Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Loadbalancer.org 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

Loadbalancer.org
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
23
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 Loadbalancer.org is 3.5%, up from 3.2% 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

Roger Seelaender - PeerSpot reviewer
Great WAF - low-maintenance solution that performs as advertised
The solution can be improved with the development of a SIP engine because it is difficult to manage SBCs. All SBCs are really tough to write rules for. If we could put this in front of an SBC to have the right rules to possibly block the traffic, that would be very helpful. The solution can also improve the relationship between Loadbalancer.org and Metaswitch, or now, Microsoft because Metaswitch was purchased by Microsoft. They both position themselves as certified but don't always talk to each other. I wish there would be closer integration between the solution and the vendors when either release new upgrades to their product line. Often we find issues on either end post upgrades.
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 connection that this solution helps our servers maintain has been most useful."
"Loadbalancer is easy to use. It performs well, with low latency."
"With basic network knowledge, our required system functionality can be configured and maintained.​"
"Most important for us that it makes sure that the load is distributed and that we always have access to the end servers."
"The user interface precludes need to be well versed with Linux IPVS command line. This make it easy for junior team members to participate in managing load balancing needs."
"Loadbalancer.org is less complex than Citrix."
"We now get notifications when pool members go down, and we eliminate our downtime by not sending traffic to downed pool members.​"
"It's pretty much a Swiss Army knife for managing all the load balancing techniques."
"When you use NGINX, you have more options and power."
"I need to highlight that the number one thing about NGINX is that it is free."
"Supports IMAP, POP and SMTP protocols for the reverse proxy."
"It's lightweight software that can handle heavy loads efficiently."
"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."
"The product is resilient."
"The best solution, by far, for web traffic control for things in production and just around the house."
"Application Gateway with application-level firewall tool and load distributor and balancer (also serves for A/B testing)."
 

Cons

"Compared to the physical products, the solution's throughput is a little less."
"We could enhance the security aspects of the load balancer."
"Loadbalancer.org's complexity could be reduced."
"There are many features you can set in the backend of Loadbalancer. They should simplify the configuration. The administrator should be able to configure it more simply. How it is now, you can only configure it if you have a lot of experience."
"I'd like to see scalability improved; it can be costly."
"You can run into an issue when one engineer passes the case over to another engineer after their shift and they don't know what the first engineer worked on up to that point."
"The configuration is somewhat complicated. Someone who does not know the solution may find this challenging."
"They're mostly designed to balance a particular type of traffic. I wanted to load balance DNS, and they just don't do it the way that we wanted to. So they're not used as DNS load balancers."
"Lack of a feature to print data on the terminal for verification of network traffic during debugging and testing."
"The scalability could be improved."
"The KPI should be more focused on load balancing and the latency in application calling from the end system."
"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 solution's GUI is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"I would suggest adding GUI-based configuration panels to NGINX Plus to simplify setup and management tasks."
"Our most challenging part was to run an older PHP website reverse-proxied through NGINX. That was not fun."
"The scaling should be built into the software rather than configured from an outside source."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's worth the cost. It's not cheap, but it's a good solution. If you're looking for a good solution, this is a good solution. Is it cheap? No. Is it worth the money? Yes, I think it is."
"I think it’s very affordable."
"Loadbalancer.org is based on open-source products, but it requires money for support and other activities."
"They're not the cheapest, not the most expensive, but I think value-wise, they're 100%."
"For now, it's stable."
"I love that they do not price on some arbitrary throughput rating where you are guessing at what the load balancer is going to handle."
"I’m not entirely sure about the rating since I'm not very technical. I haven't thoroughly compared the ratings. So, if you're asking for my impression so far, I would rate it around five out of 10."
"We've got an unlimited license, which doesn't costs that much compared to other vendors, and we don't have to buy it again."
"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."
"The cost is reasonable."
"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."
"You pay for each feature that you want."
"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."
"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours.​"
"​NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it.​"
"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.
848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
8%
University
7%
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

Do you recommend Loadbalancer.org?
Since Loadbalancer.org is an open-source solution, I would recommend this solution for smaller businesses that don’t have major scaling requirements and don’t have the budget for a commercial solut...
What do you like most about Loadbalancer.org?
Existing customers are trying to migrate from the physical F5 load balancer to the AVI load balancer because it is scalable and easily managed.
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

No data available
NGINX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Vodafone, NASA, Mercedes, NBC, Siemens, AT&T, Barclays, Zurich, Penn State University, Fiserv, Canon, Toyota, University of Cambridge, US Army, US Navy, Ocean Spray, ASOS, Pfizer, BBC, Bacardi, Monsoon, River Island, U.S Air Force, King's College London, NHS, Ricoh, Philips, Santander, TATA Communications, Ericcson, Ross Video, Evertz, TalkTalk TV, Giacom, Rapid Host.
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 Loadbalancer.org vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,207 professionals have used our research since 2012.