A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs HAProxy vs NGINX Plus comparison

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

A10 Networks Thunder ADC

NGINX Plus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between A10 Networks Thunder 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: July 2025).

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Download the complete report

Helped 864,574 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 Thunder ADC is 4.9%, up from 4.9% 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

RonaldoDE Melo

Sales Account Executive at L8 Group

Protects connection and servers from direct access with control access feature

The initial setup is very simple. The issue is that it achieves high output across all its features, specifically the output ports. This affects the customer's solution because sometimes, the customer is even aware of the user's activity on certain servers. If you have all the necessary information, we can quickly deploy the solution within two to three days. The size of the Thunder ADC depends on its configuration. For example, the cache converter typically includes more than two rack units, often requiring at least three rack units for adequate space. I rate it a ten out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy.

Read full review

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…

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features in A10 Networks Thunder ADC are the ease of configuration, user-friendliness, and simplicity to sell to customers."

"We can control access based on the specific application. If other devices are attempting to directly access the servers, you can block them. Additionally, you can balance the load among servers to optimize performance. For example, utilizing caching can make the application run faster."

"We do have the option of creating virtual chassis, so that gives it a bit more security. If we find an application which is not going to play well in the main pool, we can easily create a virtual chassis and have that application in that virtual chassis. With the virtual chassis we can also create system partitions and have a test system for test applications, and have the others elsewhere."

"It helps with the efficiency of application deployments and data security."

"Being a public entity and having a public website which is highly visible with a lot of traffic, we are a target for DDoS. Within the last year, we have had a couple of DDoS attacks which could have affected our web traffic and taken down certain parts of our website. This did not happen because the A10 was able to mitigate the attacks using rate limiting that can be configured for DDoS mitigation on the box."

"The solution is user-friendly and the CLA troubleshooting is easier compared to other solutions."

"A lot of our SSL management is done on the front-end side, so there is one pane of glass for a lot of our security certificates. It gives us visibility. It also falls under when certificates are going to expire. Even for servers that are coming down, we can see how that affects the traffic flow by using the services map."

"It's a very friendly solution, easy to configure and it's very flexible."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC pros

"Scalable and inexpensive."

"The feature that I have found the most valuable is that it works for my use case of application load balancing. I'm using it for PeerSense, and it's easy enough for PeerSense."

"We don't have a problem with the user interface. it's good."

"It is a crucial tool in ensuring smooth service provision without any interruptions."

"I am also able to make configuration changes during the day, in production, with no worries of problems and/or downtime occurring."

"Tech support is super-quick to respond, and always on target with answers specific to the current issue."

"It is scalable."

"The solution is effective in managing our traffic."

More HAProxy pros

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

"I receive very good support."

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

"I think installation only took a couple of minutes — no more than 10 minutes."

"Its versatility and capabilities make it invaluable for implementing patches and fixes when necessary."

"I find the solution’s community support and documentation most valuable. Compared to HAProxy, have found a lot of documentation and community support on Quora. If you would be asking me as a developer whether to choose this product, I would recommend this since it has good community support, documentation, and signature updates. The configuration of HAProxy is also very tedious. However, NGINX’s configuration is very simple."

"This solution has everything."

"It's lightweight software that can handle heavy loads efficiently."

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"Traffic flow issues are very difficult, as there's no means for us to analyze the traffic coming in or out of the appliance without technical support."

"The tool's load-balancing feature should improve."

"The solution should add automation features in the next release."

"The user interface is not as pretty as it could be."

"They need to make the user interface (GUI) a bit more usable and intuitive. Some features can be a little difficult to find at times. Sometimes, the workflow in the GUI doesn't match the workflow of an actual workflow. E.g., if I want to create a load balancer application, sometimes you've got to do things a bit out of order in the GUI in order to make it work right."

"The user interface is what people complain about most of the time, particularly if they don't use it very often. Then they complain that it's a bit clunky."

"It scaled well for our numbers, up to 3 million subscribers for our most crowded region but I would like to see the same scalability numbers for the virtualized version as well."

"The costs can be quite high."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC cons

"There is no standardized document available. So, any individual has to work from scratch to work it out. If some standard deployment details are available, it would be helpful for people while deploying it. There should be more documentation on the standard deployment."

"The basic clustering is not usable in our very specific setup. The clustering is mainly a configuration replication and is great in a case of active-passive usage. In the case of an active-active (or with more than two nodes) where the configuration is not fully identical, it cannot be used as-is."

"Dynamic update API. More things should be possible to be configured during runtime."

"The logging functionality could use improvement, as it is a little cryptic."

"The visibility could be improved."

"Maybe HAProxy could be more modular."

"We need to handle new connections by dropping, or queuing them while the HAProxy restarts, and because HAProxy does not handle split config files."

"I would like to evaluate load-balancing algorithms other than round robin and SSL offloading. Also, it would be helpful if I could logically divide the HAProxy load-balancing into multiple entities so that I would install one HA Proxy LB application which could be used for different Web servers for different applications. I am not sure if these features are available."

More HAProxy cons

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

"Improvement needed in NGINX Plus could focus on optimizing memory usage for users."

"The biggest room for improvement would be to allow NGINX Core machines to cluster for memory zones in some way with a plug and play module. "

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

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

"The solution's GUI is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."

"NGINX Plus is moderately priced, but it could give better value for money."

"I would like to see the Grafana integration in NGINX which is already present in HAProxy. Grafana integration will help the solution visualize all the data analytics on the dashboard which is currently not present."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We previously had F5 and switched because of costs."

"One of the main reasons for switching away from Cisco was the licensing model. A10 gives you global server load balancing for free, while Cisco charged a significant licensing fee for that."

"The price of the maintenance support is too expensive."

"For the hardware and license, we paid $35,000 per box, which was a one-time cost. Then, for the Gold Support on the two boxes, we pay $9400 annually."

"It is $7000 per unit for the support annually."

"We just pay for support in addition to our licensing."

"You get a lot more for your dollar with A10."

"The pricing is fine, considering the features they are providing. If you are an individual user, they'll price the product differently compared to how they price the product that is sold to an organization."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC pricing and cost advice

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

"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."

"Test/lab virtual machines can be installed without a licence. They can't be used for performance testing but otherwise behave like production nodes."

"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."

"The tool is open-source."

"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."

"It is free of cost."

"HAProxy is free open-source software."

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."

"NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it."

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

"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours."

"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."

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

"It's an open source solution, so it's free."

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

See recommendations

864,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

11%

University

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

16%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

I would recommend A10 Networks due that it delivers high performance in a small form factor to reduce OPEX with signi...

Do you recommend A10 Networks Thunder ADC?

I do recommend A10 Networks Thunder ADC. It's very user-friendly, easy to configure, and flexible. It is a very usefu...

What do you like most about A10 Networks Thunder ADC?

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is an easy-to-use and flexible solution.

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 ...

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Comparisons

Compared 25% of the time

NetScaler vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 23% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 10% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 8% of the time

Array APV Series vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 3% of the time

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs HAProxy

Compared 13% of the time

NetScaler vs HAProxy

Compared 13% of the time

Istio vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

Envoy vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

Barracuda Load Balancer ADC vs HAProxy

Compared 1% of the time

More HAProxy Competitors

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 15% of the time

NetScaler vs NGINX Plus

Compared 11% of the time

Apache Web Server vs NGINX Plus

Compared 11% of the time

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

Compared 11% of the time

LoadBalancer Enterprise vs NGINX Plus

Compared 2% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Download A10 Networks Thunder ADC product report

Download HAProxy product report

NGINX Plus

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

Thunder ADC, AX Series

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

NGINX

Overview

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is a dynamic application delivery controller and advanced load balancer. Thunder ADC is a value-added solution provided by A10 Networks specializing in robust, trusted, scalable application services for cloud, hybrid, edge cloud, and on-premise environments focused on improving business processes and keeping infrastructures safe. The solution consistently provides server availability, improves content delivery, and protects at-risk applications. A10 Networks Thunder ADC easily controls hybrid and multi-cloud deployments using a Polynimbus strategy to minimize difficulties and costs for IT processes, facilitating overall improved business results.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC is effective for small to medium businesses (SMBs) to large enterprises. Service providers and cloud operators are all using A10 Network ADC to manage their large and fast-growing group of business-critical applications.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC supplies L4-7 load balancing with numerous layers of security using DNS and web app firewalls, comprehensive support for advanced encryption, single sign-on (SSO) authentication, and high-performance Perfect Forward Secrecy and Error Correction Code (PFS/ECC). Thunder ADC is designed upon A10 Networks Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS®) platform to provide consistent, efficient application performance and trusted security for any environment.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC Benefits

Consistently accessible: A10 Networks Thunder ADC employs numerous load balancing protocols to evenly distribute workloads to all servers and works to ensure constant application functionality. User requests are monitored to ensure loads are directed to the appropriate server so that there is always a proper response delivery to content. This process ensures the applications are consistently available.
Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB): To ensure business processes are fully optimized at all times, A10 Networks Thunder ADC employs a dynamic Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB) process to augment server load balancing capabilities throughout global data centers for high availability and improved user experience and application tolerance.
Fast content delivery: A10 Networks Thunder ADC conquers the general WAN latencies, chatty policies, and redundant software programs to ensure quick and responsive service. Employees receive a fast, excellent end-user experience while the organization's business leaders get exceeded SLA mandates and increased productivity with teams working remotely and a step up on the competition.

A10 Networks Thunder ADC Features

Detailed Analytics: When deployed with A10 Networks Harmony Controller, Thunder ADC delivers a large selection of detailed aggregate and per-request reports in real time. The reports include popular URLs, error and health indicators, latencies, and end-to-end response times. The data is further dissected to deliver per-app reporting, availability alerts, and performance.
API Coverage: Thunder ADC utilizes A10 Networks REST-based aXAPIs to structure all features with 100 percent API coverage. The resulting interface is then used to seamlessly integrate custom or third-party management solutions, such as VMware or other SDN platforms, OpenStack, Microsoft SCVMM, or other cloud orchestration systems. There are also software plug-ins available for private clouds utilizing VMware’s vRealize Orchestrator.
Comprehensive Management Controls: Thunder ADC is fully supported by A10 Networks Harmony Controller and can be deployed in software or as a software-as-a-service (SaaS). This controller functions as a native management platform that organizes and distributes application-centric service protocols and configuration data to numerous Thunder appliances and device cluster infrastructures throughout numerous multi-cloud environments. Users can instantly identify, audit and track every appliance using critical operational metrics, such as CPU, disk usage, device partitions, and end users. The A10 Networks Harmony Controller will also complete configuration backups and restore operations, and will schedule regular software upgrades.

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

123inkt.nl, Bentley University, Box, Brainshark, Buienradar, Capgemini, CGN/LSN & NAT64, Chengdu Telecom, Club One, Code Ready, CRC Health Group, Cyso, Deutsche Telekom, Earth Class Mail, Excite, FFF Enterprises, Florence County, Framingham State University, From30

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)