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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
4.8
Some users see ROI with VMWare Avi Load Balancer through reduced recovery times and lower hardware and licensing costs.
VMWare Avi Load Balancer has created a smoother failover process without issues, keeping the state normal, where typically there would be manual intervention.
Senior Database Engineer, SRE at Interswitch Group
I have not found any return on investment so far, as it does not really lend itself to that; it is more about not having to stand up another data center for redundancy.
Vdi Consultant at Garbutt Ltd
 

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 customer service is skilled but inconsistent, with support better for users with integrated VMware tools.
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
The solution architect from VMware side told me that there would be no issue adding them. Here we are with an RFP, and we cannot add them easily.
Pre Sales at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
The support for VMWare Avi Load Balancer is really good, and the integration with other tools is really effective, which makes the overall experience smoother.
Senior Database Engineer, SRE at Interswitch Group
They are quite responsive, taking the necessary time to address our issues.
Senior Associate Infrastructure at Publicis Sapient
 

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
7.1
VMWare Avi Load Balancer offers reliable scalability, though some users seek enhancements for seamless integration with existing 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
I would rate the scalability of VMWare Avi Load Balancer a perfect ten out of ten because it senses traffic and scales automatically, also scaling down when there is no need, making it very elastic, resulting in zero costs when there is no traffic, which is excellent.
Senior Associate Infrastructure at Publicis Sapient
In my role as a database engineer, scalability works in two layers and rarely becomes a bottleneck.
Senior Database Engineer, SRE at Interswitch Group
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
8.0
VMWare Avi Load Balancer is praised for stability, reliability, and efficient traffic handling, with high stability ratings from users.
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
VMWare Avi Load Balancer is very reliable and stable.
Vdi Consultant at Garbutt Ltd
VMWare Avi Load Balancer is stable based on my experience.
Senior Associate Infrastructure at Publicis Sapient
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 is costly with complex setup, lacking security features, needing improved documentation, and enhanced integration.
NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates.
Senior Software Engineer at Checkit
As with any application, there were initial issues, however, after receiving support, everything was rectified.
Executive Director at Geojit
There were some vulnerabilities in F5.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Multi-cloud capability comes from a configuration called NSX Extended.
Pre Sales at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
The need for policy execution tracing to simplify debugging is evident because if connections are routed incorrectly, for example, directly to a replica, debugging can become painful in production.
Senior Database Engineer, SRE at Interswitch Group
It would also be beneficial to have true VMWare Avi Load Balancer failover at the VMWare Avi Load Balancer level.
Vdi Consultant at Garbutt 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 offers competitive, flexible pricing with positive value, avoiding additional hardware costs but requires separate licensing.
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
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that its pricing is quite pricier compared to Anthos Service Mesh.
Senior Associate Infrastructure at Publicis Sapient
it operates on a capacity and consumption model, unlike traditional appliances that charge based on hardware.
Senior Database Engineer, SRE at Interswitch Group
 

Valuable Features

NGINX Plus excels in load balancing, security, and integration, praised for simplicity, efficiency, and superior traffic management features.
VMWare Avi Load Balancer is valued for integration, stability, centralized management, traffic distribution, intuitive UI, cloud-native and security features.
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
Since implementing VMWare Avi Load Balancer, we no longer need to manually change IP addresses in our configuration, as Avi automates this process, which controls traffic and network appropriately, adding a layer of security and assurance.
Senior Database Engineer, SRE at Interswitch Group
The special capability I appreciate about VMWare Avi Load Balancer is its ease of use; it is very lightweight and quite inexpensive to deploy.
Vdi Consultant at Garbutt Ltd
It enables flexible deployment across environments and elastic auto-scaling, automatically scaling load balancer capacity based on traffic, then adding and removing service engines dynamically without over-provisioning, which leads to lower infrastructure costs and efficient handling of sudden traffic spikes.
Senior Associate Infrastructure at Publicis Sapient
 

Categories and Ranking

NGINX Plus
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
10th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (3rd)
VMWare Avi Load Balancer
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of NGINX Plus is 7.5%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMWare Avi Load Balancer is 4.7%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NGINX Plus7.5%
VMWare Avi Load Balancer4.7%
Other87.8%
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.
ParthasarathyT - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Associate Infrastructure at Publicis Sapient
Multi-cloud traffic has been routed intelligently while security and cost model still need improvement
VMWare Avi Load Balancer can be improved in various ways, as it follows a pay-as-you-go model, which still makes it quite pricey and a little expensive for startups or small-scale industries. They have to pay a lot to use it, and they may not find it reliable for their environment, but for enterprise-level or larger organizations, this tool is excellent. The product's stability has some bugs, and there are reports suggesting quick upgrades. New releases may require patches and fixes. The learning curve for new users is quite tough since the architecture controller and service engine differ from traditional ADCs, requiring an understanding of cloud concepts and networking, plus DevOps. It also has limited advanced traffic control compared to F5 due to a lack of flexibility with F5 rules. It can accept all traffic routes and paths, but when using an advanced setting like an F5 rule, it is not highly flexible with traffic scripting.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise6
 

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 needs improvement with NGINX Plus?
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....
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?
I did not participate directly in pricing, setup cost, and licensing for VMWare Avi Load Balancer, as that responsibility falls to another functional team. However, I know that it was an internal d...
What needs improvement with Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?
In my opinion, VMWare Avi Load Balancer is a complicated tool with many advanced features that can be beneficial, but policies are powerful yet difficult to debug when traffic behaves unexpectedly ...
What advice do you have for others considering Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?
My advice for others looking into using VMWare Avi Load Balancer is to assess the environment and what you aim to achieve. VMWare Avi Load Balancer is powerful and delivers great value when designe...
 

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: June 2026.
899,258 professionals have used our research since 2012.