We performed a comparison between HAProxy and Microsoft Azure Application Gateway based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: HAProxy is the winner in this comparison. It is powerful, stable, and has good load balancing capabilities. In addition, HAProxy is free of charge and has a proven ROI.
"The solution is user-friendly and efficient."
"Advanced traffic rules, including stick tables and ACLs, which allow me to shape traffic while it's load balanced."
"I have found HAProxy very helpful in replicating production environment architecture in a development and testing environment."
"I am also able to make configuration changes during the day, in production, with no worries of problems and/or downtime occurring."
"It is scalable."
"HAProxy's TCP load balancer is excellent and super stable."
"It reduced the load on our main load balancers."
"I can simplify configurations of many internal services (e.g. Web server configs) by moving some elements (like SSL) to HAProxy. I can also disable additional applications, like Varnish, by moving traffic shaping configurations to HAProxy."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway gives us a lot of benefits, including domain mapping."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is traffic management."
"Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the performance side of things, which is why we use it."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is its ease of use."
"We can control what rules should be used and what should be disabled."
"The simplicity of the solution and its ability to integrate easily with others are its most valuable aspects."
"Good customization; able to report and take action on alerts."
"The GUI should be more responsive and show the detailed output of logs."
"I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit"
"The basic clustering is not usable in our very specific setup. The clustering is mainly a configuration replication and is great in a case of active-passive usage. In the case of an active-active (or with more than two nodes) where the configuration is not fully identical, it cannot be used as-is."
"There is no standardized document available. So, any individual has to work from scratch to work it out. If some standard deployment details are available, it would be helpful for people while deploying it. There should be more documentation on the standard deployment."
"Pricing, monitoring, and reports can be improved."
"There is room for improvement in HAProxy's dynamic configuration."
"Improving the documentation with multiple examples and scenarios would be beneficial. Most users encounter similar situations, so having a variety of scenarios readily available on the tool's website would be helpful. For instance, if I were part of the HAProxy team, I'd create a webpage with different scenarios and provide files for each scenario. This way, users wouldn't have to start from scratch every time."
"The visibility could be improved."
"The tool is a pain to deal with when it comes to the area of configuration."
"The tool's pricing could be improved."
"The increased security that we are considering is because of some of the things that the security team has brought to our attention. They have pointed out that we would most likely require a better web application firewall than Azure Application Gateway."
"For the first-time user, it is difficult to understand so the user-interface needs to be improved."
"It takes a lot of time for a certificate to update in the system. That is a huge drawback, affecting the load-balancing side. And when there are changes to the load balancing, it affects the end-user."
"The solution has many limitations. You cannot upgrade the VPN to the application gateway. So I started with version one, which has limited capabilities, and they provided version two. And unfortunately, I cannot upgrade from v one to v two like other services. So I have to decommission the version one and create a new one with version two. Also the version one was complex with the certificates uploading the SQL certificates."
"Implementing and standardizing the solution across the IT landscape in a heterogeneous environment is painful."
"The pricing of the solution is a bit high. The solution should offer different pricing systems."
More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Pricing and Cost Advice →
HAProxy is ranked 3rd in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 41 reviews while Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is ranked 4th in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 40 reviews. HAProxy is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is rated 7.2. The top reviewer of HAProxy writes "Useful for for small and quick load-balancing tasks". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway writes "High stability with built-in rules that reduce alerts and are easy to configure". HAProxy is most compared with NGINX Plus, Kemp LoadMaster, Citrix NetScaler, Envoy and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), whereas Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is most compared with AWS WAF, Citrix NetScaler, F5 Advanced WAF, Azure Front Door and Cloudflare. See our HAProxy vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report.
See our list of best Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) vendors.
We monitor all Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
