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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 April 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Kemp LoadMaster is 7.6%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 7.9%, down from 8.9% 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

"Load-balancing is a great feature that is very easy to configure and it is always working fine."
"LoadMaster is easy to deploy and understand."
"With Kemp 360 Central, our customers get a nice overview of their Kemp products and an easy way to upgrade firmware on all devices from a single interface."
"Mitigates content security policy issues."
"The security features are the most valuable features of this solution."
"It has been functional. We don't have any outages."
"Using Kemp as a front-facing service appliance, it allows me to have the flexibility of swapping out real servers behind the scenes without any intervention from my network team."
"We are most impressed with the ease of use and great support."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is simple to configure."
"Valuable features include authentication, caching, reverse proxy routing, and load balancing."
"The primary valuable feature of NGINX for me is its ability to provide a reverse proxy."
"-"
"Nginx is extremely efficient in terms of the connection rate to the CPU cycles ratio, and in terms of the bandwidth to CPU cycles."
"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."
"Supports IMAP, POP and SMTP protocols for the reverse proxy."
"The best solution, by far, for web traffic control for things in production and just around the house."
 

Cons

"In the next release, they can introduce 360 views in the same dashboard to make it easier for users to view. The graphical information should be displayed on the dashboard."
"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 nice if the historical metrics were easily exportable from the interface."
"The cost of the GEO upgrade is not cost-prohibitive but it's something that would be a nice add-in, out of the box."
"Over the last several major versions, the GUI has remained virtually unchanged and still seems lacking."
"If there is anything that needs to be updated, the GUI can get a refresh to make it look more like 2020, although it is just a cosmetic change."
"We have experienced at least one problem with stability, although it was fixed with an upgrade."
"The GUI is rather technical and complex, so it could be improved by making it simpler and more user-friendly."
"The solution needs to be easier to setup and deploy."
"I would suggest adding GUI-based configuration panels to NGINX Plus to simplify setup and management tasks."
"Initially, I experienced hiccups whenever I installed the application."
"I would like the configuration process to be more simplified."
"NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5."
"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. ​"
"Our most challenging part was to run an older PHP website reverse-proxied through NGINX. That was not fun."
"They should do in the open source version of what they did to Advanced HTTP, TCP, and UDP load balancing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nowadays, going with the virtual appliance is the easiest way and the cost is reasonable."
"This is a cost-efficient product."
"The price is lower than other options."
"The price of the solution is cheap."
"The price is great and the value is definitely there."
"Download Kemp's VLM trial and take it for a test drive; you will be impressed."
"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."
"Less expensive than Citrix."
"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."
"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."
"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."
"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."
"It's an open source solution, so it's free."
"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
59%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
3%
University
3%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.