Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

The Fastly Next-Gen WAF (powered by Signal Sciences) vs Virsec Security Platform comparison

Sponsored
 

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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
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) (27th)
Virsec Security Platform
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (36th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (56th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (25th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
Archana Heeralal - PeerSpot reviewer
A good solution to implement web application firewall for applications
There are some lags in Signal Sciences for the web application firewalls. Even if we create some custom rules, Signal Sciences cannot capture some of the malicious traffic. There is a little bit of complexity with custom rules that should be removed. Signal Sciences should add a feature called rate limiting with multiple options, wherein I can create a rate limiting based on the cookie request or the IP.
KevinMcCarthy - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps with Zero-day protection
We use the solution for Zero-day protection.  The solution stops any kind of remote code execution.  The tool's dashboard needs to load since it is not responsive and takes time to load.  I have been using the product for a year.  I would rate the tool's stability a six out of ten.  I would…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"It's very user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature is its usability."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"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."
"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"The product's most valuable feature is its ability to set up the rules easily."
"When configuring a web application firewall using Signal Sciences, we configure a rule whereby no one except a few people can access the application."
"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."
"We use the solution for Zero-day protection."
 

Cons

"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."
"Cloudflare could be improved by introducing a mid-tier pricing option."
"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."
"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."
"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 tool's dashboard needs to load since it is not responsive and takes time to load."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"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."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"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."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The product has an affordable cost."
"The pricing is 50% less than Akamai."
"Signal Sciences is pretty cheap compared to other solutions."
"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Web Application Firewall (WAF) solutions are best for your needs.
851,174 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
29%
Manufacturing Company
20%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
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 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.
What do you like most about Virsec Security Platform?
We use the solution for Zero-day protection.
What needs improvement with Virsec Security Platform?
The tool's dashboard needs to load since it is not responsive and takes time to load.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Signal Sciences Next-Gen WAF, Signal Sciences RASP
Virsec
 

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.
Chef, Adobe, Datadog, Etsy, GrubHub, Vimeo, SendGrid, Under Armour, Duo, AppNexus
Broadcom, Allstate, Department of Homeland Security
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), F5, Microsoft and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: May 2025.
851,174 professionals have used our research since 2012.