its seamless deployment tailored to media platforms and offers responsive customer service. NGINX App Protect integrates well into diverse environments, emphasizing robust installation support, with a focus on comprehensive security adaptability.

Pricing and ROI: Uplynk offers competitive pricing with impressive ROI for media-oriented businesses, driven by improved user engagement and retention. NGINX App Protect might be more costly but offers a strong ROI for companies prioritizing threat mitigation, with investment correlating with enhanced security outcomes.

To learn more, read our detailed NGINX App Protect vs. Uplynk Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect vs. Uplynk

December 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Herb Angle

Owner at Hga consulting

Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility

I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.

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Jean-Marc Porchet

Project Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Blocking IPs and detecting bots enhances security for medical websites

I was researching products like NGINX App Protect and F5 Advanced WAF for long-term options. I have some use for such a solution, but probably not before next year Detecting bots and blocking IPs have proven effective for securing applications. We were able to block groups of IP addresses that…

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Joe Hernandez

Senior Software Engineer at OmniTier Inc

Improved mobile app development and user experience through optimization and security

The most valuable aspects include the optimization of application performance by optimizing API calls for a smoother user experience and faster load times. Furthermore, I restructured our code base to establish a more efficient development workflow. During my tenure, I integrated various security features for mobile applications, such as JWT tokens for secure authentication and data encryption using AES algorithms. I also focused on secure storage options, secure coding practices, and platform-specific security compliance, like Android's SafeNet and iOS Secure Enclave.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The technical support is good."

"Cloudflare makes it easier for me to handle and set up DNS for multiple users and multiple clients, and basically go in and access their account, make the changes they need, and it's a one-stop shop."

"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."

"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."

"DDoS attacks target unprotected machines. Cloudflare detects and stops these attacks using internal systems. It identifies incoming DDoS attacks, issuing challenges or blocking them immediately."

"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."

"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."

More Cloudflare pros

"We were looking for a product that is capable of complete automation and a container based solution. It's working."

"It is a stable solution."

"The policies are flexible based on the technologies you use."

"Overall, I rate NGINX App Protect between eight and nine."

"I tested specific features and evaluated the solution against the Web Application Firewall. I conducted research to test different detection percentages. I did not use it directly for protection but for evaluation purposes."

"WAF is useful to track mitigation, inclusion, prevention, and the parametric firewall."

"The most valuable feature is that I can establish different services from the firewall."

"The tool's most valuable feature is the OWASP certification. Additionally, the tool's ability to enforce strong passwords and OTP within minutes is impressive. With its analytics and recommendations, it is a very good solution."

More NGINX App Protect pros

"The customer support and service responsiveness were excellent."

"The tool's most valuable feature is the Uplynk platform for streaming purposes."

"It's super easy to use and integrate with."

"The Rules Engine V4 is the most valuable feature."

"The product is easy to use and easy to implement."

Cons

"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."

"Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements."

"The documentation could improve for Cloudflare DNS."

"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."

"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."

"The pricing could be improved."

"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."

"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."

More Cloudflare cons

"The dashboard could provide a more comprehensive view of the status of the connections."

"Setting policies and parameters through the UI should be more automated because the process is manual, where we can only edit one rule at a time."

"NGINX App Protect would be improved with integration with Shape and F5 WAF, which would make it easy for users to manage all their web application security with a single solution."

"Its technical support could be better."

"The product's user interface is an area with shortcomings as it can be quite confusing for users, making it an area where improvements are required."

"The setup of NGINX App Protect is complex. The full process took one week to complete. Additionally, we had to change the network infrastructure platform which took one month."

"NGINX App Protect could improve security."

"The integration of NGINX App Protect could improve."

More NGINX App Protect cons

"The web interface of the Verizon Edgecast portal is very old. It's not user-friendly, slow, and it is missing some valuable features like the ability to make bulk changes."

"We could not create more than 15 custom rules."

"In the next release, I would like to see more global endpoints for their CDN and a lower price."

"The tool needs to resolve its lack of innovation."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."

"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."

"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"The price is reasonable."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"Our licensing costs are about $40,000 a year."

"The price of NGINX App Protect is approximately $3,000 annually. All of our licenses are observed by a managed service partner."

"The solution's price is reasonable."

"There are not any additional costs we had to pay to use NGINX App Protect."

"NGINX is not expensive."

"The licensing fees for this solution are pretty expensive for what it does, but there is no alternative."

"The product's price is high."

"NGINX App Protect is expensive."

More NGINX App Protect pricing and cost advice

"When I modeled it out, we are spending somewhere between $600 to $800 a month with Verizon EdgeCast."

"Be careful about the options because to have all the features can be very expensive."

"The product is cheaper compared to other solutions."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	25

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	11

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...

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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...

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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.

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What do you like most about NGINX App Protect?

It's very easy to deploy.

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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 t...

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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 requir...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Edgio Global CDN?

The pricing was initially very expensive. However, after improving and restructuring the application, it became more ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Edgio Global CDN?

Regarding improvements, I focused on testing and compatibility to ensure reliability across various mobile devices. B...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Edgio Global CDN?

I usually use the product for mobile development. At my last company, OmniTier, I worked as a senior principal softwa...

See all answers

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Product Reports

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Cloudflare

January 2026

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NGINX App Protect

December 2025

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Data Replication

January 2026

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Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall

Edgio, Limelight Content Delivery, Limelight Orchestrate Delivery, Limelight Origin Storage, Global CDN, Verizon EdgeCast

Overview

Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.

Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.

What are Cloudflare's key features?

CDN Caching: Enhances website speed through content delivery network caching.
Web Application Firewall: Protects websites from online threats.
DDoS Mitigation: Shields against distributed denial-of-service attacks.
DNS Management: Offers easy-to-use and flexible domain management.
SSL Certificates: Ensures secure connections between users and servers.
Analytics: Provides insights with robust analytics tools.

What benefits and ROI should users evaluate?

Enhanced Security: Strengthening web security with DDoS and firewall protection.
Speed Improvement: Faster content delivery with CDN caching.
Operational Simplicity: Simplifies website optimization through a user-friendly interface.
Scalable Solutions: Scales with global reach, lowering latency for improved performance.
Cost Efficiency: Offers layers of valuable functionality with pricing options.

Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.

Cloudflare

NGINX App Protect application security solution combines the efficacy of advanced F5 web application firewall (WAF) technology with the agility and performance of NGINX Plus. The solution runs natively on NGINX Plus and addresses some of the most difficult challenges facing modern DevOps environments:

Integrating security controls directly into the development automation pipeline
Applying and managing security for modern and distributed application environments such as containers and microservices
Providing the right level of security controls without impacting release and go-to-market velocity
Complying with security and regulatory requirements

NGINX App Protect offers:

Expanded security beyond basic signatures to ensure adequate controls
F5 app‑security technology for efficacy superior to ModSecurity and other WAFs
Confidently run in “blocking” mode in production with proven F5 expertise
High‑confidence signatures for extremely low false positives
Increases visibility, integrating with third‑party analytics solutions
Integrates security and WAF natively into the CI/CD pipeline
Deploys as a lightweight software package that is agnostic of underlying infrastructure
Facilitates declarative policies for “security as code” and integration with DevOps tools
Decreases developer burden and provides feedback loop for quick security remediation
Accelerates time to market and reduces costs with DevSecOps‑automated security

Uplynk is a robust platform providing CDN integration and optimized streaming services, improving user experience and application performance. It offers control over CDN caching, redirects, and asset transformations, supporting seamless asset management and mobile security.

Uplynk enhances application performance through efficient API calls, optimized web server loads, and robust CDN configurations. It ensures high availability and performance by leveraging Verizon EdgeCast CDN, crucial for managing high-volume traffic on e-commerce platforms. Though Uplynk excels in asset caching and mobile security with JWT tokens and AES encryption, some users note its global reach needs improvement, and its interface lacks modern user-friendliness. Deployment of new rules can be slower compared to competitors, while documentation and rate limiting features require enhancement. Despite this, Uplynk remains a preferred choice for organizations seeking streamlined web server load optimization and enhanced application performance.

What are Uplynk's key features?

Rules Engine V4: Manages CDN caching, redirects, and asset transformations.
Seamless Integration: Easily integrates with Verizon's existing offerings.
Efficient API Calls: Enhances streaming and application performance.
Staging Support: Testing in staging environments without impacting production.
Mobile Security: Includes JWT tokens and AES encryption.

What benefits should users expect in reviews?

Improved Load Times: Efficient CDN configurations enhance site speed.
Enhanced User Navigation: Optimized performance for high-volume traffic.
DDoS Protection: Layer 3, 4, and 7 protection for comprehensive security.
Performance Optimization: Mobile development and streamlined caching.

Organizations deploy Uplynk to optimize web server load, enhance streaming service performance and support high-traffic volume management, especially in e-commerce. Its security measures, combined with Verizon EdgeCast CDN, ensure high availability and reliable performance, enhancing mobile engagement through specialized frameworks.

Uplynk

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

Information Not Available

TD Ameritrade, Plus500, Solvay Bank, Yahoo, Deckers Brands, and Coach

Buyer's Guide

NGINX App Protect vs. Uplynk

December 2025

Free Report: NGINX App Protect vs. Uplynk

Find out what your peers are saying about NGINX App Protect vs. Uplynk and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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