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Fortinet FortiADC vs Kemp LoadMaster 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

Fortinet FortiADC
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Kemp LoadMaster
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
8th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiADC is 10.1%, up from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kemp LoadMaster is 7.6%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

Saeid Khanipour Ghobani - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
PeterForster - PeerSpot reviewer
A highly stable and scalable load-balancing software that offers great technical support
My company is really happy with Kemp LoadMaster as a product. My company is also happy with the support we receive from Kemp LoadMaster. I want Kemp LoadMaster to provide users with better reporting capabilities in relation to TCP packets. In general, the connections that are present in the system require improvement. Feature-wise, Kemp LoadMaster has everything that our company's customers require. Kemp LoadMaster also has features that have supported our company's past projects.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the SSL offloading capacity."
"FortiADC provides load-balancing capabilities needed for integration with other Fortinet platforms."
"The product has flexible and interesting licensing options."
"Ease of use in deploying and having it up and running requires minimal knowledge."
"The solution provides high-level services such as availability, redundancy, and load balancing between servers."
"Although FortiADC has multiple features that I like, the global DNS is the most helpful. It is primarily useful for customers with huge environments and at least two data centers. FortiADC can act as your DNS server. It can check which data center has the lowest latency, and route traffic to that one. It's an intelligent DNS."
"Fortinet FortiADC is a good product because each and every piece of content is monitored by it."
"Customer service is excellent."
"I like that this is a Network Load Balancer that can be used practically with any application in the backend. They have how-to guides on how to set up Kemp NLB with Exchange, but you can use it as well for Sharepoint, RDS, or any other back end server."
"The feature that allows us to easily disconnect a server when we need and bring back online is the most valuable. It's a click of a button. This allows us to keep all systems up. We can then run updates, perform reboots whatever we need to one of the servers without taking production down."
"The most valuable features are synchronizing email with mobile devices and synchronizing with Outlook."
"The DNS Load Balancer makes it so that I don't have to worry about site failures."
"The most valuable features for us are the Load Balancing and Web Application Firewall, as we have a lot of web applications."
"​Simple to install with good documentation."
"It is an easy-to-use, user-friendly interface, and you can set up a new VIP in a couple of minutes."
"The solution is easy to configure when changing the load balancing method to Round Robin or least connection."
 

Cons

"There is a mismatch between the number of features they are offering and the device capacity on how much it can handle."
"The L7 Persistent load-balancing algorithm has not worked for me after having tested it many times with my customer's in-house application. I'd like to suggest that the company make sure that all load-balancing algorithms work properly with most applications, even those that are in-house apps."
"The product’s price could be reduced. Also, some of its features need to be more advanced."
"The user interface could be more friendly and CLI could be more like that of Fortigate."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"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."
"Issues with SSL and encrypted traffic."
"The solution needs to integrate sFlow. sFlow provides better visualization of the bandwidth and types of traffic passing through the device. When used in the traffic path, this information can be really useful."
"When we go serverless, we may again have to revisit this because the configuration needs to be changed. With this change, we can run into a lot of other configurations that we haven't got into, which involve additional expenses. It would be challenging to convince management to buy at that price point. It would be a balancing act of justifying that expense and the value, that is, how it is going to save a bit of time and make our platform secure. It can have better configuration ability. A lot of iterations happen when we have multiple servers pointing to the same domain. If we do not orchestrate carefully, it gets into a loop, which takes away the precious time of the user who is trying to subscribe to a service. It takes a little longer time to realize services as well as web pages."
"In my opinion, the layer seven loads balancing that we're mainly using for web servers, doesn't seem to pick up when there are issues at the application level."
"I want Kemp LoadMaster to provide users with better reporting capabilities in relation to TCP packets. In general, the connections that are present in the system require improvement."
"It would be much easier to have the management interface directly integrate with the Kemp Support library, allowing you to choose the desired template from the online catalog to then directly download to the LoadMaster."
"It has all types of logs and they are very detailed, but it's a little bit hard to search for a single event."
"If I had to change something it would maybe be to have a little better reporting graphics that show more details in the reporting. It seems to be a little small in the graphic, and I'm not sure if possible but maybe a GUI page that one can use to monitor if any server goes down."
"The cost of the GEO upgrade is not cost-prohibitive but it's something that would be a nice add-in, out of the box."
"The auth website of ESP is really lacking. It’s not responsive (mobile friendly) and the procedure of changing the website is difficult. We tend to avoid using pre-auth for that reason."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I believe the price is good. It's fair. There are no extra costs."
"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 product has average pricing. I rate its pricing a five out of ten."
"The solution's pricing is an issue and should be improved."
"The solution is less expensive than F5 or Imperva and is the most reasonably priced option available."
"They offer a perpetual license."
"Compared to F5, FortiADC pricing is better."
"It has a very attractive ratio of price/performance."
"Any decent product will cost money and if you want great support and a great product, then you will want to spend the money on it."
"This is a cost-efficient product."
"​I have control on the licensing and all the prices since I work for a partner.​"
"KEMP gives away free trials for 30 days. This can be stretched if you want. During the test, you will have access to KEMP support.​"
"From a cost perspective, Kemp is very competitive and is not hard to justify by any means."
"At $2,500 USD, this is absolutely a fantastic buy for the money!"
"This product has good value and features for the money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
63%
Computer Software Company
7%
University
3%
Government
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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 ...
What do you like most about Fortinet FortiADC?
The user interface is very easy and integrates with Sandbox easily.
What do you like most about Kemp LoadMaster?
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten...I rate the technical support a ten out of ten...The initial setup of Kemp LoadMaster is very simple.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kemp LoadMaster?
LoadMaster is cheaper than some other solutions. It has a perpetual license, so it's a one-time cost.
What needs improvement with Kemp LoadMaster?
There are some challenges with updates on certain models that don't have a few features. The support team often takes a lot of time to provide resolutions for issues. Also, I could see more capabil...
 

Also Known As

FortiADC Application Delivery Controller, FortiADC
LoadMaster Load Balancer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Kent County Council, KEMP, SMA Solar Technology AG, RT€ Player , Victrix (Quebec, Canada), Texas A&M, Macmillan Cancer Support, Cisco, Austin Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiADC vs. Kemp LoadMaster and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.