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 8.3, while F5 is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3. NetScaler holds a 14.8% mindshare in ADC, compared to F5’s 7.9% 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

7,505 Views
5,440 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 31 NGINX Plus reviews

3,451 Views
2,936 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

NetScaler

NGINX Plus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus vs. NetScaler

March 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 (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (12th)

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 April 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of NetScaler is 14.8%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 7.9%, down from 8.9% 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

"It's very easy to configure."

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

"Global load balancing between data centers."

"The load balancing and VPN features are most valuable. AAA authentication is also valuable."

"The web application firewall is one feature I found valuable in the solution."

"The GSLB feature allows us to move services between data centers. We can do this in either a planned or unplanned manner. We have experienced service provider outages at our primary data center and GSLB will kick in to automatically modify DNS records to point to a secondary data center (active/passive). We also make use of GeoIP information to point clients to the closest data center for accessing applications."

"The solution is very stable."

"Citrix Director has been great. It gives us one pane of glass to be able to monitor what's going on with the user sessions as well as to keep on top of the virtual desktops, any servers that may be offline or behaving suspiciously, or any troublesome spots like disconnections. We also use Citrix Studio for maintaining the actual servers that are hosting these applications. We use it for delivery groups in case we need to modify delivery groups in regards to which groups have access to which applications. It has been very helpful."

More NetScaler pros

"The product is resilient."

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

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

"The primary valuable feature of NGINX for me is its ability to provide a reverse proxy."

"The most valuable features are the gateway and the ability to publish to sites."

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

"The flexibility of its modules allow it to be scalable."

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

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"This is an expensive solution."

"Does not include security. A web application firewall would be a nice addition."

"Deployment is complicated."

"The interface could be improved, some customers struggle with that."

"Too many bugs in the software and it's always difficult when you need to update."

"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."

"Native integration needs to be improved. You cannot build ISE codes natively. For DevOps, integration would be very helpful because it would be a lot simpler from an operational standpoint."

"Overall the price of Citrix ADC could be more competitive."

More NetScaler cons

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

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

"The solution needs to be easier to setup and deploy."

"The KPI should be more focused on load balancing and the latency in application calling from the end system."

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

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

"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. "

"Our most challenging part was to run an older PHP website reverse-proxied through NGINX. That was not fun."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licensing fees including technical support are approximately $3,500 USD."

"I do not have any experience with the pricing of the product."

"We have a yearly licencing fee, and there are no additional costs."

"We get value for money. Its price is fair. I don't think it is overpriced."

"You can do CapEx and then a yearly monthly fee, or you can do a subscription model, whether that's one month, month-to-month, or three-year subscription model."

"It all depends on the features that will be used and the number of accesses."

"The solution's pricing is very high compared to its competitors."

"We have been evaluating F5, Citrix, and other ADC products. Citrix is the most expense of all of them."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The cost is reasonable."

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

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

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

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

"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

15%

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.

See all answers

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.

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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.

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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

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 12% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

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

Compared 8% of the time

Radware Alteon vs NetScaler

Compared 6% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 18% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 16% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus

Compared 11% 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 9% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

March 2025

Download NetScaler product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

March 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

March 2025

Free Report: NGINX Plus vs. NetScaler

Find out what your peers are saying about NGINX Plus vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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