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NGINX Plus vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.5
NGINX Plus boosts website speed and reduces costs, offering superior flexibility and scalability, ensuring significant returns for organizations.
Sentiment score
4.5
Many users see quick ROI with VMWare Avi Load Balancer, but results vary due to differing use cases.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
NGINX Plus offers robust support with responsive engineers, though some lower-tier licenses experience delayed responses; documentation often suffices.
Sentiment score
6.3
VMWare Avi Load Balancer's customer service is efficient but experiences variability in support ticket volume and user interaction.
Response time is good because they have assigned and dedicated support engineers to us, and we have weekly cadence calls.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
NGINX Plus is highly scalable and flexible, easily adapting to various enterprise needs and supporting multiple users and websites.
Sentiment score
7.6
VMWare Avi Load Balancer is praised for efficiency and scalability, despite some challenges due to specific infrastructure.
While some people use NGINX for web servers, my current use case focuses on networking and tunneling, which does not necessitate much scaling.
Senior Software Engineer at Checkit
Scalability-wise, VMWare Avi Load Balancer is good.
Trainer/Consultant at Koenig Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
NGINX Plus is highly stable and reliable, praised for connectivity and performance, despite some scalability challenges in clustering.
Sentiment score
7.9
VMWare Avi Load Balancer is stable and efficient, ideal for small to medium businesses, with some concerns under heavy loads.
I require ninety-nine point nine percent uptime, and NGINX has been pivotal in helping me achieve this along with our other DNS services.
Senior Software Engineer at Checkit
From a stability point of view, VMWare Avi Load Balancer is stable.
Trainer/Consultant at Koenig Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
 

Room For Improvement

NGINX Plus users seek improved scalability, user-friendly interface, better integration, cost-effectiveness, advanced features, and enhanced support services.
VMWare Avi Load Balancer requires better pricing, documentation, security features, integration, analytics, and interoperability with hyperscale and Kubernetes.
NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates.
Senior Software Engineer at Checkit
There were some vulnerabilities in F5.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
As with any application, there were initial issues, however, after receiving support, everything was rectified.
Executive Director at Geojit
The documentation needs to improve, as it was really handy a couple of years back.
Trainer/Consultant at Koenig Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
 

Setup Cost

NGINX Plus has a modular licensing model with varying costs, offering value but can be expensive compared to alternatives.
VMware Avi Load Balancer is cost-effective with flexible pricing, differing experiences, and generally positive feedback on affordability.
My use case involves using the free and open-source version of NGINX, making it cost-effective as I haven't incurred any costs.
Senior Software Engineer at Checkit
The solution offers a cost advantage.
Executive Director at Geojit
 

Valuable Features

NGINX Plus excels in load balancing, security, and integration, praised for simplicity, efficiency, and superior traffic management features.
The VMWare Avi Load Balancer excels in usability, integration, analytics, and scalability, outperforming competitors in load balancing and application debugging.
For API management, the WebSocket, and the WebServer, NGINX provides a cost advantage, value addition, and effective support.
Executive Director at Geojit
The web application firewall feature has helped enhance security for our applications because most of the attacks which are performed on our website are being blocked by it.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
The features I find most valuable in VMware Avi Load Balancer are the load balancing part and the WAF part.
Trainer/Consultant at Koenig Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
 

Categories and Ranking

NGINX Plus
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (4th)
VMWare Avi Load Balancer
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of NGINX Plus is 6.6%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMWare Avi Load Balancer is 5.4%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NGINX Plus6.6%
VMWare Avi Load Balancer5.4%
Other88.0%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

Nadeem-Inamdar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Information Security Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Advanced policies and web firewall have strengthened application protection and reduced attack traffic
There were some vulnerabilities in F5. They tried to fix it, but the fixes were not available at the time because they were zero days, so they attempted to fix it, but their support was not proper. Their support should be improved because sometimes features which we need for customization take time, and they are sometimes feasible and sometimes not feasible by the team, so their support and the engineering team should improve their product. I would like to see more features regarding customization which should be built into the application, and the tool optimization should be good, and the dashboard should be more crisp and clear.
Vishal Bhatia - PeerSpot reviewer
Trainer/Consultant at Koenig Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Analytics dashboard has provided deep visibility and delivers reliable load balancing and WAF protection
Regarding the benefit of VMWare Avi Load Balancer's WAF protection, I think the heuristics are pretty common. I do not come across many trainings for the WAF part, but once in a while. I cannot comment much on whether organizations are using it or not. In terms of VMWare Avi Load Balancer's multi-cloud capability, I have not come across many organizations using it across the different platforms. It is primarily used in the VMware context only. I have not seen anyone using it purely from a Linux or AWS or Azure perspective. Most of the organizations I come across are primarily using it from the VMware side. As for the API-driven infrastructure as code feature of VMWare Avi Load Balancer, because I am not from the developer side, I think that is more for the developers or maybe for integrating some new solutions and digging something deeper into it. That is quite handy. Regarding ease of use with VMWare Avi Load Balancer, that is pretty okay. For implementation, people find it quite okay to implement. There is nothing much from the implementation side. I think VMWare should promote their product more, particularly from the VMWare Avi Load Balancer side. It may be promoted a little bit more. Apart from Avi, most of those are already well-known. I would rate this review an 8 out of 10.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

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 do you like most about Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?
The solution has simplified our network infrastructure management.
What needs improvement with Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?
The network analytics and monitoring features are not effective. The product does not provide deep troubleshooting features. The solution must provide public IP features. F5 provides such features.
 

Also Known As

NGINX
Avi Software Load Balancer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA
Palo Alto Networks, DGDean, Swisslos
Find out what your peers are saying about NGINX Plus vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,360 professionals have used our research since 2012.