IBM WebSphere Application Server vs NGINX Plus comparison

IBM and F5 are both solutions in the Application Infrastructure category. IBM is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.8, while F5 is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3. IBM holds a 12.0% mindshare in AIS, compared to F5’s 11.4% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of F5 users who would recommend it.

IBM WebSphere Application S...

Read 31 IBM WebSphere Application Server reviews

2,329 Views
1,674 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 31 NGINX Plus reviews

2,093 Views
1,787 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

IBM WebSphere Application S...

NGINX Plus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

IBM WebSphere Application Server and NGINX Plus compete in application deployment management. WebSphere seems to have the upper hand in enterprise settings due to its comprehensive features, whereas NGINX Plus excels in performance and simplicity, appealing to agile environments.

Features: IBM WebSphere Application Server offers robust enterprise integration, extensive security features, and efficient clustering capabilities. NGINX Plus delivers high-performance support for HTTP, an advanced load balancing system, and microservices optimization. WebSphere enriches larger enterprises with middleware functionality, while NGINX Plus ensures speed and efficiency for fast-paced operations.

Room for Improvement: IBM WebSphere could improve by simplifying configurations, enhancing user interface intuitiveness, and streamlining middleware integration. NGINX Plus could enhance scalability features, expand native security capabilities, and optimize configuration processes further.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NGINX Plus boasts a straightforward deployment process and responsive customer service, suitable for businesses prioritizing agility. IBM WebSphere, despite its complex deployment requirements, offers extensive support options advantageous for enterprises needing detailed assistance.

Pricing and ROI: IBM WebSphere generally involves higher initial costs but can offer significant ROI in extensive enterprises through its comprehensive features and robust support. NGINX Plus, with lower initial costs, offers quick ROI through its simple yet effective functionalities, making it cost-effective for startups and cloud-native applications.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM WebSphere Application Server vs. NGINX Plus Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Application Server vs. NGINX Plus

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 848,716 peers since 2012

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

IBM WebSphere Application S...

Ranking in Application Infrastructure

5th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Server (5th)

NGINX Plus

Ranking in Application Infrastructure

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of IBM WebSphere Application Server is 12.0%, up from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 11.4%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Infrastructure

Featured Reviews

BharathirajaSukumar

Senior Lead Analyst at Radial

Efficient load balancing and the clustering, achieved by using the deployment manager, is valuable

I believe that the system is already good. However, for improvement or enhancement, it is user-friendly, but it could offer better choices on the front end for different aspects or options. Sometimes, I have to search extensively for features, as there are no upfront tabs. There is a lack of visible, easy, user-friendly, and straightforward options for the number of features.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"As compared to other applications, it has tremendous support. We have built internal capability so that we use it extensively internally. It is also easier to use with the outside data. You can write in ESQL, Java, or any other technology that you want to use for development. So, it is a lot more flexible in the language that it supports."

"The most valuable features are its user-friendliness and reliability in terms of application hosting."

"The solution is robust. The connection management and the scalability, which IBM provides to the Stack, are also valuable."

"High availability, alert management, and deployments are the most valuable features for us. We have the ND version so we can do deployments."

"Ease of administration: It has an Integrated Solutions Console, what we call the administrative console, with very detailed configurations and Help pages for each configurable item."

"The integration between IBM tools and applications is very well executed."

"Security: It is compatible with the latest Java 8 security features, supports FIPS 140-2 and NIST SP 800-53 with strong ciphers and cryptography keys, and supports TLS 1.2 completely. Also, configuring client and server certificates is relatively easy."

"IBM WAS is extremely scalable. It is easy to add additional servers and to divide the load over servers in all kinds of ways."

More IBM WebSphere Application Server pros

"The primary valuable feature of NGINX for me is its ability to provide a reverse proxy."

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

"It's lightweight software that can handle heavy loads efficiently."

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

"The most valuable features are the gateway and the ability to publish to sites."

"Its most valuable features are load balancing and application delivery. This is the most efficient application for these features because of stability and its efficiency."

"Nginx is simple to configure, very stable in a highly utilized environment and very modular, allowing DevOps to create it's own modules for interactive use with Nginx."

"Application Gateway with application-level firewall tool and load distributor and balancer (also serves for A/B testing)."

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"Installing or configuring a WAS server instance as a Windows Service causes a lot of problems, especially when the server needs credentials to stop."

"IBM needs to pay attention to market changes more quickly. We now have Java 9 and very soon Java EE8. We do not want to wait for two or three years after their release until they are supported by the new version."

"When compared with WebLogic, Weblogic is lighter and consumes less memory."

"It should be able to serve more concurrent requests like Oracle. Oracle has more powerful stability, availability, and real-time serving."

"WebSphere Application Server doesn't have an automated deployment option, forcing us to use third-party tools like Jenkins UCD and Palo Automated Deployment."

"WebSphere is very cumbersome and not user-friendly. It used to have its own JVM, which presented challenges such as different architecture and memory leaks."

"Some things are very difficult to do, so the interface and usage could be more intuitive for those."

"Sometimes, I feel WebSphere runs a bit slow. It might be loading unnecessary libraries, impacting its performance compared to other application servers."

More IBM WebSphere Application Server cons

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

"The scalability could be improved."

"Initially, I experienced hiccups whenever I installed the application."

"Initially, I experienced hiccups whenever I installed the application. As with any application, there were initial issues, however, after receiving support, everything was rectified."

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

"Only improvement needed that I would point to is scalability. With it, I mean clusterized organisation on a low level. At the moment, the best alternative is RHEL HA."

"The biggest room for improvement would be to allow NGINX Core machines to cluster for memory zones in some way with a plug and play module. "

"It would be good if NGINX provided a graphical user interface."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company is on a perpetual or permanent license agreement with IBM WebSphere Application Server. There's also a pay-per-use option, but customers rarely choose that option. Most of the customers are on the perpetual license deal that's all-inclusive. As the license cost is quite expensive, I'm rating it two out of five."

"We pay around $200,000 annually."

"The price of IBM WebSphere Application Server could be less expensive and there is an annual license required for this solution."

"It is very expensive."

"Room for improvement would only be in the licensing. As with all IBM products the licensing can be complex and expensive. Bargain well and try to get as much discount as possible. Discounts of 85% are possible. Without the discount, I think the product is overrated."

"The solution is quite expensive."

"When you purchase Maximo, you get WebSphere for free."

"It's expensive."

More IBM WebSphere Application Server pricing and cost advice

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

"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."

"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."

"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. "

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

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

"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."

"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Infrastructure solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

31%

Computer Software Company

13%

Insurance Company

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 do you like most about IBM WebSphere Application Server?

Network Deployment is the most useful feature for scalability. It has many features within the standard WebSphere Application Server edition.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM WebSphere Application Server?

In Korea, when you buy IBM iOS, the WebSphere base version is included with iOS. That means no additional cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM WebSphere Application Server?

I find the server okay, however, using the Maker instance, the Moving instance, and the Change instance is a little bit complicated without WebSphere knowledge.

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?

My use case involves using the free and open-source version of NGINX, making it cost-effective as I haven't incurred any costs.

See all answers

Comparisons

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform vs IBM WebSphere Application Server

Compared 27% of the time

JBoss vs IBM WebSphere Application Server

Compared 24% of the time

Tomcat vs IBM WebSphere Application Server

Compared 17% of the time

Oracle WebLogic Server vs IBM WebSphere Application Server

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Fusion Middleware vs IBM WebSphere Application Server

Compared 2% of the time

More IBM WebSphere Application Server Competitors

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 17% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 16% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus

Compared 11% of the time

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

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft .NET Framework vs NGINX Plus

Compared 1% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Application Server

April 2025

Download IBM WebSphere Application Server product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

April 2025

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

WebSphere Application Server

NGINX

Overview

IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS) is a middleware platform developed by IBM. It provides a range of services and tools to help organizations develop, deploy, and manage Java-based applications. WAS is part of IBM's WebSphere product family and provides a secure, scalable, and highly available platform for developing and running web-based applications. WAS provides a secure, scalable, and highly available platform, making it an attractive solution for organizations looking to develop and deploy enterprise-grade applications.

IBM WebSphere Application Server Features

IBM WebSphere Application Server has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Application deployment: IBM WAS enables organizations to deploy and manage applications in a secure and scalable environment.

Clustering: The clustering feature can help organizations ensure high availability and improve application performance.

Load balancing: The solution Includes load balancing capabilities to distribute application workloads and improve performance.

Security: IBM WAS offers a range of security features, including authentication, authorization, and encryption, to help organizations secure their applications and data.

Monitoring and management: The solution’s range of tools for monitoring and managing applications, including the IBM WebSphere Administrative Console allows organizations to optimize application performance and resolve issues easily.

Integration: IBM WAS integrates with a range of IBM and third-party products, including IBM WebSphere MQ, IBM DB2, and more, to provide a comprehensive platform for developing and running web-based applications.

IBM WebSphere Application Server Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing IBM WebSphere Application Server. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Improved application performance: The IBM WAS platform offers a scalable and secure platform for deploying and managing applications, enabling organizations to improve application performance and reduce downtime.

High availability: IBM WAS provides clustering and load-balancing capabilities to help organizations ensure high availability.

Improved security: With a large range of security features, including authentication, authorization, and encryption, the solution helps organizations secure their applications and data.

Simplified management: IBM WAS is designed with a set of tools for monitoring and managing applications, enabling organizations to optimize performance and resolve issues efficiently.

Increased flexibility: The solution integrates with a range of IBM and third-party products, providing organizations with a flexible platform for developing and running web-based applications.

Improved developer productivity: It supports the latest Java EE specifications, allowing developers to use the latest technologies and development methodologies when building applications.

Better customer experience: Organizations can deliver faster and more reliable applications, improving the overall customer experience.

Scalability: IBM WAS provides a scalable and secure platform for deploying and managing applications, so organizations can quickly respond to changing business requirements.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM WebSphere Application Server is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Some of its major advantages are that it is stable, supports many languages, and is resilient.

Princewill O., Head Banking Application Customization and Reporting at a financial services firm, states, “[The solution is] very stable, supports many languages, and helpful for faster time to market.”

"What's most valuable in IBM WebSphere Application Server is its resilience. When you use the solution, you know that after the communication has been done, there will be no doubt that the data has reached its destination,” says Nicolae C., System and Solutions Architect at Seidor.

Another PeerSpot reviewer, an Enterprise Technical Leader at a tech services company mentions, “[It is an] enterprise-level product with extensive console capabilities, including the ability to control multiple JVM containers.”

IBM

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

TalkTalk, Property management group, E.SUN Bank, Ohio National Financial Services, Aviarc, Cincom Systems, FJA-US, D+H, Staples, Michigan Municipal League

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM WebSphere Application Server vs. NGINX Plus

April 2025

Free Report: IBM WebSphere Application Server vs. NGINX Plus

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM WebSphere Application Server vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our IBM WebSphere Application Server vs. NGINX Plus report.

See our list of best Application Infrastructure vendors.

We monitor all Application Infrastructure reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.