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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 February 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Loadbalancer.org is 3.3%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 8.3%, down from 9.2% 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 performance is good."
"We now get notifications when pool members go down, and we eliminate our downtime by not sending traffic to downed pool members.​"
"The SSL Layer 7 load balancing is valuable."
"We can more easily set up a test environment, because you can easily configure your forms. It makes it more flexible for us, to convert our test environment to a production environment, without having to change DNSs on the outside. You just configure the forms on the inside. So without changing the actual endpoint for the end user, we can create completely different networks in the background."
"It helps us to route the traffic to the available servers. If we didn't have Loadbalancer we would fail to set the end-user and it would cause a failure in the cluster."
"The support we have received from Loadbalancer.org has been good."
"The load balancers have an easy installation and a relatively simple, easy user interface to use."
"The features I find valuable in this solution are the ease of managing the logs on the WAFs, the ease to identify break-in attempts into the network, the front-end firewall, and a more specific firewall."
"Its versatility and capabilities make it invaluable for implementing patches and fixes when necessary."
"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."
"When I worked in a security research center, we tested NGINX to support DoS and DDoS attacks, and its results were great."
"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."
"Its most valuable features are load balancing and application delivery. This is the most efficient application for these features because of stability and its efficiency."
"NGINX Plus' most valuable feature is the ingress controller."
"The robust software architecture allows for it to be scalable and very stable."
"-"
 

Cons

"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."
"There is room for improvement in Loadbalancer.org in certain areas."
"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."
"Originally we had some stability issues with it, so they replaced it with a new box and it's fine."
"We could enhance the security aspects of the load balancer."
"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."
"The configuration is somewhat complicated. Someone who does not know the solution may find this challenging."
"The user interface could be improved."
"If NGINX brings some features for health check in the open source version, it would be better. ​"
"I would like the configuration process to be more simplified."
"I would like it to have a more user-friendly graphical interface."
"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."
"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 scaling should be built into the software rather than configured from an outside source."
"The solution needs to be easier to setup and deploy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For now, it's stable."
"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."
"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 think it’s very affordable."
"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."
"These guys make their pricing scheme really easy.​"
"It is inexpensive, and even their “unlimited” version, the VA MAX is still far cheaper than competitors."
"The costs associated with Loadbalancer.org depends on the technology. For some, we need to pay, but others are open, so they're free."
"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours.​"
"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."
"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."
"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."
"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."
"You pay for each feature that you want."
"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."
"​NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
9%
University
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?
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: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.