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F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF vs. Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF) vs. NGINX

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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

    Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AThe Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF) is based on technology acquired with Incapsula and the former WebSphere WAF.N/A

    NGINX

    Score9.1 out of 10
    Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
    NGINX, a business unit of F5 Networks, powers over 65% of the world's busiest websites and web applications. NGINX started out as an open source web server and reverse proxy, built to be faster and more efficient than Apache. Over the years, NGINX has built a suite of infrastructure software products o tackle some of the biggest challenges in managing high-transaction applications. NGINX offers a suite of products to form the core of what organizations need to create…N/A
    Pricing
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFImperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)NGINX
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFImperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)NGINX
    Free Trial
    NoNoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details———
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFImperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)NGINX
    Considered Multiple Products
    F5
    Chose F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    F5 APM beats them all, hands down for internally hosted applications.
    Incentivized
    Imperva, a Thales company
    No answer on this topic
    F5
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    20 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Would buy again
    49 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    18 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    45 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    20 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    50 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    92%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    34 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    17 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    43 Answers
    Features
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFImperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)NGINX
    Application Servers
    Comparison of Application Servers features of F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF and Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF) and NGINX
    Feature
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    -
    Ratings
    Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)
    -
    Ratings
    NGINX
    8.8
    43 Ratings
    10% above category average
    IDE support00 Ratings00 Ratings8.127 Ratings
    Security management00 Ratings00 Ratings8.638 Ratings
    Administration and management00 Ratings00 Ratings8.939 Ratings
    Application server performance00 Ratings00 Ratings9.139 Ratings
    Installation00 Ratings00 Ratings9.040 Ratings
    Open-source standards compliance00 Ratings00 Ratings9.037 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFImperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)NGINX
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    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
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    Score9.4 out of 10
    Oracle WebLogic Server
    Score7.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
    F5 Distributed Cloud WAF (Web Application Firewall)
    Score9.2 out of 10
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAF
    Score9.4 out of 10
    Red Hat JBoss EAP
    Score8.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFImperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)NGINX
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.6
    (21 ratings)
    9.5
    (4 ratings)
    9.3
    (72 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    8.4
    (10 ratings)
    9.5
    (3 ratings)
    8.3
    (25 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (5 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    F5 Big-IP Advanced WAFImperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)NGINX
    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
    Read full review
    Imperva, a Thales company
    I recommend Imperva specially if you have a big environment with thousand of websites because of its ease to use and availability. Imperva delivers a reliable solution with great capability to contain cyber attacks and even fraud preventions in some cases. The only scenario it's less appropriate is if your focus is anti fraud instead of a solution to block cyber attacks.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    Nginx is well-suited for any web server scenarios, such as web applications, backend or reverse proxy for both application and HTTP requests, and distribution. It is less appropriate for Windows-based applications that run directly on a Windows Server host. In any case, it is very easy to manage, through separate conf files for each application or site you want to host with it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Imperva, a Thales company
    • Block some dynamic attacks such as SQL injection.
    • Block unfriendly accesses based on geographic source.
    • Helps us implement SSL in cases where the original server can't (yet).
    Read full review
    F5
    • Very low memory usage. Can handle many more connections than alternatives (like Apache HTTPD) due to low overhead. (event-based architecture).
    • Great at serving static content.
    • Scales very well. Easy to host multiple Nginx servers to promote high availability.
    • Open-Source (no cost)!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Imperva, a Thales company
    • Attack Correlation Validation - This specific policy produces a lot of false positives as well as the SQL injection policies. Of course it is difficult to tell what a legitimate query is on a public facing web app.
    • Profiling - I tend to spend more time than any other feature tuning the Web App Profiles. Plugins are used to help cope with this, but on extremely large web apps we are forced to turn off the profiling feature.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    • Customer support can be strangely condescending, perhaps it's a language issue?
    • I find it a little weird how the release versions used for Nginx+ aren't the same as for open source version. It can be very confusing to determine the cross-compatibility of modules, etc., because of this.
    • It seems like some (most?) modules on their own site are ancient and no longer supported, so their documentation in this area needs work.
    • It's difficult to navigate between nginx.com commercial site and customer support. They need to be integrated together.
    • I'd love to see more work done on nginx+ monitoring without requiring logging every request. I understand that many statistics can only be derived from logs, but plenty should work without that. Logging is not an option in many environments.
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    F5
    We just love work with f5
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Imperva, a Thales company
    No answers on this topic
    F5
    Great value for the product
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Imperva, a Thales company
    It's easy and works great. The onboarding process, although easy, can sometimes take too long for SSL and domain validation, but its not a big deal.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    This tool is really easy to use and configure. Consumes very less system resources. It is highly modular and configurable. You can easily use it with other tools like certbot for SSLs. You can configure basic security with configuration and headers
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Imperva, a Thales company
    We haven't needed support from Imperva since implementation. But during that time, their personnel were very quick to respond to questions. Since then, it's been largely doing its thing for us (which is exactly what we'd hoped).
    Read full review
    F5
    Community support is great, and they've also had a presence at conferences. Overall, there is no shortage of documentation and community support. We're currently using it to serve up some WordPress sites, and configuring NGINX for this purpose is well documented.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Imperva, a Thales company
    I believe there's no comparison as Imperva is a much more reliable and powerfull WAF. AWS WAF lacks of several features Imperva have and is not that simple to configure neither have a clean web console. I consider Imperva WAF a whole superior level of cyber security solution and it's consider to be one of the leader in this segment.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    I have found that [NGINX] seems to perform better throughout the years with less issues although I've used Apache more. I would definitely recommend [NGINX] for any high volume site and I've seen this to usually be the case from most provided web hosts who will pick [NGINX] over alternatives
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Imperva, a Thales company
    • Meet compliance requirements - Check.
    • Better Insight into web application - Absolutely great, checks all the traffic against RFC standards and will alert on common development mistakes that duplicate application traffic or provide attack vectors for potential attackers.
    • Have had several issues blocking a customer without producing alerts, while it happened only one week out of 2 years of working with the devices, it did produce a lot of headaches.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    • By using Nginx, we can host multiple web services on a single server, keeping our infrastructure costs lower.
    • Nginx maintains our HTTPS connections, allowing us to keep our promise to our customers that their data is safe in transit.
    • Due to Nginx's extremely low failure rate, our web addresses always return something meaningful, even when individual services go down. In sense, this means we are "always online" and allows us to maintain brand and support our customers even in the face of catastrophe.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    NGINX Screenshots

    Screenshot of Overview of the NGINX Application PlatformScreenshot of NGINX Controller - MonitoringScreenshot of NGINX Controller - Configuration