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HAProxy vs HashiCorp Consul comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

HAProxy
Ranking in Service Mesh
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (3rd)
HashiCorp Consul
Ranking in Service Mesh
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Service Mesh category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 14.4%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HashiCorp Consul is 5.4%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Service Mesh
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Phanindra Sangers - PeerSpot reviewer
Has an efficient key vault feature, but its integration capabilities need enhancement
I recommend HashiCorp Consul for beginners. It is a stable tool. The key-vault storage feature has significantly enhanced our configuration management process. We have maintained the secret software applications in the vault and retrieved the information from Kv. I rate the product a seven out of ten. It is good open-source software to be managed within the production.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"​It has allowed us to evenly distribute the load across a number of servers, and check their health and automatically react to errors."
"It is a crucial tool in ensuring smooth service provision without any interruptions."
"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."
"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."
"It improves our scalability and responsiveness services to meet our demanding customer requirements."
"The most valuable thing for me is TCP/IP Layer 4 stuff you can do with HAProxy. You can go down to the protocol level and make decisions on something."
"We did not need technical support because the documentation is good."
"HashiCorp Consul's most valuable feature is the automation of many processes, which limits the errors from user interaction."
"The product's most valuable features are support for Service Mesh TLS and canary deployment."
"The documentation is good."
 

Cons

"The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved."
"While troubleshooting, we are having some difficulties. There are no issues when it is running; it is stable and very good; however, if there is a troubleshooting issue or an incident occurs, we will have issues because this is open-source."
"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."
"There is no standardized document available. So, any individual has to work from scratch to work it out. If some standard deployment details are available, it would be helpful for people while deploying it. There should be more documentation on the standard deployment."
"The logging functionality could use improvement, as it is a little cryptic."
"I would like to evaluate load-balancing algorithms other than round robin and SSL offloading. Also, it would be helpful if I could logically divide the HAProxy load-balancing into multiple entities so that I would install one HA Proxy LB application which could be used for different Web servers for different applications. I am not sure if these features are available."
"We've changed solutions as it doesn't fit with our current needs."
"The GUI should be more responsive and show the detailed output of logs."
"Health check outputs are delayed sometimes."
"The command line of HashiCorp Consul could be more intuitive to make it easier to use."
"They could improve issues related to triggering generic deployments for the platform."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."
"The price is well worth it. HAProxy Enterprise Edition paid for itself within months, simply due to the resiliency it brings. It was a bit more expensive than we were originally interested in paying, but we are thankful we chose to go with HAProxy."
"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."
"It is free of cost."
"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."
"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."
"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."
"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."
"In case of budget constraints, we opt for the product's business support licenses and use an open-source version"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What do you like most about HashiCorp Consul?
The product's most valuable features are support for Service Mesh TLS and canary deployment.
What needs improvement with HashiCorp Consul?
They could improve issues related to triggering generic deployments for the platform. We have raised multiple support cases. They could enhance the integration approach with Service Mesh tools. Add...
What advice do you have for others considering HashiCorp Consul?
I recommend HashiCorp Consul for beginners. It is a stable tool. The key-vault storage feature has significantly enhanced our configuration management process. We have maintained the secret softwar...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
No data available
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about HAProxy vs. HashiCorp Consul and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.