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HAProxy vs Kemp LoadMaster comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

HAProxy
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Service Mesh (5th)
Kemp LoadMaster
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
7th
Average Rating
9.4
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 12.9%, down from 13.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kemp LoadMaster is 7.5%, up from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 17, 2024
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.
PeterForster - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 21, 2023
A highly stable and scalable load-balancing software that offers great technical support
I use Kemp LoadMaster in my company as a replacement for Microsoft Forefront Threat Management Gateway and as a load balancer for Microsoft Exchange services in an on-premises environment. Nowadays, I use Kemp LoadMaster as an application load balancer for SQL Server, DNS servers, and different…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The support for all major Linux distros makes running and testing a breeze."
"Tech support is super-quick to respond, and always on target with answers specific to the current issue."
"The ability to handle a sequence of front- and back-ends gives the user the opportunity to send traffic through different services."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable is that it works for my use case of application load balancing. I'm using it for PeerSense, and it's easy enough for PeerSense."
"We use the solution for load balancing."
"I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good."
"HAProxy's TCP load balancer is excellent and super stable."
"We don't have a problem with the user interface. it's good."
"The configuration is really easy and the web portal is self-explanatory."
"We needed a Microsoft Threat Management Gateway server replacement solution for a customer and were impressed with the simplified deployment of the Kemp LoadMasters."
"Edge Security Pack is valuable because of the way it separates between critical infrastructure and the public internet."
"Managing and maintaining multiple servers is done in a single place."
"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."
"From my personal experience, many firewalls provide Load Balancing functionalities, but Kemp Loadmaster has a lot of features and functionalities like what you can configure. So there are a lot of features but we use only five percent of it."
"The feature I find most valuable is load balancing with different algorithms."
"The DNS Load Balancer makes it so that I don't have to worry about site failures."
 

Cons

"The GUI should be more responsive and show the detailed output of logs."
"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)."
"Maybe HAProxy could be more modular."
"I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit"
"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."
"Documentation could be improved."
"The logging functionality could use improvement, as it is a little cryptic."
"The configuration should be more friendly, perhaps with a Web interface. For example, I work with the ClusterControl product for Severalnines, and we have a Web interface to deploy the HAProxy load-balancer."
"I want to have the ability to pull a particular server. The DevOps portion was challenging for me, like if I needed to redirect from one IP to another URL. I needed to look that up, and the knowledge base is not well organized. When I look for information about Kemp on the Internet, I don't find many articles or something like that."
"It has all types of logs and they are very detailed, but it's a little bit hard to search for a single event."
"Certificate installations could be simplified and modernized, and allowed to be monitored for expirations/issues."
"Hardware version needs a dual power solution."
"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."
"The only thing I have struggled with is setting up automatic backups."
"There is room for improvement in the stability of the solution."
"If you want logging for SMTP traffic, you have to enable ESP, which requires you to define allowed IP addresses. That’s irritating, to say the least."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."
"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."
"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."
"The tool is open-source."
"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."
"HAProxy is an open-source solution."
"The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."
"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
"Setup is easy, the cost is affordable, and the licensing is quick and simple."
"The pricing is alright and we pay a monthly licensing fee"
"Currently, no cost is involved with a virtual load balancer. They have used open source. We did not pay for software. We paid for the expertise. We are only paying the consulting charges, which are very reasonable, that is, around a thousand dollars."
"Less expensive than Citrix."
"The license varies according to the number of megabits."
"They have multiple tiers of licensing and you can upgrade it easily."
"Download Kemp's VLM trial and take it for a test drive; you will be impressed."
"This is a cost-efficient product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
63%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
3%
Financial Services Firm
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 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?
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 reportin...
 

Also Known As

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

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
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 HAProxy vs. Kemp LoadMaster and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
815,690 professionals have used our research since 2012.