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Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus 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
NGINX Plus
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Kemp LoadMaster is 7.6%, up from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 8.1%, down from 9.1% 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.
Ritesh-Bakhru - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 feature that I found is the load balancing feature, it is the core function of the product."
"The most valuable features are synchronizing email with mobile devices and synchronizing with Outlook."
"When the templates are used, there is not much left to configure and they just work!"
"Mitigates content security policy issues."
"The DNS Load Balancer makes it so that I don't have to worry about site failures."
"LoadMaster is easy to deploy and understand."
"It has greatly fortified the performance and uptime of our front-door email ingress, simplified and segmented mail routing, and reduced admin overhead for mail issue resolution and troubleshooting."
"The robust software architecture allows for it to be scalable and very stable."
"​The flexibility of its modules allow it to be scalable.​"
"I need to highlight that the number one thing about NGINX is that it is free."
"NGINX Plus also has NGINX App Protect. It's a separate module, which is inspired by the F5 apps."
"NGINX Plus' most valuable feature is the ingress controller."
"I think installation only took a couple of minutes — no more than 10 minutes."
"With NGINX, I appreciate its ability to route traffic geographically."
"When I worked in a security research center, we tested NGINX to support DoS and DDoS attacks, and its results were great."
 

Cons

"It would be helpful if there were a way to incorporate tooltips on the fields so that we don't have to dig through documentation."
"Some documentation is out of date versus the new version, and things have been moved​."
"It would be nice if the historical metrics were easily exportable from the interface."
"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."
"SNMP and/or RESTCONF management, in order to collect many counters, for plotting in a central application need to be improved."
"The configuration of the basic services is pretty straight forward but for more complex solutions, there needs to be better documentation or knowledge base articles."
"I definitely think that the WAF can be improved."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."
"NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5."
"NGINX Plus is moderately priced, but it could give better value for money."
"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. ​"
"The drawback is that you must obtain a license for everything."
"Make modules easier to enable or disable. The beauty and ugly side of the NGINX modules is you have to know how to compile the module. For beginners or non-very technical aspirant(s) going for NGINX, they have to learn how to compile the modules.​"
"If NGINX brings some features for health check in the open source version, it would be better. ​"
"One area of improvement could be that NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This product has good value and features for the money."
"The setup cost and pricing plan is reasonable and will ultimately give you a worthy return."
"​I have control on the licensing and all the prices since I work for a partner.​"
"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."
"The price of the solution is cheap."
"The price is great and the value is definitely there."
"Licensing is yearly and I am going to guess that it is CAN $2000.00."
"It is well-priced and licensing is very flexible."
"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."
"​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. ​"
"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."
"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."
"NGINX Plus is an open-source solution with limited additional features. When you try to get additional features in the solution, then you need to pay an extra amount to NGINX Plus."
"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."
"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."
"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
63%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
3%
Financial Services Firm
3%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

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...
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,...
What do you like most about NGINX Plus?
It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.
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.
 

Also Known As

LoadMaster Load Balancer
NGINX
 

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
Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA
Find out what your peers are saying about Kemp LoadMaster vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.