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F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF vs. Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF

    Score9.4 out of 10
    N/AF5 Networks offers the Advanced Web Application Firewall (WAF) to provide bot defense, advanced application protection, anti-bot SDK, and other features.N/A

    Forcepoint SWG

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AThe Forcepoint ONE Secure Web Gateway (SWG) is one of the three foundational gateways of the Forcepoint ONE all-in-one cloud platform. Forcepoint ONE SWG monitors and controlsany interaction with any website, including blocking access to websites based on category and risk score, blocking download of malware, blocking upload of sensitive data to personal filesharing accounts, detecting shadow IT, and optionally providingRemote Browser Isolation (RBI) with Content Disarm andReconstruction (CDR).N/A
    Pricing
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFForcepoint SWG
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFForcepoint SWG
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFForcepoint SWG
    Considered Both Products
    F5
    No answer on this topic
    Forcepoint
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    20 Answers
    70%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    18 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    20 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    10 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    86%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    17 Answers
    78%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFForcepoint SWG
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)
    Score9.2 out of 10
    UniFi Cloud Gateways
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
    F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Skyhigh Secure Web Gateway
    Score8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFForcepoint SWG
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.6
    (21 ratings)
    8.0
    (76 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    8.4
    (10 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFForcepoint SWG
    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.
    Incentivized
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    Forcepoint
    Over the years, [in our experience], the maintenance of the Forcepoint Web Security solution proved to be more cumbersome and troublesome with each version upgrade. In addition, it did not transition well to support the large increase of remote workers. We also experienced weird incompatibilities with the client. We have since replaced this solution with Zscaler Internet Access, a cloud-based secure web gateway solution with a client that behaves as expected, is more flexible, and requires significantly less administration.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Forcepoint
    • It prevents users from accessing websites that may have recently been created for the purpose of distributing malware.
    • It prevents users from accidentally or intentionally accessing websites that are considered inappropriate for a work environment.
    • It allows us to create different policies for different teams in our organization.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Forcepoint
    • The user access logs contain a lot of useless information. I understand this is very hard to tackle as I've seen this across any product that logs web activity.
    • I would like to see more customization options of website block pages.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    F5
    We just love work with f5
    Incentivized
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    Forcepoint
    It is very stable, the organisation has "locked in" the product and has no plans to change or try another product. We have already renewed our 2019-2020 licenses. It is user friendly and people catch on easily when they first use it. The only downtime is when we install Microsoft updates! It has excellent reporting which help in determining how the organisation's Internet is used and also during both internal and external IT audits.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Forcepoint
    Despite the intimidating Linux CLI when you use the appliance for troubleshooting, the web security usability compensates as most of the Administration of the system is done there. It is GUI based and has an easy to use UI where one can navigate around rather easily like getting reports, checking alerts, looking the whole setup under deployment to check if all services are running in one place though there are other parts to the system.
    Incentivized
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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.
    Incentivized
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    Forcepoint
    The is a quick first response to acknowledge your issue and the Engineers never take more than two hours to fix an issue and we hardly get issues looking at the fact that the system is pretty stable. There is also a robust Knowledge Base in the site for known problems.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    F5
    No answers on this topic
    Forcepoint
    Research known issues with upgrading from the Support Knowledge base, this will enable you avoid road blocks along the way and reduce your dependence on Forcepoint Support
    Incentivized
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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
    Incentivized
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    Forcepoint
    To be honest, once using Forcepoint for our Web Security, I have not wanted to look anywhere else. The dashboard gives me quick insight of threats, productivity, and bandwidth usage. Again, this is a layer in my security and it fills many holes. I feel safe and I do like I can just let it do its thing
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    F5
    • One impact F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF has on our organization's overall business objectives is that F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF is security sensitive
    • Another impact F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF has on our organization's overall business objectives is the F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF blocking feature
    Incentivized
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    Forcepoint
    • Being a non-profit the cost is a bit higher than some competitors so our ROI takes a bit longer to recoup. I would really like to see better non-profit pricing.
    • The ease of doing a report on someone cuts down on the IT man-hours to do website tracking for managers as we can do it from a central point whereas in the past (prior to Forcepoint/Websense) we would have to ghost their machine to look for activity as well as their local servers.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots