Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NGINX Plus comparison

Microsoft and F5 are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 7.3, while F5 is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.3. Microsoft holds a 8.8% mindshare in ADC, compared to F5’s 8.5% mindshare. Additionally, 78% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of F5 users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure Application...

Read 46 Microsoft Azure Application Gateway reviews

5,230 Views
4,504 Comparison Views

78% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 28 NGINX Plus reviews

4,885 Views
3,959 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Application...

NGINX Plus

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and NGINX Plus based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs. NGINX Plus Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs. NGINX Plus

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Azure Application...

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

3rd

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF) (2nd)

NGINX Plus

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

5th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is 8.8%, down from 11.5% 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

Sami

Cyber Security Consultant at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

High stability with built-in rules that reduce alerts and are easy to configure

The graphical interface needs improvement because it is not user friendly. There isn't a standardized process for blocking IPs. IPs need to be blocked individually, whether one or one hundred. A normal scenario would be to copy and paste multiple IPs at the same time but the solution does not offer this option. Updating takes a long time and is up to the WAF. In most cases, we prepare scripts to handle these updates.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find Application Gateway’s WAF module valuable because it helps prevent layer 7 attacks."

"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 pricing is quite good."

"The load balancing features are valuable."

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

"I like the tool's stability and performance."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy."

"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."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway pros

"Nginx is extremely efficient in terms of the connection rate to the CPU cycles ratio, and in terms of the bandwidth to CPU cycles."

"When I worked in a security research center, we tested NGINX to support DoS and DDoS attacks, and its results were great."

"When you use NGINX, you have more options and power."

"The load balancing module, which is equivalent to LTM, is the focus of the PSE. So far, the features of both are identical. I believe NGINX has more features for securing these services, but in terms of load balancing, both are massive solutions."

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

"Application Gateway with application-level firewall tool and load distributor and balancer (also serves for A/B testing)."

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

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"Microsoft needs to work on their documentation."

"It is a bit tricky to configure. You've got to have a very specific format to configure it. They should make it a little bit easier to configure. Mapping the certificates into it isn't easy, and it could be better. Currently, you've to write a bit of automation to pull certificates directly to HTTPS."

"I want the solution's support to improve. The tool is also expensive."

"It does not have the flexibility for using public IPs in version 2."

"The support provided for the solution has certain shortcomings that need improvement, especially when it comes to the response time from the support team."

"We faced some downtime while validating CNAME."

"The tool's pricing could be improved."

"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is not scalable."

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway cons

"The solution's GUI is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."

"The scaling should be built into the software rather than configured from an outside source."

"The center management system could be improved."

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

"It would be good if NGINX provided a graphical user interface."

"Make modules easier to enable or disable. The beauty and ugly side of the NGINX modules is you have to know how to compile the module. For beginners or non-very technical aspirant(s) going for NGINX, they have to learn how to compile the modules."

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

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

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."

"Every solution comes with a license and cost. Microsoft provides the license and the total cost is for the maintenance every year."

"We use the tool's basic subscription. Its licensing costs are monthly."

"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is expensive."

"I would rate the pricing a three out of ten, with ten being cheap and one being expensive."

"The solution is cheaper than Imperva. I rate it four to five out of ten."

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

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

More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway pricing and cost advice

"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 solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."

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

"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours."

"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."

"NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it."

"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."

"It's an open source solution, so it's free."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

18%

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...

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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 ...

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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?

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

See all answers

Comparisons

F5 Advanced WAF vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 13% of the time

AWS WAF vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 11% of the time

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 10% of the time

NetScaler vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

Compared 10% of the time

HAProxy 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 14% of the time

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

Compared 9% of the time

IBM WebSphere Application Server vs NGINX Plus

Compared 2% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway

November 2024

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report

Download Microsoft Azure Application Gateway product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

November 2024

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway

NGINX

Learn More

Microsoft

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.

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

October 2024

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: October 2024.

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