F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NGINX Plus comparison

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and NGINX Plus are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.4, while NGINX Plus is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.3. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) holds a 15.0% mindshare in ADC, compared to NGINX Plus’s 8.5% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of NGINX Plus users who would recommend it.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

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

8,171 Views
6,832 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 28 NGINX Plus reviews

4,885 Views
3,959 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

NGINX Plus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and NGINX Plus based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. NGINX Plus Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. NGINX Plus

October 2024

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Helped 816,406 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

120

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NGINX Plus

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

5th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is 15.0%, down from 16.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 8.5%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Richard Polyak

Sr. Architect at NBC Universal

Reduces maintenance downtime and has a strong user community

The advice I would give to others who are looking to implement F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is this: look at their user knowledge base first to see if the solution truly fits what you need. On a scale of one to 10, I would give F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager a nine.

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Ritesh-Bakhru

Major Account Manager at Check Point Software

Quick installation and very easy to manage while doing orchestration or automation

NGINX cannot be a replacement for your traditional load balancer with what we use in the network today. However, with applications going toward microservices, NGINX is definitely a way forward. F5 has many traditional load balancing features, so they still need to bring some of those features to NGINX. NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5. I think F5 is trying to implement those features in NGINX so they can improve the balancing on NGINX, but I think that will take some time. With the traditional F5 set up, the same OS can do load balancing, firewalls, and even policy enforcement. If we are able to bring some of those capabilities to NGINX, I think it would become a versatile solution and usage would definitely increase.

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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

"The capability is at a seven or eight out of ten."

"The combination of ADC and WAN is the most valuable feature."

"The most valuable feature is being able to manipulate the iRules, so you can send traffic to different avenues."

"It makes the publishing of applications to the Internet safer."

"iRule feature is useful."

"F5 has many capabilities for load balancing and web application firewall features."

"We use F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager to balance traffic."

"Bandwidth optimization and capacity awareness of the bandwidth are valuable features. Its video streaming capabilities are also very useful."

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

"This solution has everything."

"Nginx is extremely efficient in terms of the connection rate to the CPU cycles ratio, and in terms of the bandwidth to CPU cycles."

"I need to highlight that the number one thing about NGINX is that it is free."

"When you use NGINX, you have more options and power."

"NGINX Plus also has NGINX App Protect. It's a separate module, which is inspired by the F5 apps."

"I think installation only took a couple of minutes — no more than 10 minutes."

"-"

"I find the solution’s community support and documentation most valuable. Compared to HAProxy, have found a lot of documentation and community support on Quora. If you would be asking me as a developer whether to choose this product, I would recommend this since it has good community support, documentation, and signature updates. The configuration of HAProxy is also very tedious. However, NGINX’s configuration is very simple."

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"My only point of contention would be that it is a little pricey."

"Its price can be better. It is a bit expensive."

"I would like them to expand load balancing, being able to go across multiple regions to on-premise and into the cloud. This could use improvement, as it is sometimes a little cumbersome."

"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."

"In terms of what could be improved, I would expect more integration with different platforms and more integration with the backend systems. Additionally, in the next release, I would like a more secure version."

"Native support for containers should be added to future releases, as this is the future of load balancing."

"The pricing of the product is a bit too high."

"There are some aspects of F5 BIG-IP that could be improved, the main one being virtual machine support. We have seen that even with the virtual editions, there are some things that we would like to do that are currently not possible with virtual machines."

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

"I would suggest adding GUI-based configuration panels to NGINX Plus to simplify setup and management tasks."

"I would like the configuration process to be more simplified."

"They should do in the open source version of what they did to Advanced HTTP, TCP, and UDP load balancing."

"Make modules easier to enable or disable. The beauty and ugly side of the NGINX modules is you have to know how to compile the module. For beginners or non-very technical aspirant(s) going for NGINX, they have to learn how to compile the modules."

"The KPI should be more focused on load balancing and the latency in application calling from the end system."

"Our most challenging part was to run an older PHP website reverse-proxied through NGINX. That was not fun."

"Improvement needed in NGINX Plus could focus on optimizing memory usage for users."

"The solution's GUI is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When we purchased additional licenses for our other locations, we received a discount of between 20% and 25%."

"The solution is quite expensive if we compare it with the competition."

"We are on an annual license to use the solution."

"This product is costly from a licensing perspective considering its competitors."

"The price of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is too high."

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

"I am a fan of using AWS natively. It is much cheaper."

"It is quite expensive as a product. Because it is very stable, it is also expensive."

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

"NGINX Plus is an open-source solution with limited additional features. When you try to get additional features in the solution, then you need to pay an extra amount to NGINX Plus."

"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."

"NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it."

"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours."

"NGINX Plus is worth it, if you need it. If you do not need the features or support, the free and open source package is more than capable. "

"The cost is reasonable."

"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."

"It's an open source solution, so it's free."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.

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816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?

Price is an area of the tool where improvements are required. I want to see CDN capabilities in the product.

See all answers

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

I use the solution for load balancing.

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

Which is better - IIS or NGINX Plus?

IIS is a flexible, secure, and manageable web server to host anything on the web. IIS’s scalable and open architecture can handle the most demanding tasks. From media streaming to web applications,...

See all answers

What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Plus?

There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free. There's also NGINX Plus, which is a paid version with additional features.

See all answers

Comparisons

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

Compared 18% of the time

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

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway 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

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 19% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 18% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus

Compared 14% of the time

Apache Web Server vs NGINX Plus

Compared 8% of the time

NetScaler vs NGINX Plus

Compared 8% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

November 2024

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

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

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

November 2024

Download NGINX Plus 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

NGINX

Learn More

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.

NGINX Plus is a versatile solution that offers load balancing, caching, proxying, and API deployment capabilities. It can be deployed on private or public clouds and is ideal for building CDN solutions. The solution can also be used to secure web applications and replace web services like Apache.

NGINX has helped organizations improve functioning, reduce downtimes, and offer a DevOps-friendly solution. Its community support and documentation are highly regarded, and its configuration is more straightforward, making it a recommended choice over HAProxy.

Sample Customers

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

Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA

Buyer's Guide

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. NGINX Plus

October 2024

Free Report: F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. NGINX Plus

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