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Barracuda Load Balancer ADC vs HAProxy 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

Barracuda Load Balancer ADC
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HAProxy
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Service Mesh (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Barracuda Load Balancer ADC is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 12.6%, down from 13.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

Roni Wijaya - PeerSpot reviewer
A simple and powerful solution with WAF feature
The solution is simple and powerful. I find the Barracuda Load Balancer ADC's load balancing function most valuable. It balances the traffic well. The security features, like the Web Application Firewall, are also very helpful. I use the SSL offloading feature too. It's very helpful because it prevents overload. Our application runs on HTTP, but we upload HTTPS on the load balancer. This means there are no performance issues. I think it's very helpful.
Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful for for small and quick load-balancing tasks
What I like best about the product is its simplicity and speed. When you need to set up a load balancer quickly, HAProxy offers options like sticky sessions and round-robin. It's also fast to configure, including adding SSL for security. While it may have fewer options than other solutions like F5, HAProxy gets the job done for basic load-balancing tasks. The reliability features of HAProxy were particularly useful in a scenario where I needed to test load balancing between two Tomcats. Since these domains were inaccessible, I set up a third Docker with HAProxy, which had access to the Tomcat domains. I then configured HAProxy to handle the load balancing. This setup allowed the client to interact with HAProxy. The solution's integration with other elements is easy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most useful features in Barracuda Load Balancer are its security capabilities, load balancing efficiency, and scalability."
"Barracuda's technical support is good - whenever we have an issue, they immediately connect and resolve it."
"The solution is simple and powerful. I find the Barracuda Load Balancer ADC's load balancing function most valuable. It balances the traffic well. The security features, like the Web Application Firewall, are also very helpful."
"The price is very good, and it's not very expensive."
"I would rate the stability of Barracuda Load Balancer as a ten out of ten; it has high stability."
"We use the solution for load balancing."
"It improves our scalability and responsiveness services to meet our demanding customer requirements."
"The most important features would be the load-balancing of HTTP and TCP requests, according to multiple LB-algorithms (busyness, weighted-busyness, round robin, traffic, etc). Another important feature that we cannot live without is the username/passwd authentication for legacy systems that had none."
"Tech support is super-quick to respond, and always on target with answers specific to the current issue."
"HAProxy's TCP load balancer is excellent and super stable."
"HAProxy potentially has a good return on investment"
"​​Reliability. HAProxy is the most reliable product I have ever used."
"The solution is effective in managing our traffic."
 

Cons

"The Barracuda Load Balancer ADC could be improved with more customization features. For example, F5 uses iRules for custom configurations. I haven't found something similar in Barracuda yet. The load balancer and WAF's basic and common features are enough, but we need more customization options."
"Load Balancer ADC is competitively priced, but it's not feature-rich, and its technology is not that advanced."
"There are areas of Barracuda Load Balancer's security that have room for improvement, particularly concerning handling traffic."
"There are areas of Barracuda Load Balancer's security that have room for improvement, particularly concerning handling traffic."
"The quality of the solution's performance could be improved."
"I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit"
"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."
"Documentation could be improved."
"The web stats UI, which provides the status of the health and numbers, could greatly benefit from having a RESTful interface to control the load-balanced nodes. Although there is a hack around the UI (by issuing a POST request to HAProxy with parameters), a RESTful interface would greatly improve the automation process (through Chef and Ansible)."
"The reconfigurability in terms of the tooling could be improved and maybe an editor plugin can be added."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model. It could be cheaper."
"The only area that I can see needing improvement is the management interface, since it is pretty much all through the CLI or configuration. A GUI/web interface could be helpful for users who are not as experienced in the Linux shell. However, HAProxy does have another product that we evaluated called ALOHA, which has a web front-end, but we found it did not meet our needs."
"There are three main areas to improve: 1) Make remote management more modern by adding API. 2) Propose a general HA ​solution for HAProxy (no I'm using keepalived for this). 3) Thread option should be a bit more stable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Load Balancer ADC is cost-effective and is about half the price of F5."
"I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."
"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."
"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."
"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."
"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."
"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."
"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."
"HAProxy is free open-source software."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Retailer
11%
Educational Organization
10%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Barracuda Load Balancer ADC?
The Barracuda Load Balancer ADC could be improved with more customization features. For example, F5 uses iRules for custom configurations. I haven't found something similar in Barracuda yet. The lo...
Do you recommend HAProxy?
I do recommend HAProxy for more simple applications or for companies with a low budget, since HAProxy is a free, open-source product. HAProxy is also a good choice for someone looking for a stable ...
What do you like most about HAProxy?
The solution is effective in managing our traffic.
 

Also Known As

Barracuda Load Balancer
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fenwal Blood Technologies
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Load Balancer ADC vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
830,455 professionals have used our research since 2012.