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

Loadbalancer.org vs NGINX Plus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Loadbalancer.org
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NGINX Plus
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Loadbalancer.org is 3.4%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 8.5%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

Roger Seelaender - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 21, 2022
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
Jul 12, 2022
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

"With basic network knowledge, our required system functionality can be configured and maintained.​"
"For now, it's stable."
"It's pretty much a Swiss Army knife for managing all the load balancing techniques."
"It does what it’s supposed to do which is balancing an important intranet site we are using, so if one server dies, the second becomes active straight away."
"Existing customers are trying to migrate from the physical F5 load balancer to the AVI load balancer because it is scalable and easily managed."
"Loadbalancer is easy to use. It performs well, with low latency."
"The most valuable features of Loadbalancer.org are related to its load balancing capabilities."
"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."
"​Zero Downtime has always been a strength in recommending infrastructure web services. NGINX allows me to execute such infrastructure with less complications and the ability to switch from server to server easily.​"
"NGINX works much better than HAProxy in our current hardware and architecture for HTTP/HTTPS load balancing. ​​"
"NGINX Plus also has NGINX App Protect. It's a separate module, which is inspired by the F5 apps."
"Valuable features include authentication, caching, reverse proxy routing, and load balancing."
"I find the solution’s community support and documentation most valuable. Compared to HAProxy, have found a lot of documentation and community support on Quora. If you would be asking me as a developer whether to choose this product, I would recommend this since it has good community support, documentation, and signature updates. The configuration of HAProxy is also very tedious. However, NGINX’s configuration is very simple."
"The product is resilient."
"I need to highlight that the number one thing about NGINX is that it is free."
"Its versatility and capabilities make it invaluable for implementing patches and fixes when necessary."
 

Cons

"I would like it if Loadbalancer had the ability to make rules for specific shared bots."
"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 interface from Loadbalancer.org should be improved."
"If I have to say something, I suppose they could add an automated configuration backup to an FTP location (or something similar) so you don’t have to manually do it. I don’t see this as a problem, of course, as the configuration rarely changes and we only need one backup, but maybe for other users that feature would be handy."
"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."
"The configuration is somewhat complicated. Someone who does not know the solution may find this challenging."
"There is room for improvement in Loadbalancer.org in certain areas."
"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 solution must improve its performance."
"The solution needs to be easier to setup and deploy."
"They should do in the open source version of what they did to Advanced HTTP, TCP, and UDP load balancing."
"The KPI should be more focused on load balancing and the latency in application calling from the end system."
"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."
"I would like to see the Grafana integration in NGINX which is already present in HAProxy. Grafana integration will help the solution visualize all the data analytics on the dashboard which is currently not present."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is inexpensive, and even their “unlimited” version, the VA MAX is still far cheaper than competitors."
"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."
"It was easy to upgrade the license for unlimited clusters and servers. Pricing is fair."
"The solution requires an annual support license of $2,780 for four systems or $695 a year per unit for support not including the units."
"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 think it’s very affordable."
"They're not the cheapest, not the most expensive, but I think value-wise, they're 100%."
"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."
"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."
"It's an open source solution, so it's free."
"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours.​"
"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."
"You pay for each feature that you want."
"​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 cost is reasonable."
"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
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

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?
There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free. There's also NGINX Plus, which is a paid version with additional features.
 

Also Known As

No data available
NGINX
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

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: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.