Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NGINX Plus comparison

Microsoft and F5 are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. Microsoft is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.2, while F5 is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.3. Microsoft holds a 8.2% mindshare in ADC, compared to F5’s 8.3% mindshare. Additionally, 78% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of F5 users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure Application...

Read 46 Microsoft Azure Application Gateway reviews

4,678 Views
4,027 Comparison Views

78% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 31 NGINX Plus reviews

4,382 Views
3,571 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Application...

NGINX Plus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

NGINX Plus and Microsoft Azure Application Gateway compete in the web traffic management category, with NGINX Plus having an edge in performance and versatility, while Azure Application Gateway excels in integration with Azure services.

Features: NGINX Plus is favored for its ability to provide load balancing, reverse proxy, and high performance with minimal resource usage, offering extensive customization and support for microservices architectures. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is known for its integration with Azure services, ease of use, and robust security features like the Web Application Firewall (WAF), making it suitable for large-scale cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: NGINX Plus could improve scalability and pricing, along with better management solutions such as graphical user interfaces; enhancements in clustering and configuration streamlining are also desired. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway needs improvements in flexibility, particularly in network prototyping, with initial deployment complexity and security features also being areas where enhancements are sought, as well as more flexible pricing.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NGINX Plus is highly versatile in hybrid and on-premises deployments, though user support often relies on community resources. Azure Application Gateway shines in public cloud deployments with seamless Azure integration but faces challenges with complex initial setups, and documentation could be improved.

Pricing and ROI: NGINX Plus offers a reasonable price for its features but can be costly when scaling. It provides a good ROI with improved application performance. Azure Application Gateway's usage-based pricing is seen as high compared to competitors, but its integration benefits within Azure provide satisfactory ROI when fully utilized in cloud environments.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs. NGINX Plus Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs. NGINX Plus

January 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 832,138 peers since 2012

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

Microsoft Azure Application...

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

4th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd)

NGINX Plus

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

5th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is 8.2%, down from 10.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 8.3%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Sooryanarayan Hegde

Technical Architect at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Easy management and configuration, affordable, and has good features

We use all the features. It is very useful. Using WAF, we can control the WAF rules based on our application requirements. We can control what rules should be used and what should be disabled. The role of the tool is limited to HTTP traffic. It does exactly what it must do. It's a regional service. We know how to use it for DR scenarios. WAF has been the most valuable in protecting applications. We use at least three instances in the back end to give the best performance for our applications. The management and configuration of the solution is quite easy. All certificate renewals are automatically taken care of by Key Vault.

Read full review

Ritesh-Bakhru

Major Account Manager at Check Point Software

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The health probe is pretty good for your backend health. It tells you whether it's communicating and talking to the endpoint correctly. It is quite useful."

"The tool helps manage microservices by providing developers with a platform to conduct tests and assessments on the web application. The custom domain option is one of the most valuable features I've found. This feature is incredibly helpful for the end-users of the web application. With the custom domain feature, you can change the lengthy link to a shorter, more memorable one. For example, instead of using a lengthy default link, you can customize it to something like imail.com, which is much easier to remember and share."

"We chose this solution in the first place because it has access to Layer 7. I can control the requests and the content, which I can access on my network if I want to even if it's forbidden access to other external resources. If I want to monitor, for example, traffic, and apply this rule on Layer 7, I can do so. This was our main goal when implementing this application. We wanted to take advantage of the Gateway capabilities."

"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway are the policies, the data store they are using, and the cloud platform it operates on."

"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway gives us a lot of benefits, including domain mapping."

"The tool is easy to use and quite flexible. It has policy management features as well. The solution screens all traffic to our web applications before passing it to the application. We recently tested it on one of our poorly developed applications, and the upgrade gave us a 100% result based on our tests. It's very effective as a security measure, and people can detect threats even through the web application."

"The simplicity of the solution and its ability to integrate easily with others are its most valuable aspects."

"The solution is easy to set up."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway pros

"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."

"NGINX provides a cost advantage, value addition, and effective support."

"The web proxy and the database proxy are excellent."

"Its versatility and capabilities make it invaluable for implementing patches and fixes when necessary."

"The robust software architecture allows for it to be scalable and very stable."

"It's lightweight software that can handle heavy loads efficiently."

"Using NGINX Plus for web traffic distribution is fantastic. It offers performance similar to physical load balancers but with added flexibility."

"This solution has everything."

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"The solution doesn’t support wildcard-based and regular expression-based rules."

"It takes a lot of time for a certificate to update in the system. That is a huge drawback, affecting the load-balancing side. And when there are changes to the load balancing, it affects the end-user."

"Application Gateway’s limitation is that the private and the public endpoint cannot use the same port."

"The product could be easier to use and implement."

"The solution can sometimes feel a little cumbersome unless you're a professional infrastructure person."

"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway could improve by allowing features to use more third-party tools."

"The configuration is very specific right now and needs to be much more flexible."

"For the first-time user, it is difficult to understand so the user-interface needs to be improved."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway cons

"NGINX Plus is moderately priced, but it could give better value for money."

"The drawback is that you must obtain a license for everything."

"I would like it to have a more user-friendly graphical interface."

"I would like the configuration process to be more simplified."

"The solution must improve its performance."

"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."

"Improvement needed in NGINX Plus could focus on optimizing memory usage for users."

"One area of improvement could be that NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Between v1 and v2, there is a lot of change in the pricing. It is very costly compared to AWS."

"There is a need to pay a fixed price per month to use the product. There are no additional payments to be made to Microsoft apart from the charges paid towards the monthly licensing costs attached to the solution."

"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has less price than other application gateway solutions."

"I rate the price of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway an eight out of ten."

"The solution's pricing is not complex. It is not expensive from our point of view."

"The solution is reasonably priced."

"There is some additional cost, such as extended support."

"The product is not expensive."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway pricing and cost advice

"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."

"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."

"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."

"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."

"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."

"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. "

"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?

We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides excellent support. Azure Front Door can quickly detect abnormalities before the...

See all answers

How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?

Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft Azure Application Gateway web application firewall software was the better fit ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?

Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the performance side of things, which is why we use it.

See all answers

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,...

See all answers

What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

F5 Advanced WAF vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 13% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 11% of the time

AWS WAF vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 11% of the time

HAProxy vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 9% of the time

Cloudflare vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 9% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Competitors

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 19% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 18% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus

Compared 12% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NGINX Plus

Compared 10% of the time

Loadbalancer.org vs NGINX Plus

Compared 1% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

January 2025

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Download Microsoft Azure Application Gateway product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

January 2025

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway

NGINX

Overview

Azure Application Gateway is a web traffic load balancer that enables you to manage traffic to your web applications. Traditional load balancers operate at the transport layer (OSI layer 4 - TCP and UDP) and route traffic based on source IP address and port, to a destination IP address and port.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

NGINX Plus is a versatile solution that offers load balancing, caching, proxying, and API deployment capabilities. It can be deployed on private or public clouds and is ideal for building CDN solutions. The solution can also be used to secure web applications and replace web services like Apache.

NGINX has helped organizations improve functioning, reduce downtimes, and offer a DevOps-friendly solution. Its community support and documentation are highly regarded, and its configuration is more straightforward, making it a recommended choice over HAProxy.

Sample Customers

Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell

Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs. NGINX Plus

January 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs. NGINX Plus

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs. NGINX Plus report.

See our list of best Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) vendors.

We monitor all Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.