A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs NetScaler comparison

Read 107 NetScaler reviews

8,049 Views
5,814 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

A10 Networks Thunder ADC and Citrix NetScaler compete in the application delivery controller category. A10 Networks seems to have the upper hand in cost management and security features, while NetScaler leads in scalability and integration with Citrix products.

Features: A10 Networks Thunder ADC is notable for its all-inclusive licensing, advanced traffic management capabilities, and a broad security feature set, including DDoS mitigation. NetScaler stands out with its flexible deployment model, strong SSL offload capabilities, and comprehensive traffic and application reporting features. User reviews emphasize A10's security and simpler licensing, while NetScaler is recognized for its scalability.

Room for Improvement: A10 Networks Thunder ADC could enhance third-party integration, mobile web acceleration, and US support accessibility, while also addressing potential legal concerns. NetScaler users have noted complex and costly licensing processes, difficulties in maintaining backward compatibility during updates, and a need for more intuitive documentation and support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: A10 Networks Thunder ADC benefits from effective technical support and ease of on-premises setup but could improve support responsiveness in emergencies. NetScaler offers extensive deployment options, including cloud environments, but its customer service could be quicker in problem resolution and less complex, especially during its transition phase.

Pricing and ROI: A10 Networks Thunder ADC provides competitive pricing and high ROI through streamlined operations and reduced costs. Its all-inclusive licensing model boosts its value proposition. NetScaler demands higher prices due to a hefty licensing structure and separate feature costs, with ROI linked to its comprehensive features and Citrix integration capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs. NetScaler Report (Updated: January 2025).

A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs. NetScaler

January 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 838,713 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

10th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetScaler

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

107

Ranking in other categories

Network Management Applications (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (11th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Thunder ADC is 5.0%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 15.5%, up from 15.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

SatishBabu

Vice President at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Known for its load balancing capabilities, the WAF features need to be improved

The solution's initial setup process was easy. For the installation, it takes around five minutes. One person can do the maintenance since it is not required much. So, it's a one-time solution, and its maintenance is fine. The number of people required for maintenance depends on the clients as well. One or two engineers are fine to serve around a hundred clients. If you have a number of devices, more people are needed for their maintenance because of the patching it requires during regular operations. Only for the maintenance, one engineer's fine. However, for regular operations, we need multiple people.

Read full review

DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking

Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The solution is stable."

"Compared to F5, which I used about six years ago, the A10 is much easier when routing. You don't have to use the wildcard bits to route it between the different segments. It's much less troublesome to configure."

"Feature-wise, A10 Networks Thunder ADC is better for troubleshooting...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."

"The solution is flexible."

"The ADCs are pretty straightforward and easy to use. There is a GUI base where you can go in and see everything, but they also have a CLI base where you can use a command and get the information that you want, very fast."

"A lot of our SSL management is done on the front-end side, so there is one pane of glass for a lot of our security certificates. It gives us visibility. It also falls under when certificates are going to expire. Even for servers that are coming down, we can see how that affects the traffic flow by using the services map."

"The ease of use is very good. It's very robust. It just sits and works."

"For the past two and a half years, we have not had a need to open a tech support ticket. It is really stable. In the past, our experience with tech support was that they were extremely helpful."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC pros

"Citrix NetScaler offers robust security features, including SmartAccess and customizable policies, making it a reliable choice for safeguarding user data."

"Content Switching provides flexibility for routing traffic as desired to designated real servers. It also provides good geo capabilities through its GSLB feature."

"Easy, user-friendly setup with content switching and integrated caching features."

"The solution is extremely stable."

"It is a very stable solution."

"SSL Offload"

"From a security standpoint, It is a comprehensive solution in a single box."

"The GSLB feature allows us to move services between data centers. We can do this in either a planned or unplanned manner. We have experienced service provider outages at our primary data center and GSLB will kick in to automatically modify DNS records to point to a secondary data center (active/passive). We also make use of GeoIP information to point clients to the closest data center for accessing applications."

More NetScaler pros

Cons

"It scaled well for our numbers, up to 3 million subscribers for our most crowded region but I would like to see the same scalability numbers for the virtualized version as well."

"The interface and integrated custom applications can be a bit difficult."

"A graphical dashboard for analyzing performance is needed."

"The tool's load-balancing feature should improve."

"The user interface is what people complain about most of the time, particularly if they don't use it very often. Then they complain that it's a bit clunky."

"The solution does logging, but the logging capacity is really small. Because we have a bunch of traffic here, we usually get a logging-side warning that "This many logs were lost because of the heavy traffic." If the logging was better, that would be very good."

"There is room for improvement in the GUI. I just migrated from the 2.7 software train to the 4.1, and there are still people on 2.7. The latter is a very old GUI if you compare it to F5. It's not as easy to use and a lot of things are missing. They've made a lot of improvements in the 4.1 step, but compared to the ease of use of F5, it's still quite difficult. For people who haven't got a lot of experience, the GUI can be quite challenging."

"They need to make the user interface (GUI) a bit more usable and intuitive. Some features can be a little difficult to find at times. Sometimes, the workflow in the GUI doesn't match the workflow of an actual workflow. E.g., if I want to create a load balancer application, sometimes you've got to do things a bit out of order in the GUI in order to make it work right."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC cons

"I think the documentation should be improved."

"Some of our customers have questioned the security of this solution lately, wondering whether it is safe or not, so enhancements in this respect would be good."

"Security could be improved because then I can get rid of my Cisco firewalls. If they improve the security then I could run my security, my proxy, my firewalling and my SDN solution on one device instead of having to have multiple devices."

"Citrix Web App and API Protection could improve in the area of licensing"

"Improvements are needed to address the issue of machines becoming unregistered, ensuring stability for end users. Troubleshooting with Citrix support can be challenging, so clearer diagnostics would be beneficial. As for global server load balancing, it works well on-premises, depending on user volume and service stability. Overall, it's satisfactory for us."

"It can be difficult to setup."

"Technical support sometimes takes a little longer because of the multilevel ticket priority."

"I will try to migrate all the tools to the cloud because there is more lab and more VPN scalability available in the cloud. It is not available on-premises."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As for the initial investment in the hardware, F5 and A10 are quite similar now. For the current A10 solution, the initial cost was about $36,000. As for annual support, the F5 solution would be between $10,000 and $12,000, while the A10 is $2,200 a year for support."

"We just pay for support in addition to our licensing."

"We previously had F5 and switched because of costs."

"The price is good they are very comparative."

"The price of the maintenance support is too expensive."

"We did try out the solution’s Harmony analytics and visibility controller for its one-year trial. Due to the cost, we chose not to keep it onsite."

"It is $7000 per unit for the support annually."

"The pricing is fine, considering the features they are providing. If you are an individual user, they'll price the product differently compared to how they price the product that is sold to an organization."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC pricing and cost advice

"NetScaler does the same thing as an F5 and it's cheaper."

"Citrix ADM costs us approximately $5000 per month."

"It all depends on the features that will be used and the number of accesses."

"For partners, NetScaler is not as expensive price-wise versus F5."

"It is an enterprise solution. Thus, its costs are reasonable."

"I rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."

"Price-wise, I feel that the solution is a little bit expensive."

"The price for Citrix ADC here in Mexico was good, when you compare it with F5 and Radware."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

12%

University

Government

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

I would recommend A10 Networks due that it delivers high performance in a small form factor to reduce OPEX with significantly lower power usage, rack space, and cooling requirements compared to oth...

Do you recommend A10 Networks Thunder ADC?

I do recommend A10 Networks Thunder ADC. It's very user-friendly, easy to configure, and flexible. It is a very useful solution - especially now, when a lot of employees are working remotely. I hav...

What do you like most about A10 Networks Thunder ADC?

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is an easy-to-use and flexible solution.

What do you like most about Citrix ADC?

The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic enters our environment.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?

After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more expensive.

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexity. While it could be easier to manage, it is like transitioning from driving a ...

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Comparisons

Compared 25% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 15% of the time

Radware Alteon vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 10% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 8% of the time

NGINX Plus vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 7% of the time

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 12% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 10% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs NetScaler

Compared 4% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

Product Reports

Download A10 Networks Thunder ADC product report

A10 Networks Thunder ADC

February 2025

Download NetScaler product report

February 2025

Also Known As

Thunder ADC, AX Series

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

Overview

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is a dynamic application delivery controller and advanced load balancer. Thunder ADC is a value-added solution provided by A10 Networks specializing in robust, trusted, scalable application services for cloud, hybrid, edge cloud, and on-premise environments focused on improving business processes and keeping infrastructures safe. The solution consistently provides server availability, improves content delivery, and protects at-risk applications. A10 Networks Thunder ADC easily controls hybrid and multi-cloud deployments using a Polynimbus strategy to minimize difficulties and costs for IT processes, facilitating overall improved business results.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is effective for small to medium businesses (SMBs) to large enterprises. Service providers and cloud operators are all using A10 Network ADC to manage their large and fast-growing group of business-critical applications.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC supplies L4-7 load balancing with numerous layers of security using DNS and web app firewalls, comprehensive support for advanced encryption, single sign-on (SSO) authentication, and high-performance Perfect Forward Secrecy and Error Correction Code (PFS/ECC). Thunder ADC is designed upon A10 Networks Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS®) platform to provide consistent, efficient application performance and trusted security for any environment.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC Benefits

Consistently accessible: A10 Networks Thunder ADC employs numerous load balancing protocols to evenly distribute workloads to all servers and works to ensure constant application functionality. User requests are monitored to ensure loads are directed to the appropriate server so that there is always a proper response delivery to content. This process ensures the applications are consistently available.
Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB): To ensure business processes are fully optimized at all times, A10 Networks Thunder ADC employs a dynamic Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) process to augment server load balancing capabilities throughout global data centers for high availability and improved user experience and application tolerance.
Fast content delivery: A10 Networks Thunder ADC conquers the general WAN latencies, chatty policies, and redundant software programs to ensure quick and responsive service. Employees receive a fast, excellent end-user experience while the organization's business leaders get exceeded SLA mandates and increased productivity with teams working remotely and a step up on the competition.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC Features

Detailed Analytics: When deployed with A10 Networks Harmony Controller, Thunder ADC delivers a large selection of detailed aggregate and per-request reports in real time. The reports include popular URLs, error and health indicators, latencies, and end-to-end response times. The data is further dissected to deliver per-app reporting, availability alerts, and performance.
API Coverage: Thunder ADC utilizes A10 Networks REST-based aXAPIs to structure all features with 100 percent API coverage. The resulting interface is then used to seamlessly integrate custom or third-party management solutions, such as VMware or other SDN platforms, OpenStack, Microsoft SCVMM, or other cloud orchestration systems. There are also software plug-ins available for private clouds utilizing VMware’s vRealize Orchestrator.
Comprehensive Management Controls: Thunder ADC is fully supported by A10 Networks Harmony Controller and can be deployed in software or as a software-as-a-service (SaaS). This controller functions as a native management platform that organizes and distributes application-centric service protocols and configuration data to numerous Thunder appliances and device cluster infrastructures throughout numerous multi-cloud environments. Users can instantly identify, audit and track every appliance using critical operational metrics, such as CPU, disk usage, device partitions, and end users. The A10 Networks Harmony Controller will also complete configuration backups and restore operations, and will schedule regular software upgrades.

A10 Networks

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

Sample Customers

123inkt.nl, Bentley University, Box, Brainshark, Buienradar, Capgemini, CGN/LSN & NAT64, Chengdu Telecom, Club One, Code Ready, CRC Health Group, Cyso, Deutsche Telekom, Earth Class Mail, Excite, FFF Enterprises, Florence County, Framingham State University, From30

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk