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Amazon Elastic Load Balancing vs NetScaler comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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

Amazon Elastic Load Balancing
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
21
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 January 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Amazon Elastic Load Balancing is 1.4%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 15.5%, up from 14.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

Mohd Farhan - PeerSpot reviewer
Manage complex traffic routing with ease and ensure system availability
The ELB would benefit from allowing deployment in a single availability zone for test servers to avoid unnecessary costs. Additionally, the ability to directly block specific IP addresses without additional service integration would be beneficial. Furthermore, sometimes ALB has a delay in recognizing the need to scale the system based on CloudWatch metrics, which could use improvement.
DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Elastic Load Balancer facilitates the distribution of incoming application traffic, which directs requests to various servers, preventing overload on a single instance."
"The tool integrates well with Amazon native services. Its valuable feature is integrations."
"Amazon Elastic Load Balancing has improved our application availability by routing client requests only to healthy EC2 instances."
"Customer support is good."
"It has very good features. It is very configurable. Security with TLS, et cetera is also very easy."
"We use the solution for internet-exposed websites and internal load-balancing purposes."
"The solution is very well integrated into Amazon's services."
"The solution offers good load balancing."
"One of the most beneficial features for application delivery is its integration with Citrix Storefront, facilitating user logins and ensuring continuity during data center outages."
"The load balancing is one of the most valuable features."
"We like the periodic upgrades and backups, also made via ADMs, and it makes our environment much more robust and reliable."
"We use the product for load balancing and as a reverse proxy solution."
"The web application firewalling component is a powerful feature."
"The solution is extremely stable."
"HTTP analysis and action. We have a lot of custom web applications that sometimes require custom header insertions. Some of these custom apps are external and, via the content switching, we can use one IP and leverage various back-end web app servers."
"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."
 

Cons

"They charge for technical support depending on the support model required."
"They should improve the solution's pricing."
"I do not have any notes for improvements."
"The ELB would benefit from allowing deployment in a single availability zone for test servers to avoid unnecessary costs."
"Improvement is needed in the integration with Terraform, especially in writing scripts for creating load balancers and target groups."
"It would be good if we had a product that integrates well with third-party vendors. Some of our customers want a multi-cloud solution. They don't want to be tied up to or be in just one cloud."
"They could improve provisioning speed."
"Sometimes the target group takes too much time to configure or to be seen on the internet, especially when configuring through ISV tools."
"The interface needs to be improved because the competition is coming up with ones that are more eye-catching, straightforward, and sophisticated."
"The solution can improve their support and send tickets directly to a Citrix ADC engineer in order to avoid having to escalate each support call."
"The configuration is complex, and only one or two people know how to assist when problems arise."
"We would like the licensing model for this product to be improved, as it isn't currently very transparent. There isn't a standard package available, and each extra feature creates an additional cost."
"An area for improvement would be the difficulty in finding information about standard licensing costs over the internet. They should provide some reference prices on the net to be quickly referred to."
"The security is okay, but the monitoring and reporting need improvement."
"We would like to see some fairly large scale improvement in the configuration process for this solution."
"I am not an expert in this solution, but simplicity and user-friendly interfaces are crucial for me. I would appreciate advice from Citrix, particularly in the form of an interactive guide for API protection. It would be helpful if they could provide specific points and recommendations for cybersecurity, indicating areas that need attention or improvement. I find such interactive guidance valuable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing fees are based on the number of connections one uses. It is a free tool for a certain amount of connections, which runs into thousands, and after that, there is a certain amount to be paid to Amazon."
"The solution's pricing is low and I rate it a nine out of ten."
"The product is not cheap."
"The cost for using the application load balancer is approximately $18 to $21 per month."
"I have no issues with the tool's pricing."
"There is a yearly license."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is $30 per month."
"The licenses for this product are payable as a yearly subscription, and carry a high price-point. The subscription scheme is quite complicated, and costs will increase with each additional feature that is required, outside of the basic setup."
"Citrix NetScaler VPX is not the cheapest solution out there, but you get what you pay for."
"The solution is undoubtedly very good, but it is expensive."
"I give the price of the solution a seven out of ten."
"It all depends on the features that will be used and the number of accesses."
"Costly product and complicated licensing."
"It's an expensive product but it works well."
"Citrix ADC could improve the price and make it less expensive, other competitors have a better prices. This would allow Citrix ADC to keep dominating the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
56%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Government
3%
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Elastic Load Balancing?
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing transfers the data securely from servers to users and splits the traffic based on peak times.
What needs improvement with Amazon Elastic Load Balancing?
Sometimes the target group takes too much time to configure or to be seen on the internet, especially when configuring through ISV tools.
What is your primary use case for Amazon Elastic Load Balancing?
Elastic Load Balancer is used to maintain requests and distribute traffic on target groups. The target could be any type of instances, IPs, or Lambda functions. Most of the time, the target group i...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Elastic Load Balancing vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.