Sold by: Botguard
Deployed on AWS
AWS Free Tier
BotGuard GateKeeper protects your website from the full range of automated attacks, like DDoS or brute force, and eliminates bad bot-induced traffic from your business. This solution is an advanced reverse proxy built around state of the art bot and hacker detection technology that hides your infrastructure and protects it from L7 DDoS attacks. It also offers a wide range of security and performance features such as WAF, HTTP/3 (QUIC), TLS 1.3, 0-RRT, automatic SSL certificate management, content caching and rate limiting. You will also prevent server overload and diminish your web server network traffic to provide a more pleasant user experience with our straightforward and easy to install GateKeeper.
Overview
The BotGuard GateKeeper is an all-in-one web app protection that safeguards your business from the full range of automated attacks and eliminates bad bot induced traffic. This state of the art, cloud-based, solution allows you to block bots, hackers and spam and grant unrestricted access for human users, search engines or affiliate automation tools to your website. Bots are at our core, but we offer much more. Our solution is an advanced reverse proxy that allows you to manage your inbound web traffic, protect your website from DDoS attacks and scale up your website without interruptions.
With our solution you'll be able to distribute network traffic across a number of web servers and increase both processing speeds and server capacity effectiveness. Mitigate traffic spikes that occur during atypical activity, like DDoS attacks, and assure that you can prevent any single server from overloading.
With the GateKeeper in place, the website doesn't reveal its origin server real IP address, making it harder for attackers to leverage targeted attacks against them as they will only be able to find that instance which has tighter security and additional resources to fight them. When using multiple instances of the GateKeeper, some of them may be hidden from attackers and left for legitimate visitors to use.
As our solution limits the number of concurrent connections and the request rate on a per-client basis, it helps to prevent website abuse and targeted server overload like the ones in a DDoS attack. In more complex cases, where a cluster is used, the attacker addresses are propagated throughout the cluster and filtered at the network stack of the operating system.
SSL operations are CPU intensive and can limit the server resources. With SSL offloading that process moves to the GateKeeper and frees up the web server. Our solution supports TLS 1.3 cryptographic and HTTP/3 (QUIC) protocols, being that in the first case it speeds up encrypted connections even more with TLS false start and Zero Round Trip Time (0-RTT) and the second has beer transmission speed, shorter loading times and a stabler connection for mobile users. All necessary security settings are included by default and our solution issues and renews all certificates automatically. Websites protected by the BotGuard GateKeeper receive an A+ rating from Qualys SSL Labs.
Highlights
- Complete website protection: The GateKeeper supports all of BotGuard's protection services, such as the Web Application Firewall (WAF) and Vulnerability Scans Protection, and helps you mitigate DDoS attacks.
- SSL Certificates Management: The GateKeeper issues and renews all certificates automatically. All necessary security settings are included by default. Websites protected by the BotGuard GateKeeper receive an A+ rating from Qualys SSL Labs.
- Modern Protocols and Algorithms: Our solution supports both TLS 1.3 cryptographic protocol and HTTP/3 (QUIC) protocol. In the first case, it speeds up encrypted connections even more with TLS false start and Zero Round Trip Time (0-RTT). HTTP/3 has better transmission speed, shorter loading times and a stabler connection for mobile users.
Details
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Delivery method
Delivery option
64-bit (x86) Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
Latest version
Operating system
Debian 12 (bookworm)
Deployed on AWS
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AWS Marketplace now accepts line of credit payments through the PNC Vendor Finance program. This program is available to select AWS customers in the US, excluding NV, NC, ND, TN, & VT.
Pricing
This product is available free of charge. Free subscriptions have no end date and may be canceled any time.
Additional AWS infrastructure costs may apply. Use the AWS Pricing Calculator to estimate your infrastructure costs.
If you are an AWS Free Tier customer with a free plan, you are eligible to subscribe to this offer. You can use free credits to cover the cost of eligible AWS infrastructure. See AWS Free Tier for more details. If you created an AWS account before July 15th, 2025, and qualify for the Legacy AWS Free Tier, Amazon EC2 charges for Micro instances are free for up to 750 hours per month. See Legacy AWS Free Tier for more details.
Dimensions summary
BotGuard GateKeeper is offered free of charge, so you pay no software fee for the product itself. Pricing is organized by the AWS EC2 instance type you choose to run it on, billed per hour. Each dimension maps to a specific instance size, ranging from small shared instances to bare-metal and high-memory configurations. Your cost scales with the compute capacity of the instance you select, not with the software. You pick the instance that fits your traffic and performance needs, and hourly charges follow standard EC2 rates for that size.
Top-of-mind questions for buyers
Each dimension maps to one AWS EC2 instance running BotGuard GateKeeper, billed per running hour. The software itself carries no charge. You pay the standard hourly rate for the instance size you pick, from small shared types to bare-metal and high-memory configurations.
Software charges track running instance-hours only. A fully stopped instance does not accrue hourly software charges. Keep in mind that stopped instances may still incur underlying AWS storage fees for attached volumes, which are separate from this listing.
No. Cost follows the EC2 instance type and its running hours, not your traffic or number of websites. You can manage multiple sites from one dashboard and filter bot activity by website. To handle more traffic, choose a larger instance, which raises the hourly rate.
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Vendor refund policy
BotGuard monitoring mode (non-blocking mode) is free of charge for an unlimited time. Any additional purchased subscription is non-refundable, but can be cancelled at any time without any further commitment. Downgrades are not supported. Please contact the BotGuard 24/7 support service for more information.
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Delivery details
64-bit (x86) Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
An AMI is a virtual image that provides the information required to launch an instance. Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) instances are virtual servers on which you can run your applications and workloads, offering varying combinations of CPU, memory, storage, and networking resources. You can launch as many instances from as many different AMIs as you need.
Version release notes
Release Notes v1.5.3
The following are release notes for the Blackwall GateKeeper v1.5.3 release. Some features were added, enhancements made, and issues fixed to improve the platform.
Features and Enhancements: GK-236 - New functionality has been added to the GateKeeper API. You can now transfer ownership of websites, servers, and devices between accounts by issuing a PUT request that updates the object user_id. This unlocks smooth handovers (such as agency changes, and consolidations) without manual support, with permission checks, and full auditing to keep moves safe and traceable. Existing endpoints and payloads are unchanged; simply set the new user_id in your PUT to complete the migration. GK-90 - An improvement has been released in terms of DNS validation before certificate issuance. GateKeeper now verifies that all A and AAAA records of a domain point to GateKeeper IPs before issuing or renewing certificates. This prevents certificate failures due to misconfigured DNS (e.g., missing or incorrect AAAA records). GK-305 - A new Magento ruleset has been added, following the same structure and behavior as existing rulesets. This enables consistent handling and configuration for Magento-based environments.
Fixed Issues: GK-318 - BuyPass Certificate Authority (CA) support has been removed and any existing certificates cannot be renewed. Instead Blackwall recommends that you switch either to Lets Encrypt or use custom certificates. GK-203 - An issue has been fixed where the Force redirect from www subdomain to primary domain setting had no effect. When enabled, GateKeeper now issues a permanent redirect (301) from www . to the apex and returns the correct Location header, ensuring proper canonicalization. The change applies to new and existing sites. If the option was already enabled, redirects take effect automatically after deployment (no user action required). GK-300 - A fix has been added to ensure that API-applied custom rules now propagate to servers. Previously an issue existed where custom rules set via the GateKeeper API were not synchronized to BotGuard servers, despite appearing in the dashboard. The sync path and JSON handling are now corrected, so that API updates now persist and apply on nodes without manual intervention. GK-244 - A fix has been provided for an issue where GateKeeper incorrectly reported its private IP, instead of the public-facing IP on AWS EC2 instances. This was due to NAT-based networking. The system now correctly identifies and uses the public IP address. GK-333 - Previously, on fresh GateKeeper instances (e.g., Vultr), when adding a new domain, it could hang and never reach an Online status. Sometimes this required hosts-file edits and service restarts to get it Online. A fix has been released, so that provisioning now completes automatically without manual steps, and the Add subdomains prompt no longer blocks activation.
Release Notes v1.5.0
Features and Enhancements: GateKeeper API: GK-41 - Blackwall is pleased to introduce the first General Availability version of our application load-balancing GateKeeper API, with support for multi-tenant management. This API provides hosting partners, SaaS users, and integration developers with a programmatic interface to manage users, websites, and settings. This mirrors all key features available in the Blackwall dashboard. It also supports a reseller model, with master and sub-account hierarchies for scalable, delegated access. Significant enhancements have been made to the beta version previously released to a limited user group and feedback provided has been incorporated into this GA version. For example, a website custom rules API editor has been added, and the ability to get event logs for all Gatekeeper API schemas - user, device, server, and website. GK-184 - A new feature has been added, introducing read-only event log API endpoints for users, devices, servers, and websites. This feature adds support for retrieving event log record via new GET endpoints, enabling clients to fetch event data scoped to specific resources; for example, /user/{user_id}/events, or /device/{device_id}/events. The API supports filtering by time range and other rule-based parameters, providing flexible access for auditing, analysis, and integrations. GK-136 - Added a possibility to get event logs for all Gatekeeper API schemas (user, device, server, website). GK-139 - Logout functionality has been added to the GateKeeper dashboard. Users can now securely log out of the GateKeeper UI. This feature enhances session control and aligns authentication behaviour across the Blackwall platform. GK-58 - Added support for light mode in the GateKeeper platform UI, enabling users to toggle between dark mode and light mode based on personal visual preference or environment. Previously, only dark mode was available. GK-51 - A new Early Hints feature has been added to help users optimize their websites, whether using the Blackwall GateKeeper user interface (UI) or our GateKeeper API. HTTP header 103 support has been added along with the corresponding web application acceleration logic, by implementing a module for nginx and using it in GateKeeper. This added feature significantly improves browser page load performance, leading to a smoother browsing experience.
Fixed Issues: GK-144, GK-199, and GK-138 - The nginx-stat-module has been replaced with the status-nginx-module to prevent OOM crashes during frequent Nginx reloads. By replacing it with the more stable status-nginx-module, GateKeeper now supports safe and reliable configuration reloads, even under high-frequency update cycles. GK-195 - A fix has been created for an issue preventing domains without IPv6 addresses from being added via API. Previously, domains that only had IPv4 (or only IPv6) addresses were incorrectly rejected when added through the API. This fix correctly distinguishes between a missing IPv6 address and an invalid one, allowing valid domains with single-stack configurations to be registered and function as expected.
1.4.3 LB API add website bugfix, prevent certificate issuing for invalid websites 1.4.2 Implemented LB API mTLS auth, first boot initialization scripts updated, fixed website apply config on edit issue, fixed nginx: [emerg] no servers are inside upstream issue 1.4.1 SSH config issue on uninstall resolved, embedded terminal issue on first login resolved, added wildcard subdomain support 1.4.0 GateKeeper API server and a lot of performance improvements 1.3.3 SSL certificate management improvements, Debian updated to 12.6 (CVE-2024-6387 fixed), High CPU usage issue fixed 1.3.2 Nginx 1.27.0 1.3.1 BotGuard nginx module updated to 1.4.2 1.3.0 Transparent JavaScript challenges are supported, TCP BBR optimization applied, Nginx updated to 1.25.5, OpenSSL updated to 3.0.13, ZSTD compression support added, UI bug fixes 1.2.2 Fixed issue with Apache HTTP2 upstreams (Safari cannot open the page xxx because the server unexpectedly dropped the connection) 1.2.1 Debian 12.2.0, Nginx 1.25.2, added upstream patch for CVE-2023-44487 1.2.0 Debian 12, Nginx 1.25.1, OpenSSL 3.0.9. Optimized rate limits 1.1.6 Nginx 1.25.0, switch to 1.1.1.1 dns resolver by default (8.8.8.8 has limits) 1.1.3 Nginx 1.23.3 (mainline), OCSP stapling fixes, cache optimization 1.1.2 Fix for SSL upstreams with SNI, display number of blocked IP addresses in dashboard 1.1.1 Optimized Nginx performance 1.1.0 External Redis support for clustering purposes, tuning limits 1.0.2 OpenSSL upgraded to 3.0.7 version with security bugfix 1.0.1 Nginx settings tune and logrotate fix 1.0.0 Initial release
Additional details
Usage instructions
Getting started
The configuration of BotGuard GateKeeper is simple, fast and straightforward. Everything is taken care of via browser.
As a prerequisite, you'll need an API key, which can be found at your BotGuard dashboard.
Type the IP address of your GateKeeper instance in browser address bar: http://gatekeeper_public_ipv4 and hit Enter. The web application will ask you to enter your BotGuard API key or register a new BotGuard account to get one. The API key would be used as a password for further GateKeeper management.
After entering a valid API key, the page will refresh and prompt you to enter the username and password. Please use 'botguard' as the username and your API key as the password.
Domain setup
- Select Domains in the top menu
- Click Add domain button
- Enter your web application domain name and add the subdomains, if they exist
- Define your application servers IP addresses in the Upstreams section. BotGuard GateKeeper will try to guess your upstream addresses based on the domain DNS records
- Select SSL certificate provider or upload your own certificate
- Select additional caching and security settings and save the changes. Don't forget to enable BotGuard bot protection!
- Point your domain A and/or AAAA records to the BotGuard GateKeeper instance IP address
Resources
Support
Vendor support
Tickets: https://botguard.net/en/support Email: support@botguard.net 24/7
AWS infrastructure support
AWS Support is a one-on-one, fast-response support channel that is staffed 24x7x365 with experienced and technical support engineers. The service helps customers of all sizes and technical abilities to successfully utilize the products and features provided by Amazon Web Services.
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