F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF vs. F5 BIG-IP

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
F5 Networks offers the Advanced Web Application Firewall (WAF) to provide bot defense, advanced application protection, anti-bot SDK, and other features.N/A
F5 BIG-IP
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
F5 BIG-IP software from Seattle-based F5 Networks is a load balancing and application protection solution suite available on cloud or via virtual editions, on a subscription or perpetual licensing basis.N/A
Pricing
F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFF5 BIG-IP
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFF5 BIG-IP
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFF5 BIG-IP
Considered Both Products
F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
Chose F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
F5 BIG-IP advanced WAF will provide just enough flexibility to protect areas and services the way others just can't.
Chose F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
Sure! Here's a made-up but professional response you can use or adapt depending on the context (e.g., a report, RFP, internal justification, etc.): Describe how F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF stacks up against them and why you selected F5 BIG-IP Advanced WAF.
Chose F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
AWAF provides most complete web application and API protection; including L7 DoS; in custimer's multi cloud deployments whether on-premises, public cloud, private cloud, etc.
F5 BIG-IP
Chose F5 BIG-IP
Ease of used. Not that complex. Better support by the principle. A better product than the other load balancer brands
Chose F5 BIG-IP
All of the products listed are used in tangence with F5 BIG-IP.
Chose F5 BIG-IP
Since we are F5 shop we wanted to have a single pane of glass for all the F5's ONPREM and CLOUD so we wanted to do a POV on F5 XC
Best Alternatives
F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFF5 BIG-IP
Small Businesses
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Score 8.8 out of 10
NGINX
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Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cloudflare
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Score 8.8 out of 10
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NGINX
Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises
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Score 9.7 out of 10
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Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFF5 BIG-IP
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(16 ratings)
9.2
(205 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(1 ratings)
9.5
(9 ratings)
Usability
8.4
(5 ratings)
8.6
(78 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(10 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.8
(2 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
5.5
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
5.5
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFF5 BIG-IP
Likelihood to Recommend
F5
I believe that in industrial environments like ours where we have to have bare metal devices near the production environment combined with hybrid cloud, that is a good platform. That's a good use case. It optimizes traffic. It helps us stay more secure in our data centers. Now with regards to that are fully operating in the cloud, I'm not really sure if we would make the same decision considering the option that I said to have something that is self-provision to avoid too much management of virtual machines on the cloud. So that's an area of improvement.
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F5
Definitely in larger environments, more mature organizations that obviously have the budget to spend and want best in class. Where it struggles is those organizations that don't have the funding and money to spend on it and need more basic functionality. So I'd say that's smaller customers we've worked with and kind of mid-market. They tend to get scared when they get the quotes. Also we've had some struggles with account team consistency. So for the sales team, just a lot of turnover and a lot of missteps on customer calls.
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Pros
F5
  • So the product definitely is helping us for sudden attacks through DDOS, some injection ingestion into UI URLs, and definitely it's capturing those and I definitely see that as an advantage for us. They can stop the hackers from using our endpoints.
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F5
  • I mean from a basic level, it actually satisfies all the use cases we have, which is basically to have multiple web servers for the front end and then you want that to be equally split across. The traffic comes in from all over the world. We use DRA protection and everything, but then we also internally want to make sure all the servers are being utilized and we provide much more availability across all servers. We just make sure BIG-IP sits in between and handles the traffic accordingly. And it's pretty basic and it comes to drawing traffic. It's pretty easy to configure and set it up and then forget.
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Cons
F5
  • The UI for events. E.g., clicking the "Accept" button does nothing.
  • Traffic learning suggestions are often very incorrect. We were originally suggested to use "Automatic" learning, and had to completely scrap the policy due to the suggestions.
  • "All in one" dashboard for viewing application URL/parameter overrides per policy.
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F5
  • Recently we have been deploying F5 web application firewall and we have started the deployment. We have already moved applications out there, but we are not yet to the point wherein I could comment any positive feedback or any negative feedback because we are still going through it, right. But as far as I'm concerned, I don't see any drawbacks or any shortcomings on the F5 product lineup.
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Likelihood to Renew
F5
We just love work with f5
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F5
So far experience with F5 BIG-IP has been good, but we are only 6 months into the deployment and will depend on how things run over time.
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Usability
F5
Most* of it is very intuitive and easy to use. The "Help" section is fairly fantastic. See some of my other comments about things like the "Traffic Learning" section being wildly wrong sometimes, and also the event logs with UI buttons that don't do anything. Overall though, it's an excellent product.
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F5
It's not difficult to understand the parts of application configurations and features. Setting up new virtual servers with multiple profiles, certificates, and nodes is easy for new users through the web interface, which also translates to programability in scripts, DevOps, or other configuration management use-cases. Users from different backgrounds such as networking and infrastructure can use F5 BIG-IP, while users who are familiar with API calls can easily configure objects without needing to understand the platform at all.
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Support Rating
F5
Highly knowledgeable engineers who understand complex networking and application-delivery issues.


Strong escalation paths — once a case reaches senior engineers, resolutions are fast and accurate.


Comprehensive documentation and many self-service resources for troubleshooting.


Clear communication with well-structured updates throughout the ticket lifecycle.


Excellent for critical incidents, with reliable guidance during high-severity outages.


Deep product expertise across BIG-IP, ASM/Advanced WAF, GTM/DNS, and modern F5 services.
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F5
On the occasions when we've had to engage f5 support, they have been great. They have always resolved our issues quickly and been easy to work with and professional. The reason I give them a 10 out of 10, however, is because when we've had issues that have crossed over between the f5 BIG-IP, our Cisco switches, and our Microsoft IIS server the f5 support representatives have been extremely knowledgeable about every product and device involved and have been able to troubleshoot end-to-end without having to engage other vendors.
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In-Person Training
F5
No answers on this topic
F5
Practical cases and hands on , many hours of training with tipical cases
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Implementation Rating
F5
No answers on this topic
F5
implementation is fine
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Alternatives Considered
F5
-Stable data path equals to less crashes -Almost all the features working as expected -Provides more granular controls in allowing false positives -Request evaluation is accurate -Irules feature is a plus
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F5
That's the one thing that really stood out. It was a lot easier to use from an administrator standpoint, so I think that's the one thing that really made our team decide to go with this product versus another competitor. Just ease of use.
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Return on Investment
F5
  • In our case it has been great because the pricing is just right for all the features that we have on the platform and the flexibility. In fact, we acquired another license last year, so that's something that we're interested in. We are currently moving towards the cloud with our ERP systems and eliminating the IBM platform, so we would like to see that F5 virtual option available on Azure.
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F5
  • F5 BIG-IP has a highly positive impact on the customers. The main impact is on the security of the web applications.
  • F5 BIG-IP provides an easy and safe way to connect employees to assets and applications that reside in an on-premises environment.
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ScreenShots