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Kemp LoadMaster vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway 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

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
Microsoft Azure Application...
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
4th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Kemp LoadMaster is 7.3%, up from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is 8.5%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Sooryanarayan Hegde - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy management and configuration, affordable, and has good features
We use all the features. It is very useful. Using WAF, we can control the WAF rules based on our application requirements. We can control what rules should be used and what should be disabled. The role of the tool is limited to HTTP traffic. It does exactly what it must do. It's a regional service. We know how to use it for DR scenarios. WAF has been the most valuable in protecting applications. We use at least three instances in the back end to give the best performance for our applications. The management and configuration of the solution is quite easy. All certificate renewals are automatically taken care of by Key Vault.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We needed a Microsoft Threat Management Gateway server replacement solution for a customer and were impressed with the simplified deployment of the Kemp LoadMasters."
"The most valuable feature that I found is the load balancing feature, it is the core function of the product."
"We are most impressed with the ease of use and great support."
"The Global WAF has saved us more than one time from unwanted traffic."
"Load-balancing is a great feature that is very easy to configure and it is always working fine."
"The user interface is very easy to work with."
"Great web balancing and remote access balancing."
"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 health probe is pretty good for your backend health. It tells you whether it's communicating and talking to the endpoint correctly. It is quite useful."
"We chose this solution in the first place because it has access to Layer 7. I can control the requests and the content, which I can access on my network if I want to even if it's forbidden access to other external resources. If I want to monitor, for example, traffic, and apply this rule on Layer 7, I can do so. This was our main goal when implementing this application. We wanted to take advantage of the Gateway capabilities."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway are the policies, the data store they are using, and the cloud platform it operates on."
"Load balancing and web application firewall features are the most valuable."
"Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the performance side of things, which is why we use it."
"WAF feature replicates the firewall."
"The simplicity of the solution and its ability to integrate easily with others are its most valuable aspects."
"I rate Microsoft Azure Application Gateway's scalability a ten out of ten. My company has more than 1000 users who use it daily."
 

Cons

"We experienced a brief period of instability."
"So far, the only hitch we have run into is that would have been nice to have an easier method to add allow/whitelist entries into the Access Control lists for virtual services."
"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."
"Several elements of the GUI need work. For example, if you have many content switches, it’s difficult to find the ones you need. And where is the search feature?"
"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."
"It would be very helpful to get all the http/https session logs by default in the log monitor without activating debugging mode like an apache web sever natively does"
"It has all types of logs and they are very detailed, but it's a little bit hard to search for a single event."
"I think there should be more visual instructions on how to configure advanced features."
"The increased security that we are considering is because of some of the things that the security team has brought to our attention. They have pointed out that we would most likely require a better web application firewall than Azure Application Gateway."
"Application Gateway’s limitation is that the private and the public endpoint cannot use the same port."
"The solution has many limitations. You cannot upgrade the VPN to the application gateway. So I started with version one, which has limited capabilities, and they provided version two. And unfortunately, I cannot upgrade from v one to v two like other services. So I have to decommission the version one and create a new one with version two. Also the version one was complex with the certificates uploading the SQL certificates."
"The support can be improved when you are configuring the system rules. The Disaster Recovery feature can be added in the next release. The price of the solution can be reduced a bit."
"It is a bit tricky to configure. You've got to have a very specific format to configure it. They should make it a little bit easier to configure. Mapping the certificates into it isn't easy, and it could be better. Currently, you've to write a bit of automation to pull certificates directly to HTTPS."
"Needs easier integration with the existing SIAM."
"The solution doesn’t support wildcard-based and regular expression-based rules."
"One of the challenges we faced was the solution does not support any other PCP protocols apart from HTTP and HTTPS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"From a cost perspective, Kemp is very competitive and is not hard to justify by any means."
"Setup is easy, the cost is affordable, and the licensing is quick and simple."
"Licensing is yearly and I am going to guess that it is CAN $2000.00."
"Nowadays, going with the virtual appliance is the easiest way and the cost is reasonable."
"It is well-priced and licensing is very flexible."
"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."
"The price of the solution is cheap."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is expensive."
"I would rate the pricing a three out of ten, with ten being cheap and one being expensive."
"There is some additional cost, such as extended support."
"The pricing is based on how much you use the solution."
"Every solution comes with a license and cost. Microsoft provides the license and the total cost is for the maintenance every year."
"The solution is cheaper than Imperva. I rate it four to five out of ten."
"It is not expensive."
"The cost is not an issue."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
65%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
3%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides excellent support. Azure Front Door can quickly detect abnormalities before the...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft Azure Application Gateway web application firewall software was the better fit ...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the performance side of things, which is why we use it.
 

Also Known As

LoadMaster Load Balancer
Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Kent County Council, KEMP, SMA Solar Technology AG, RT€ Player , Victrix (Quebec, Canada), Texas A&M, Macmillan Cancer Support, Cisco, Austin Bank
Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell
Find out what your peers are saying about Kemp LoadMaster vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.