NGINX Plus vs NetScaler comparison

NetScaler and F5 are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. NetScaler is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2, while F5 is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.2. NetScaler holds a 15.5% mindshare in ADC, compared to F5’s 8.3% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of NetScaler users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of F5 users who would recommend it.

NetScaler

Read 107 NetScaler reviews

8,049 Views
5,814 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 31 NGINX Plus reviews

4,067 Views
3,361 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

NetScaler

NGINX Plus

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

NetScaler and NGINX Plus compete in the load balancing market. Based on available features, NetScaler seems to have the upper hand with its advanced enterprise capabilities.

Features: NetScaler provides features like SSL offloading, web application firewall, and integration with Citrix products, ideal for virtual desktops and enterprise application delivery. NGINX Plus is favored for its ease of configuration, high-efficiency routing, and modular setup, with capabilities such as caching and authentication.

Room for Improvement: NetScaler users highlight the need for better alert management, a more intuitive GUI, and enhanced customization options. Improvements in support and flexible licensing are also requested. NGINX Plus could benefit from a refined GUI, real-time alert integration, and simpler pricing and licensing.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetScaler is primarily deployed on-premises with a strong hybrid cloud presence, offering robust technical support. NGINX Plus supports diverse deployment environments, including on-premises and public cloud, but its customer service reputation suggests room for improvement.

Pricing and ROI: NetScaler is perceived as more expensive but offers substantial ROI with its stability and feature set, appealing to organizations needing comprehensive delivery solutions. NGINX Plus provides a cost-effective option, particularly attractive for simpler needs or budget constraints, despite additional costs for premium features.

To learn more, read our detailed NGINX Plus vs. NetScaler Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus vs. NetScaler

January 2025

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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

NetScaler

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

107

Ranking in other categories

Network Management Applications (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (11th)

NGINX Plus

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

6th

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 NetScaler is 15.5%, up from 15.0% 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

DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking

Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

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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 would say the rewriting and redirection functions are must-have's for us."

"Very stable."

"The feature that I have found most valuable is its load balancing."

"Load balancing, cache redirection, content switching, all connected with traffic management."

"Content Redirection and SSO integration with Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop. The GUI was wonderful."

"The solution can be configured very granularly and has good control over security."

"Enables a Web service that offers persistent client-server connections, IP restriction, URL rewrite (such as remove "/assets/" path from client-side URL path), and cache for CSS or JS files... You can easily use the GUI to set up all these requirements on the same network device within 20-30 minutes. (If you do the same steps on CLI, it might take less time.)"

"Most of the functions are user-friendly and great."

More NetScaler pros

"Supports IMAP, POP and SMTP protocols for the reverse proxy."

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

"This solution has everything."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is simple to configure."

"NGINX works much better than HAProxy in our current hardware and architecture for HTTP/HTTPS load balancing. "

"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."

"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."

"The overall product rating is ten out of ten."

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"We have issues with the certificates. All authorization processes need certificates, however, every three months we needed to change certificates. This process iss complicated for us because Citrix does not have a not user-friendly interface and does not off user-friendly services. This needs a lot of improvement."

"It does not have a sandbox cloud service and antivirus. It should have on-prem or cloud sandboxing and antivirus."

"I would like to see multifactor authentication added to this solution to improve the security."

"I would like to see support for scripting, like "iRule", which gives you the option to implement any configuration which is not available out of the box."

"I would like to see them make it easier to do some of the more complex things. For example, a web re-direct requires two pieces to it. You have two ports and when people want to go to a web page, they just type in the webpage that on the backend it will redirect them to a secure link. The initial setup of that is cumbersome because you have to do it twice. There are things that can be replicated. The IP address, for example, is the same. This change would go a long way. Don't make me do it twice and don't make me have to read tons of documentation to figure out how to do it. Ease of configuration for some of the more complex processes would be a good improvement."

"Citrix should offer a demo or free-trial version of NetScaler. Several other vendors do, but Citrix does not. Pricing should also be more readily available."

"It can be difficult to setup."

"Scripting and writing expressions need to be improved by putting logic behind the rules and improve policies involving some of the scripting part, which is a tedious task to do."

More NetScaler cons

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Initially, I experienced hiccups whenever I installed the application. As with any application, there were initial issues, however, after receiving support, everything was rectified."

"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."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have all the features and functions of Citrix because we have a premium license."

"Citrix ADC could improve the price and make it less expensive, other competitors have a better prices. This would allow Citrix ADC to keep dominating the market."

"Costly product and complicated licensing."

"The solution is undoubtedly very good, but it is expensive."

"Licensing is adequate. I wanted to have a more prominent license, but until I do they don't give enough support. The additional cost would be too much."

"For the specific use case that my customers primarily engage with, I would give the pricing a rating of seven out of ten."

"It is true that it is a bit pricey compared to newer technologies coming to the market. For example, A10 is a load balancer that does everything that Citrix can and it does a lot more than what NetScaler does when it comes to the security space, and their prices are so cheap. Every box comes with its own license and support built into it. When you compare that with NetScaler, you have to buy licenses separately, you have to buy a support agreement that is going to be separate. A small NetScaler, even if it is a VPX which is a virtual server, could cost you close to $150,000 to $200,000 dollars. So the pricing is really high."

"The pricing could be lower."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

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

"The cost is reasonable."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

17%

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

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 do you like most about Citrix ADC?

The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic enters our environment.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?

After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexity. While it could be easier to manage, it is like transitioning from driving a ...

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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,...

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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

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Compared 12% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 10% of the time

Radware Alteon vs NetScaler

Compared 5% of the time

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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

Apache Web Server vs NGINX Plus

Compared 8% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

February 2025

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Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

February 2025

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

NGINX

Overview

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

NetScaler

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

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk

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

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus vs. NetScaler

January 2025

Free Report: NGINX Plus vs. NetScaler

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