A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs HAProxy vs NGINX Plus comparison

A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Read 42 HAProxy reviews

7,217 Views
5,485 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 31 NGINX Plus reviews

4,361 Views
2,747 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between A10 Networks Lightning ADC, HAProxy, and NGINX Plus based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about NetScaler, F5, Microsoft and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC).

To learn more, read our detailed Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Report (Updated: August 2025).

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

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Helped 865,670 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Lightning ADC is 0.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 11.9%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 7.5%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

RONALDO DE MELO

Sales Account Executive at l8

Efficient application security while optimizing connections

The initial setup is simple; it is not complex. The configuration itself is simple and can be done in a couple of hours. However, the migration of the system to A10 Networks takes longer due to critical applications. Clients prefer to move them one by one, which is why it takes a significant amount of time. The configuration itself is simple, especially for this application.

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Kaushlendra Singh

Manager - IT Infrastructure and Network at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Used for load balancing, but its dashboard and reporting could be improved

We use the solution for load balancing The solution's implementation and troubleshooting are not easy. The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved. I have been using HAProxy for 12 years. We didn’t face any issues with the solution’s stability. I rate the solution’s stability an…

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Michael Olayemi

Senior Software Engineer at Checkit

Enables public access and secure configurations through reverse proxy

The primary valuable feature of NGINX for me is its ability to provide a reverse proxy. I have found that this feature supports our local server, and I am able to connect through our DNS system, making it accessible publicly. Additionally, the integration with SSL certificates and the configuration capabilities make it a valuable solution for my use case. Without NGINX, users would not be able to access our application, which means there is positive ROI from using NGINX as it is crucial for the functioning of my organization.

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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

"Our clients appreciate that this is a security enabled solution."

"What I like about Lightning ADC, is that instead of having a big appliance sitting in front of the Kubernetes cluster, Lightning can pretty much go inside of Kubernetes."

"It allows you to secure the application while balancing the connections for many other customers, reducing CPU usage and server load."

"The ease of use of the configuration, and great documentation, are the most valuable features for us."

"Load balancing is valuable, and we are also using the WAF feature."

"It solves a problem for me where I can build files, not based on the health of the check, but rather the speed of the check."

"The ability to handle a sequence of front- and back-ends gives the user the opportunity to send traffic through different services."

"The support for all major Linux distros makes running and testing a breeze."

"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."

"The solution is effective in managing our traffic."

"We were able to use HAProxy for round robin with our databases, or for a centralized TCP connection in one host."

More HAProxy pros

"The product is lightweight and fast."

"When I worked in a security research center, we tested NGINX to support DoS and DDoS attacks, and its results were great."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is simple to configure."

"Supports IMAP, POP and SMTP protocols for the reverse proxy."

"With NGINX, I appreciate its ability to route traffic geographically."

"Zero Downtime has always been a strength in recommending infrastructure web services. NGINX allows me to execute such infrastructure with less complications and the ability to switch from server to server easily."

"I receive very good support."

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

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"The support from A10 should be improved."

"We would like to see some improvement in the rapidity with which we can customize security facts within the solution."

"A10 documentation is not as open and accessible as AWS and Azure documentation is."

"We would like to see dynamic ACL and port update support. Our infrastructure relies on randomly allocated ports and this feature would allow us to update without restarting the process."

"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."

"There is room for improvement in HAProxy's dynamic configuration."

"If nbproc = 2, you will have two processes of HAProxy running. However, the stats of HAProxy will not be aggregated, meaning you don't really know the collective status in a single point of view."

"There is room for improvement in the pricing model. It could be cheaper."

"The GUI should be more responsive and show the detailed output of logs."

"It needs proper HTTP/2 support."

"The visibility could be improved."

More HAProxy cons

"I would suggest adding GUI-based configuration panels to NGINX Plus to simplify setup and management tasks."

"The user interface could be improved."

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

"One area of improvement could be that NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates."

"I would like it to have a more user-friendly graphical interface."

"One area of improvement could be that NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates."

"If NGINX brings some features for health check in the open source version, it would be better. "

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

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The product is open source."

"HAProxy is an open-source solution."

"HAProxy is free open-source software."

"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."

"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."

"The tool is open-source."

"It is free of cost."

"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."

"You pay for each feature that you want."

"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."

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

"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."

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

"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."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

16%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Do you recommend HAProxy?

I do recommend HAProxy for more simple applications or for companies with a low budget, since HAProxy is a free, open...

What do you like most about HAProxy?

The solution is effective in managing our traffic.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HAProxy?

HAProxy is an open-source solution.

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 architectur...

What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.

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 ...

NetScaler vs A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Comparisons

Compared 37% of the time

LoadBalancer Enterprise vs A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Compared 34% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs A10 Networks Lightning ADC

Compared 29% of the time

More A10 Networks Lightning ADC Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs HAProxy

Compared 13% of the time

NetScaler vs HAProxy

Compared 12% of the time

Istio vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

Envoy vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs HAProxy

Compared 6% of the time

More HAProxy Competitors

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 15% of the time

Apache Web Server vs NGINX Plus

Compared 12% of the time

NetScaler vs NGINX Plus

Compared 11% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NGINX Plus

Compared 10% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus

Compared 9% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Download A10 Networks Lightning ADC product report

Download HAProxy product report

NGINX Plus

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

Lightning ADS

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

NGINX

Overview

A cloud-native, software-defined solution that provides integrated advanced load-balancing, performance optimization, application security and per-application analytics to increase operational agility and application performance.

A10 Networks

HAProxy is considered by many in the industry to be one of the fastest and most popular and trusted software load balancer products in the marketplace today. Organizations are able to immediately deploy HAProxy solutions to enable websites and applications to optimize performance, security, and observability. HAProxy solutions are available to scale to any environment.

HAProxy is an open-source product and has a robust, active, reliable community. The solutions are continually tested and improved on by the community. HAProxy offers a dynamic design to support the most modern architectures, microservices, and deployment environments (appliances, containers, virtual, and cloud).

HAProxy utilizes a cloud-native protocol, which makes it a complete solution for cloud services such as Red Hat OpenShift, OVH, Rackspace, Digital Ocean, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and more. It also can be used as the reference load balancer in OpenStack.

HAProxy Products

HAProxy One: This is a next-gen end-to-end application delivery platform created to secure and streamline modern application architectures. It offers a complete suite of solutions, such as application delivery software, turnkey, and appliance services observed and administered through a central control plane. The product supplies application acceleration, CDN, DDoS, bot management, WAF capabilities, and load balancing.

HAProxy Fusion Control Plane: This product enables organizations to streamline workflows, arrange traffic routing and security protocols, enhance the speed of delivery, and scale out of the organization’s applications. HAProxy Fusion Control Plane offers an intuitive user interface to observe and control the complete product lineup and API for administering numerous fleets of HAProxy Enterprise servers, either in the cloud or on premises.

HAProxy Edge: This product offering is an application delivery network (ADN) that provides a broad array of turnkey application services with amazing scale and complete visibility. Services include application and content acceleration, advanced security, and load balancing.

HAProxy ALOHA Hardware or Virtual Load Balancer: This product is a virtual load balancer or plug-and-play hardware constructed upon HAProxy Enterprise that is designed to support proxying at Layer 4 and Layer 7. It has a user-friendly GUI, simple deployment, and no limit on backend servers, making it a complete product for organizations desiring a reliable system to provide high-end load distribution for critical services.

HAProxy Enterprise Kubernetes Ingress Controller: This product is designed to facilitate smooth traffic flow into a Kubernetes cluster. It is able to automatically discover anomalies and changes in an organization's Kubernetes infrastructure and provide precise distribution of traffic to healthy pods, with no downtime caused by poor pod health or scaling changes. The product comes with an embedded WAF to optimize the security of an organization’s applications running in Kubernetes.

HAProxy Enterprise: This product is the enterprise-class edition of HAProxy offering a dynamic and sturdy code base with next-generation features, an enterprise suite of add-ons, professional services, and trusted support.
- Cluster-wide tracking and rate limiting
- Advanced DDoS and bot management
- Web application firewall
- Reliable expert support
- High performance modules
- Device detection and geolocation
- Real-time dashboard

Reviews from Real Users

“Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind.” - Nathanel S., Platform Architect at SES

“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. The setup was not difficult; it usually takes a day to complete for a VPC. When it comes to pricing, HAProxy is free.” - Nasir O., Network & Cloud Architect at Koala Compute Inc.

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

Handle Financial

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp

Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)