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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 (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Amazon Elastic Load Balancing is 1.5%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 14.8%, down from 15.6% 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 tool integrates well with Amazon native services. Its valuable feature is integrations."
"The solution offers good load balancing."
"Amazon Elastic Load Balancing has improved our application availability by routing client requests only to healthy EC2 instances."
"I would recommend Amazon Elastic Load Balancing for its flexibility and scalability, which is ideal for AWS workloads."
"The best part about ALB is its ability to connect with different services including EC2, ECS, API Gateway, or Lambda functions, offering a lot of benefits like attaching a WAF."
"I find it valuable that you can provide rule prioritization and set priorities for path-based routing."
"The Elastic Load Balancer facilitates the distribution of incoming application traffic, which directs requests to various servers, preventing overload on a single instance."
"I appreciate the checks that Elastic Load Balancer performs with the instances to ensure they are running properly."
"Content Switching provides flexibility for routing traffic as desired to designated real servers. It also provides good geo capabilities through its GSLB feature."
"I like the monitoring ability as it enables me to identify when an internal (load-balanced) resource is having issues before it becomes a problem in production."
"The solution can be configured very granularly and has good control over security."
"We like the periodic upgrades and backups, also made via ADMs, and it makes our environment much more robust and reliable."
"The work balancing applications are the most valuable feature."
"Helped us a lot with load balancing."
"Compared to other solutions, Citrix ADC is much more robust in terms of the native integration to cloud platforms. It is far more robust from an operational point of view as well."
"Most of the functions are user-friendly and great."
 

Cons

"The tool could enhance the internal load balancer with better health monitoring. The external load balancer needs more security parameters to protect it from the internet, as it currently lacks protection. It's okay for basic load balancing and those looking for basic functionality in an application load balancer. However, if someone is going to onboard a critical application, like in the banking sector, I wouldn't suggest Amazon Elastic Load Balancer because of security issues. There are no firewall restrictions."
"One issue that we faced with ALB was that leaf-level certificate validation was not happening. It is not that user-friendly in that aspect."
"The product should be made as an alternative to Amazon services. It would be easier for us if you got one service that is available everywhere."
"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."
"The routing policies and waiting policies could be improved for better performance."
"The reporting could be simplified so that the client sees a report of what they cached at the end of the month and the number of hits. It should have metrics above and beyond their Google analytics, etc. You can't do that with the solutions from AWS. You have to build sophisticated cloud trails, reports, dashboards, etc. The setup is significant, and it's hard to manage. You'll need to hire someone or pay a consultant on a regular basis to manage it, and it's not for the faint of heart."
"The solution needs to guarantee stability because multiple loads behind a load balancer can cause service unavailability."
"They could improve provisioning speed."
"ADC from Citrix has added functionalities from other products and the usability is very difficult for someone who is used to a simpler user interface, it's a little bit of a mess to use."
"Deployment is complicated."
"Manageability and adaptability can also be challenging for end customers."
"The technical support could be improved. They do not respond or assist customers in a timely manner."
"We are looking for some in-depth monitoring and analytics and more information that Citrix Director doesn't provide. ControlUp has insights that not only give you an overview but also allow you to do some drill-down troubleshooting for what's going on in your environment. We are looking for some more analytical and monitoring data to be able to monitor the environment better, not only from an application standpoint but also from the standpoint of the infrastructure to everything it sits on. They can provide more data to the administrators about what's going on within the application. They can provide data not only on the application side but also about what the application sits on. They're making strides with Citrix Analytics in regards to that."
"Citrix is more expensive than Horizon."
"In every release - and it doesn't matter if it's a minor release or a major release - they keep moving things around and they keep changing the mechanism. So certain things can work in one version one way, and everything works really well, then when you upgrade it to the next version, it breaks everything because they have a new way of doing it."
"Its GUI should be improved. Its CLI is powerful, but GUI needs more features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is low and I rate it a nine out of ten."
"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 product is not cheap."
"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 is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is $30 per month."
"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten since it is expensive."
"Ninety day free trial makes it easy to try out this solution."
"It all depends on the features that will be used and the number of accesses."
"Costly product and complicated licensing."
"Citrix ADM costs us approximately $5000 per month."
"The licensing costs for this solution vary depending on which model is being used."
"The pricing could be lower."
"You get the value for your money. There aren't any hidden fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
49%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
13%
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: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.