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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 February 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Amazon Elastic Load Balancing is 1.4%, down from 2.2% 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

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."
"It is a very scalable solution in which you can add more servers instantly."
"I appreciate the checks that Elastic Load Balancer performs with the instances to ensure they are running properly."
"The solution is known for its scalability and stability."
"It is straightforward to deploy."
"The solution offers good load balancing."
"I find it valuable that you can provide rule prioritization and set priorities for path-based routing."
"The feature that I like the most is the scalability. The solutions I build often have many pieces, which are very complicated. If a client comes to me with a design, my developer has made this as a template or a cloud formation script. It's a design on paper, and I want it executed a certain way. I can do that quickly and repeatedly with AWS. That is a considerable advantage because I can take that template and do it five times in different zones. That is an excellent feature based on a template, et cetera."
"It is a complete solution for those looking for an all-in-one."
"The solution's technical support is good."
"The solution was very easy to deploy."
"Citrix Netscaler makes it easy to provide services to end users, offering better visibility into user sessions compared to VMware. However, instability in network or machine can cause headaches as it's hard to pinpoint issues. SSL offload feature enhances security posture by providing secure connectivity between end users and backend systems. We use additional Azure remote security solutions for comprehensive protection."
"Enables a Web service that offers persistent client-server connections, IP restriction, URL rewrite (such as remove "/assets/" path from client-side URL path), and cache for CSS or JS files... You can easily use the GUI to set up all these requirements on the same network device within 20-30 minutes. (If you do the same steps on CLI, it might take less time.)"
"The MAS integration for HDX Insight has provided teams with significant visibility into network performance of the user's connection."
"Scalability is great. One of the best features of NetScaler is that it can scale out."
"The web application firewall is one feature I found valuable in the solution."
 

Cons

"They should improve the solution's pricing."
"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."
"The ELB would benefit from allowing deployment in a single availability zone for test servers to avoid unnecessary costs."
"I do not have any notes for improvements."
"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."
"We faced some issues with the health check."
"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 setup was not simple."
"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."
"The setup for Citrix NetScaler has room for improvement. It could be easier."
"The tool needs to add a feature where we can access the network policy access manager."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"The customization has always been a key area where some improvements are required. In the beginning, everything was for customizing the outer shell of it. You had to use the command-based utility and you had to do a lot of manual work. They have improved it a little bit and now there are some GUI-based functionalities that can be used. However, more can be done that doesn't require a lot of intervention. Right now there are some features, there are some customizations that can be done, but it's still very tedious, very cumbersome, a lot of work. So that could be simplified."
"They can improve the scalability and the multi-tenancy feature. We recently tried to configure an authentication, and we ran into some issues while using the web-based GUI. It was very slow when you log in with your credentials in the web-based GUI. Each time we clicked on the menu, it tried to do the authentication. It works properly in the console."
"Currently, it is not easy to use the configuration capabilities of the product."
 

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."
"There is a yearly license."
"The cost for using the application load balancer is approximately $18 to $21 per month."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is low and I rate it a nine out of ten."
"I have no issues with the tool's pricing."
"The product is not cheap."
"The solution's pricing is $30 per month."
"The price for Citrix ADC here in Mexico was good, when you compare it with F5 and Radware."
"The pricing could be lower."
"Ninety day free trial makes it easy to try out this solution."
"We are quite happy with price. It's not too high."
"We have a yearly licencing fee, and there are no additional costs."
"NetScaler does the same thing as an F5 and it's cheaper."
"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten since it is expensive."
"Price-wise, I feel that the solution is a little bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
56%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
 

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.
838,533 professionals have used our research since 2012.