We performed a comparison between Citrix NetScaler and HAProxy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It is a very stable solution."
"Most of the functions are user-friendly and great."
"The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic enters our environment."
"From a security standpoint, It is a comprehensive solution in a single box."
"The program is easy to install and to set up."
"NetScaler Gateway: Why? Availability/Security: We delivered more than 200 applications thru Xenapp. This feature give us the possibility to deliver the applications anywhere. Currently, 30% of access is made through our NetScaler Gateway (Internet connections)."
"My clients use it for load balancing."
"It is a stable solution. It crashed only once, four years ago...There is a return on investment using the solution."
"HAProxy Enterprise Edition has been rock solid. We have essentially had no downtime caused by our load balancers in the last 10 months, because they’ve worked so well. Previously, our load balancers caused us multiple hours per year in downtime."
"We use it as a load balancer for our application servers."
"The features I find valuable in this solution are session control which automatically disconnects users that forget to log off, and the ability to write rules to either allow or block certain file requests."
"Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind."
"HAProxy's TCP load balancer is excellent and super stable."
"Scalable and inexpensive."
"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."
"It has allowed us to evenly distribute the load across a number of servers, and check their health and automatically react to errors."
"ADC from Citrix has added functionalities from other products and the usability is very difficult for someone who is used to a simpler user interface, it's a little bit of a mess to use."
"Getting to use some of the advanced tools, even with the assistance of Citrix support, can be challenging."
"The product provides some templates to integrate with applications like MS Exchange, MS SharePoint, SAP Enterprise Portal, and others. However, the last update for these templates was 2013 (lots of applications are running on versions newer then 2013)."
"The solution should be able to scale more effectively than it does."
"There are certain features that are very useful and Citrix makes you pay a bit more for them."
"We had some bugs in the previous firmware. These were not big issues, but more testing on the firmware would be key to happier customers."
"If one device or switch fails, the failover to another device is not seamless which is painful."
"I will try to migrate all the tools to the cloud because there is more lab and more VPN scalability available in the cloud. It is not available on-premises."
"The product does not have any new technologies."
"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."
"HAProxy is very weak in the logging and monitoring part and requires improvement."
"The configuration should be more friendly, perhaps with a Web interface. For example, I work with the ClusterControl product for Severalnines, and we have a Web interface to deploy the HAProxy load-balancer."
"Improving the documentation with multiple examples and scenarios would be beneficial. Most users encounter similar situations, so having a variety of scenarios readily available on the tool's website would be helpful. For instance, if I were part of the HAProxy team, I'd create a webpage with different scenarios and provide files for each scenario. This way, users wouldn't have to start from scratch every time."
"There is room for improvement in HAProxy's dynamic configuration."
"While troubleshooting, we are having some difficulties. There are no issues when it is running; it is stable and very good; however, if there is a troubleshooting issue or an incident occurs, we will have issues because this is open-source."
"The solution can be improved by controlling TCP behavior better and mandating to clients what the expected outcome must be in order to avoid receiving contestant timeout logs."
Citrix NetScaler is ranked 2nd in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 85 reviews while HAProxy is ranked 3rd in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 41 reviews. Citrix NetScaler is rated 8.4, while HAProxy is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Citrix NetScaler writes "Optimizing application delivery and ensuring robust network performance with its excellent stability and comprehensive load-balancing capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of HAProxy writes "Useful for for small and quick load-balancing tasks". Citrix NetScaler is most compared with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, Fortinet FortiADC, Loadbalancer.org and A10 Networks Thunder ADC, whereas HAProxy is most compared with Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, NGINX Plus, Kemp LoadMaster, Envoy and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). See our Citrix NetScaler vs. HAProxy report.
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