F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Fortinet FortiADC comparison

F5 and Fortinet are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. F5 is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6, while Fortinet is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.0. F5 holds a 15.4% mindshare in ADC, compared to Fortinet’s 9.8% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of F5 users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of Fortinet users who would recommend it.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Read 120 F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) reviews

7,233 Views
6,001 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Fortinet FortiADC

Read 24 Fortinet FortiADC reviews

3,790 Views
3,142 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Fortinet FortiADC

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager and Fortinet FortiADC compete in the application delivery controller market. While F5 BIG-IP LTM has the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set and high performance, Fortinet FortiADC is a compelling choice for those prioritizing cost-effectiveness and simplicity.

Features: F5 BIG-IP LTM offers iRules for traffic management, advanced load balancing for complex applications, and SSL offloading for security. Its integration with apps like Oracle PeopleSoft is a significant advantage. Fortinet FortiADC provides essential load balancing, simplified management, and integration capabilities aimed at less complex environments, prioritizing cost-efficiency in its design.

Room for Improvement: F5 BIG-IP LTM can improve by addressing its high cost and complex licensing, simplifying system configuration, and enhancing integration features. Fortinet FortiADC could benefit from more responsive technical support, expanding its feature set to better handle SSL traffic, and improving performance in high-volume environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: F5 BIG-IP LTM supports versatile deployment across hybrid and on-premises environments, with varied feedback on customer support efficiency. Its technical assistance is knowledgeable but inconsistent. Fortinet FortiADC is praised for its straightforward setup and quick deployment, though user feedback on customer support expertise varies, suggesting areas for enhancement.

Pricing and ROI: F5 BIG-IP LTM, known for higher pricing, offers superior features that some users find justify the cost. It's considered a premium option, requiring substantial budget allocation. Fortinet FortiADC's competitive pricing attracts budget-conscious organizations, viewed as offering a favorable return on investment by focusing on necessary features without excessive financial burden.

To learn more, read our detailed F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. Fortinet FortiADC Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. Fortinet FortiADC

January 2025

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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

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

120

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Fortinet FortiADC

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

7th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is 15.4%, down from 15.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiADC is 9.8%, up from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Mahmoud-Yassin

Head of IT Infrastructure and Security Operations at United Arab Bank

You can fully automate disaster recovery

LTM's cloud capabilities could be improved. Cloud providers all offer load balancing, but you can't get the same level of security. F5's cloud service is still not on par with its on-prem service. F5 acquired multiple companies a few years ago, but they still haven't integrated those solutions. For example, F5 acquired Shape Security, which had an excellent solution for detecting bots and automated login attacks, but F5 offers the solution in an inflexible way. It is only available as a cloud-based solution. It isn't zone-based. Some companies are restricted from sending financial data outside the country because of GDPR in Europe or other national regulations. Here in the UAE, we can't send host data out.

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Saeid Khanipour Ghobani

IT Manager at Technology Evaluation Center

High-level load balancing and routing protocols but scalability is limited to 200 gigabits

The initial setup and configuration are very easy because the solution includes a simple OS. Initial configuration takes about ten minutes for simple environments. It is important to assess the environment and decide what services, servers, and web applications are needed. The solution can be configured in router mode or one-arm mode which uses source NAT as destination NAT to send traffic to the firewall. One-arm mode is more complex and requires discussions with our engineers. For example, you have a website with Node.js for your programming language, Amazon S3 for your CDN, NGINX for your web server, and you use both React and reCAPTCHA. Our team meets with your developer to learn your website and OS through a multi-step process and then we configure the solution to protect everything.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It improves the overall performance of applications by decreasing the burden on servers associated with managing and maintaining applications and network sessions, as well as by performing application-specific tasks."

"Our experience has been very good, in terms of performance, and securing our application infrastructure."

"The most valuable feature I found is iRules."

"You can create multiple virtual servers on F5 BIG-IP technology, and within multiple virtual servers you can have multiple nodes, where a node equals two application servers."

"The F5 interface is easy to use."

"F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is a stable and reliable solution."

"Load balancing generally brings high availability and a bigger ability to scale out. In some cases, it brings security, depending on how it is configured."

"The load balancing function, the monitors that you can create, and iRules programmability are most valuable."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pros

"I use load balancing technology like Round Robin or low weight to maintain session-based connections. This ensures that clients can connect to their applications without interruption."

"The main feature that we use is GSLB (Global Server Load Balancing). GSLB makes the customer's network more reliable by scaling applications across multiple datacenters. GSLB as a disaster recovery solution can direct traffic based on site availability."

"Because ADC is the intermediary between the servers and the end-user application, it gives thorough information about the traffic, what the problem is."

"Ease of use in deploying and having it up and running requires minimal knowledge."

"Fortinet FortiADC is a good product because each and every piece of content is monitored by it."

"The user interface is very easy and integrates with Sandbox easily."

"Key features include SSL Offloading, VM availability, and L7 load balancing."

"The solution enhances performance by efficiently balancing the load across multiple backend servers."

More Fortinet FortiADC pros

Cons

"Not everything is intuitive."

"It is a hardware load balancer, and its installation procedure is more complex than a software load balancer. There are pros and cons of using hardware load balancing. You have to have specific hardware deployed in your data center to activate this load balancer. They never came up with any software-based load balancing solution. It is all hardware-based."

"The license terms for "non-commercial" will be a challenge for us."

"The initial setup can be complex - it's quite flexible in terms of configuration, but the person configuring it needs to understand the application side, the network side, and the server."

"It requires a particular skill or training before being able to manage it."

"The solution could improve the ease of use, the management could be simplified. Other solutions are easier to use."

"The analytics should provide insight into latency across various traffic routes and virtual servers."

"It would be good to have better traffic and better data. It would be nice to have more granularity to see packets in terms of the header details, the analytics, etc. It would be nice if that was also part of it and to have analytics added to the traffic."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) cons

"The solution should improve finding false positives and false negatives. There are a lot of false positives."

"It would be good if they built in a fully functional web application firewall."

"FortiADC is complex to configure so the interface should be improved."

"The user interface could be more friendly and CLI could be more like that of Fortigate."

"If I need design help, they do not assist; they say it is a design issue they cannot support, and I must approach the system integrator."

"One of the product's areas of improvement includes reducing the number of components requiring additional licenses, such as antivirus and IDS, which are already covered by our firewall."

"Technical support and documentation could both be improved."

"Though FortiADC is useful, I'd appreciate more user-friendly features and in-depth insights into network activity, like detailed logs and AI-driven feedback for optimization."

More Fortinet FortiADC cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our company pays for the licensing cost on a yearly basis. Also, there are no extra costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"We have found the pricing and licensing on AWS to be competitive."

"F5 isn’t cheap but is worth the price."

"Unless the price difference is large, this is not the primary concern for the product. The performance and product-related issues (secure for VPN, multi-function for network device, etc.) are the keys."

"It is the best solution, but that comes with an increased price."

"It was probably a one-time purchase and then you have maintenance, but I don't have the details on that. We bought what they called the Best bundle at the time, which pretty much included all of the modules. There was probably no additional cost afterward."

"The tool is a bit expensive."

"This is a high-priced tool. We pay for its license yearly."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pricing and cost advice

"They offer a perpetual license."

"The solution's pricing is an issue and should be improved."

"The solution could be more cost-effective."

"Our basic license excludes features such as antivirus and IDS. Due to license limitations, some functionalities are not configured."

"The solution is less expensive than F5 or Imperva and is the most reasonably priced option available."

"I rate Fortinet FortiADC's pricing one out of ten. It is fixed."

"The product has average pricing. I rate its pricing a five out of ten."

"The product has affordable pricing."

More Fortinet FortiADC pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

Government

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?

There are no specific areas for improvement as it is already well-resolved and doesn't require further enhancements.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?

The primary use case includes load balancing to serve application servers and basic web application firewall solutions. Our customers use it for that purpose.

See all answers

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)?

The solution is robust and reliable.

See all answers

Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?

For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc.

See all answers

Do you recommend Fortinet FortiADC?

I recommend Fortinet FortiADC. My experience with Fortinet has been very positive. Our company has been using it for around five years. We mainly use FortiADC for the load balancing of application ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiADC?

The user interface is very easy and integrates with Sandbox easily.

See all answers

Comparisons

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

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 8% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 8% of the time

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

Compared 7% of the time

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

Compared 6% of the time

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Competitors

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 26% of the time

NetScaler vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 13% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 9% of the time

A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 5% of the time

HAProxy vs Fortinet FortiADC

Compared 4% of the time

More Fortinet FortiADC Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

February 2025

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

Download F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) product report

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiADC

February 2025

Download Fortinet FortiADC product report

Also Known As

F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP

FortiADC Application Delivery Controller, FortiADC

Overview

F5 BIG-IP LTM optimizes the speed and reliability of your apps via both network and application layers. Using real-time protocol and traffic management decisions based on app and server and connection management conditions, and TCP and content offloading, BIG-IP LTM dramatically improves application and infrastructure responsiveness. BIG-IP LTM's architecture includes protocol awareness to control traffic for the most important applications. BIG-IP LTM tracks the dynamic performance levels of servers and delivers SSL performance and visibility for inbound and outbound traffic, to protect the user experience by encrypting everything from the client to the server.

BIG-IP LTM provides enterprise-class Application Delivery Controller (ADC). You get granular layer 7 control, SSL offloading and acceleration capabilities, and advanced scaling technologies that deliver performance and reliability on-demand. The highly optimized TCP/IP stack combines TCP/IP techniques and improvements in the latest RFCs with extensions to minimize the effect of congestion and packet loss and recovery. Independent testing tools and customer experiences show LTM's TCP stack delivers up to a 2x performance gain for users and a 4x increase in bandwidth efficiency.

Fortinet FortiADC is a robust application delivery controller (ADC) that delivers application optimization, application security, and application availability. FortiADC is a valued offering from Fortinet, which is widely recognized as a trusted supplier of dynamic security solutions worldwide. FortiADC offers dynamic security functions (AV, DDoS, and WAF) in addition to advanced application connectors for a simplified deployment and complete transparency to an organization's networks and applications. FortiADC offers three primary deployment options: physical machine, virtual machine, (VM) and cloud solution options.

Fortinet FortiADC Benefits

FortiADC security protocol: FortiADC integrates with FortiSandbox to improve the overall antivirus security protections where every file is scanned for known and unknown malicious risks. If a file is identified as malicious or problematic, it will be blocked in the future.
SSL protocol: FortiADC securely uses the most up-to-date cryptography to provide exceptional encryption and decryption using a hardware-based SSL ASIC. FortiADC offers complete transparency to inspect all traffic for threats, improves server response time, and reduces backend server load, SSL inspection and SSL offloading. FortiADC integrates seamlessly with Gemalto’s SafeNet Hardware Security Module (HSM).
FortiADC connectors: FortiADC Fabric Connectors offer open API-based integration and coordination with numerous software-defined networks (SDNs), third-party partners, and cloud management providers. Fortinet Fabric Connectors provide deep open and turnkey integration with recognized third-party vendors such as AWS, K8s, OCI, and SAP, in multi-vendor solutions, improving scalability, simplified management, and automation.
Business stability: FortiADC load balancing for on-premise global server load balancing (GSBL) and in the cloud (FortiGSBL Cloud) will ensure users can maintain a reliable and available network by improving the ability of scaling applications throughout numerous data centers to reduce application response times and enhance disaster recovery. Users are able to define protocols based on network latency concerns, overall data performance, and site availability.

Fortinet FortiADC Features

Application availability
- 4-7 application load balancing: DNS, HTTPS, RTMP, RADIUS, MySQL and more
- External fabric connectors: Splunk Integration, AWS/OCI Connector, Kubernetes Service.
- Security fabric connectors: FortiSIEM, Fortigate BanIP Integration, FortiAnalyzer, and more.
- Deployment modes: High availability (AA/AP Failover), Router mode, transparent mode (switch), one-arm mode (proxy with X-forwarded for support.
Web application firewall (WAF)
- Security services: Captcha support, cookie support, HTTP header security, XML/SOAP/JSON validation, CSRF protection, API gateway, and more.
- Application security: Web attack signature, bot detection, web vulnerability scanner, OWASP Top-10 Wizard, API protection and more.

Application enhancement
- HTTP and TCP improvement: TCP buffering, HTTP compressions/decompression, HTTP caching (dynamic and static objects), Bandwidth monitoring using quality of service (QoS), TCP buffering, and more.
- Authentication offloading: Two-factor authentication (Fortitoken/Fortitoken Cloud and Google Authentication), NTLM, AUTH2.0, SAML 2.0 (SP and Idp) RADIUS, LDAP, Kerbos, and local.
- Networking: Integration with Ansible, Cisco ACI, OpenStack and Nutanix, NVGRE and VXLAN support, VLAN and port trunking support, IPv6 Support (SLB, firewall, routing and interfaces), Dynamic NAT, Hide NAT, Static NAT for added scalability and flexibility.
- Management: Syslog support, SNMP using private MIBs with threshold-based traps. REST APIs, VDOMS, data analytics, real-time monitoring graphs, role-based monitoring, intuitive reporting, FortiView integration, and more.

Fortinet

Sample Customers

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. Fortinet FortiADC

January 2025

Free Report: F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. Fortinet FortiADC

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