The primary use case of HAProxy is for load balancing.
It Security Consultant at juke
Scalable and inexpensive although stability can falter with high traffic levels
Pros and Cons
- "Scalable and inexpensive."
- "The visibility could be improved."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
This product is scalable and inexpensive.
What needs improvement?
The visibility could be improved. Stability can falter when there is a lot of traffic. End-to-end connections are limited.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability could be improved.
Buyer's Guide
HAProxy
February 2025
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Learn what your peers think about HAProxy. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
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What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is good, it's provided to us by the distributor.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Licensing costs are inexpensive.
What other advice do I have?
I rate this solution six out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Integrator
Network & Cloud Architect at Koala Compute Inc.
Free, potentially good return on investment, for low balancer environment
Pros and Cons
- "HAProxy potentially has a good return on investment"
- "I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit"
What is our primary use case?
I use HAProxy for individuals who can not buy low balancers. I built NFV in a box and send individuals a pathway into an HAProxy VM.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using HAProxy for the past four to five months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I do not have it in a full production environment to have those statistics. What I am currently using is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I do not see enough traffic to make an honest critique of the stability.
How was the initial setup?
I have not currently used technical support.
What was our ROI?
HAProxy potentially has a good return on investment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The setup was not difficult it usually takes a day to complete for a VPC.
When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I did look at NGINX.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate HAProxy an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
HAProxy
February 2025
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Learn what your peers think about HAProxy. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Works
Cluster Solution Prevents Interruption of Service Caused By Inundation
What is most valuable?
The cluster feature. I use it for my second informatic room.
How has it helped my organization?
Four days ago, I had an inundation in my informatic room, and there was no interruption of service, because HAProxy is an excellent cluster solution.
What needs improvement?
While the product is quite perfect, it could use more supervision and be more active. Also, more simplicity, more peripherals, and more scalability.
For how long have I used the solution?
About five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Yes, the first time. I have an old VMware vCenter Server 6.0 . The VMware vCenter Server 6.0 cannot go with HAProxy. HAProxy developed a special feature for me to improve the function.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No issues. I have about 500 users on HAProxy, which use a web server and mail server.
How are customer service and technical support?
No majors issues to contact them, but did contact them regarding questions about the product.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used before a server from Microsoft, and a server is very slow as a solution.
How was the initial setup?
The product is very simple to install and to use.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Yeah, but I don't remember it, because the other product was very bad in comparison to HAProxy.
What other advice do I have?
The product is very simple and fast. It's a microchannel.
Try it and if you like it, you buy it.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
CTO & Founder at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
A good solution with a good user interface but no longer fits our needs
Pros and Cons
- "We don't have a problem with the user interface. it's good."
- "We've changed solutions as it doesn't fit with our current needs."
What is our primary use case?
We use it in a model teacher, project, and financial trading system.
What is most valuable?
Overall, it's a good solution.
We don't have a problem with the user interface. It's good.
What needs improvement?
We've changed solutions as it doesn't fit with our current needs.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have used the solution for a while, however, we are currently moving away from it.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We are currently moving away from it. We changed our orchestrator solution and we move to something else and now use an internal proxy.
What other advice do I have?
We are end-users and customers. We don't have a business relationship with the solution.
I would rate the solution at a seven out of ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Deployment Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Advanced traffic rules, including stick tables and ACLs, allow me to shape traffic
Pros and Cons
- "I can simplify configurations of many internal services (e.g. Web server configs) by moving some elements (like SSL) to HAProxy. I can also disable additional applications, like Varnish, by moving traffic shaping configurations to HAProxy."
- "Advanced traffic rules, including stick tables and ACLs, which allow me to shape traffic while it's load balanced."
- "Performance configuration options with threads, processes, and core stickiness are very valuable."
- "There are three main areas to improve: 1) Make remote management more modern by adding API. 2) Propose a general HA solution for HAProxy (no I'm using keepalived for this). 3) Thread option should be a bit more stable."
What is our primary use case?
I'm using HAProxy in two use cases.
The first is as an internal load balancer for OpenStack services, in private cloud solutions. So HAProxy is used in front of Galera (MySQL cluster), Nova API, and also in front of exposed docker services.
The second use case is as a load balancer for a Web hosting solution. HAProxy is load balancing external traffic.
Configuration of HAProxy includes brute force sandboxing (including stick tables and hardcoded ACL for defined paths), splitting traffic by dynamic and static content to redirect it to the proper back-end, SSL, and HTTP headers management.
How has it helped my organization?
I can simplify configurations of many internal services (e.g. Web server configs) by moving some elements (like SSL) to HAProxy. I can also disable additional applications, like Varnish, by moving traffic shaping configurations to HAProxy.
What is most valuable?
Advanced traffic rules, including stick tables and ACLs, which allow me to shape traffic while it's load balanced.
Performance configuration options with threads, processes, and core stickiness are also very valuable.
What needs improvement?
In my opinion, there are three main areas to improve:
- Make remote management more modern by adding API.
- Propose a general HA solution for HAProxy (no I'm using keepalived for this).
- Thread option should be a bit more stable.
For how long have I used the solution?
One to three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No issues with stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No issues with scalability, but multiprocess config for HAProxy is more efficient than multi-thread.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I used NGINX in my Web environment. HAProxy has more traffic shaping options and it's a dedicated VNF load-balancer.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was straightforward. The documentation is pretty thorough and up to date, and it is also easy to search.
What other advice do I have?
During the implementation, you have to plan ACLs and back-ends first. That allows you to prepare a cleaner config.
I rate HAProxy a 10 out of 10. It is fast, flexible, and rock solid.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Operations Engineer
Reduced the load on our main load balancers
Pros and Cons
- "It reduced the load on our main load balancers."
- "We did not need technical support because the documentation is good."
- "We need to handle new connections by dropping, or queuing them while the HAProxy restarts, and because HAProxy does not handle split config files."
What is our primary use case?
We are using HAProxy for our internal load balancers between the front-end and back-end services. HAProxies are configured either manually (LVS redundancy included) or automatically (ambassador pattern by using a Consul & Consul-Template).
How has it helped my organization?
It reduced the load on our main load balancers.
What is most valuable?
- Flexible health-checking
- Good config format to auto-configure
What needs improvement?
We need to handle new connections by dropping, or queuing them while the HAProxy restarts, and because HAProxy does not handle split config files.
For how long have I used the solution?
More than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
No stability issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No scalability issues.
How is customer service and technical support?
We did not need technical support because the documentation is good.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is pretty straightforward.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We pretty much know all the software out there and its capabilities, so we did not evaluate anything else.
What other advice do I have?
Use a split front-end and back-end instead of using the "listen" directive. Therefore, you are clear what you are setting up.
Be aware of connections dropping during restarts, etc.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Team Lead at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Easy to learn but performance is quite bad
What is our primary use case?
Our company used the solution as a proxy for Tanzu during an initial installation for conducting performance tests.
What is most valuable?
It is easy to learn proxy operations.
What needs improvement?
The solution has bad performance issues.
For how long have I used the solution?
I used the solution for six months.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is good and passed all tests.
How are customer service and support?
I did not need technical support.
How was the initial setup?
The solution is easy to install and configure in terms of the load balancer. Other tools might take eight days to install, but the solution only takes three or four days.
What about the implementation team?
We installed the solution in-house using available documentation.
Maintenance can be completed by one network administrator. Sometimes it is not easy to diagnose issues.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution is open source so is free.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did not evaluate other options before the solution. We were not happy with the solution's performance so we switched to Load Balancing Analytics.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Sr. System Administrator Linux & AWS at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees
Provides us with reliable load balancing, we have never had any downtime
Pros and Cons
- "They should introduce one feature that I know many people, including me, are waiting for: HAProxy should have provide hot-swipe for back-end servers. Also, they need a more detailed GUI for monitoring and configuration."
What is our primary use case?
I am using HAProxy on a live production Web Server (Apache load balancing). It's a very good open-source solution.
How has it helped my organization?
Four to five years back, we were struggling with Web load-balancing; we were facing issues with a single Apache. We got the best, and open-source, solution.
What is most valuable?
Load balancing, mainly. We are using two Apaches with HAProxy load-balancing.
Some people use HAProxy to load balance MySQL databases as well.
What needs improvement?
They should introduce one feature that I know many people, including me, are waiting for: HAProxy should have provide hot-swipe for back-end servers, no downtime while shifting back-end servers.
They also need a more detailed GUI for monitoring and configuration.
For how long have I used the solution?
Three to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have been using this solution for the last four to five years with no downtime.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
No issues with scalability.
How was the initial setup?
Easy to set up.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution.
What other advice do I have?
I will always give HAProxy a 10 out of 10. We never have any downtime with it. The HAProxy team regularly updates the product. I would definitely recommend HAProxy. You must go with this product.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
We use haproxy and I feel the same as the reviewer. Works great, easy to setup and change. Just works! We have open source version running on Centos.
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Updated: February 2025
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Hello,
somewhere around version 1.8 of haproxy a new feature was released which helps to reduce connection drops to zero (at least according to the test i made)
At this post i mention the test and the source to "truly-seamless-reloads-with-haproxy"
devops.haim-ari.com
Hope this helps out
cheers