A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs HAProxy vs Radware Alteon comparison

Read 42 HAProxy reviews

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91% willing to recommend

Radware Alteon

Read 48 Radware Alteon reviews

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1,904 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Radware Alteon

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between A10 Networks Thunder ADC, HAProxy, and Radware Alteon 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)

July 2025

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Helped 865,140 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 Radware Alteon is 4.6%, up from 4.2% 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…

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Gaurav-Mishra

Network Engineer at DXC Technology

Debugging and SSL offloading are excellent, and it's easy to create policies

Multiple software bugs exist. Most of the time, they're issues with Radware's patching. The organization has a vulnerability and penetration team attempting to upgrade the system to version n minus one. If we have deployed the software to the n-minus-one range, the device isn't performing well because it's already in the testing version. Version compatibility is a critical issue. If a vulnerability team or penetration team suggests you upgrade your device or server to the n-minus-one range once we are deployed, that's an issue. We get alerts in two formats: graph and decimal. The graph format is a good one, but it's not so easy to debug and prioritize issues.

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 DNS application firewall and load balancing are very valuable."

"The Deterministic CGNAT feature is valuable for us."

"A10 explained why the latency dropped significantly on a site that we have."

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

"We have two appliances and I'm able to move my application from one appliance to another. I don't have to move my whole A10 to be active on the other side or to be passive on the other side. If an application is having a problem, I can just move it using a command."

"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 is very useful to have a simple dashboard where you can login and look into what your traffic patterns are, then look and see what times of day you're experiencing the heaviest traffic. You can quickly identify if you are possibly having a security issue or security breach. It makes it very easy to use the box."

"The solution is stable."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC pros

"The solution is user-friendly and efficient."

"It improves our scalability and responsiveness services to meet our demanding customer requirements."

"The anti-DDOS PacketShield filtering solution (embedded in the physical appliances) as well as the BGP route injection are great features and heavily used."

"Advanced traffic rules, including stick tables and ACLs, which allow me to shape traffic while it's load balanced."

"Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind."

"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."

"Reliability. HAProxy is the most reliable product I have ever used."

"Performance configuration options with threads, processes, and core stickiness are very valuable."

More HAProxy pros

"The integrated application protection provided by Alteon is very good. It really helps to avoid false positives in some cases. It provides important granularity to avoid a situation in which security or cybersecurity scenarios escape us."

"The features that mitigate attacks are very valuable."

"The strength of this solution is the application delivery controller."

"The round-robin distribution of the load is quite useful."

"Valuable features of Radware Alteon include global server load balancing, SSL offloading, Layer 7 load balancing, automation and traffic scaling, real-time analytics, and reporting."

"I like the concept of self-service, that I can do everything on my own."

"I like the ADC feature and the global certificate feature."

"Security is one of the most valuable features that I like. It is easy to use and easy to configure."

More Radware Alteon pros

Cons

"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."

"The solution does logging, but the logging capacity is really small. Because we have a bunch of traffic here, we usually get a logging-side warning that "This many logs were lost because of the heavy traffic." If the logging was better, that would be very good."

"There is room for improvement in the upgrading process. Sometimes we have to contact A10 for verification of some stuff."

"There is two-factor authentication built-in, but it could be more robust."

"The interface and integrated custom applications can be a bit difficult."

"The costs can be quite high."

"We are starting to do a lot with containers and how the solution hooks into Kubernetes that we haven't explored. I'm hoping that they have a lot of hooks into Kubernetes. That would be the part for improvement: Marketing use cases with containers."

"When it comes to support, there is always room for improvement. First call resolution is not always there for urgent issues. The first call resolution is something that could be improved upon."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC cons

"The web stats UI, which provides the status of the health and numbers, could greatly benefit from having a RESTful interface to control the load-balanced nodes. Although there is a hack around the UI (by issuing a POST request to HAProxy with parameters), a RESTful interface would greatly improve the automation process (through Chef and Ansible)."

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

"HAProxy is very weak in the logging and monitoring part and requires improvement."

"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."

"The only area that I can see needing improvement is the management interface, since it is pretty much all through the CLI or configuration. A GUI/web interface could be helpful for users who are not as experienced in the Linux shell. However, HAProxy does have another product that we evaluated called ALOHA, which has a web front-end, but we found it did not meet our needs."

"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."

"Maybe HAProxy could be more modular."

"The reconfigurability in terms of the tooling could be improved and maybe an editor plugin can be added."

More HAProxy cons

"The solution could be more robust."

"Their support can be better. The Radware management is very proactive. We can connect to anybody in Radware Management in India. We can even connect with the MD of Radware India. However, their lower level staff should be more proactive towards the customers."

"I would like for the load balancing to work with premier and the cloud, a mix of premium and cloud."

"The solution lacks HA configuration."

"I would like to see future enhancements in security, specifically in threat protection."

"Integration with cloud services could be improved. Every now and then, we need engagement to address challenges with cloud integrations."

"I would like to see more educational and training sessions."

"We are in the process of updating our version of the solution, so judging what should be improved is difficult. But in some cases, the visualization takes a while, especially for mapping issues."

More Radware Alteon cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"There were budgetary constraints that keep us from investing in the single pane of glass traffic management feature. We saw a demo of this feature about a year to a year and a half ago."

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

"We did try out the solution’s Harmony analytics and visibility controller for its one-year trial. Due to the cost, we chose not to keep it onsite."

"The solution costs less than its competitors."

"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."

"The price of A10 Networks Thunder ADC depends on capacity and the customer's requirement. They have several offerings. They have different price models and options to choose from. Additionally, you need to subscribe to support for the hardware appliances."

"As for the initial investment in the hardware, F5 and A10 are quite similar now. For the current A10 solution, the initial cost was about $36,000. As for annual support, the F5 solution would be between $10,000 and $12,000, while the A10 is $2,200 a year for support."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC pricing and cost advice

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

"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."

"It is free of cost."

"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."

"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."

"HAProxy is an open-source solution."

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

"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible."

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

"The pricing seems reasonable to me for what the solution provides. It is within the parameters of this type of solution."

"It is cost-efficient. That is why we have gone with Alteon. As a product, it is efficient and robust. We have not faced any issues with the device."

"Radware LinkProof is neither cheap nor expensive."

"The Radware team we work with always gives us the best price. As a university, our budget is limited. We need something that is the best solution but with a low or economical pricing. We are getting a better price than competitors. The shift from Barracuda to Alteon was primarily due to cost efficiency. It is very economical, and the price fits our business needs."

"The solution is cost-efficient."

"It is the best in the industry. It was better than the competition, and that is what made us go ahead with them."

"Our government agency opted for Radware Alteon due to its affordability and efficiency. While I can't say precisely how much it costs the organization, the price per device. In India, we always look for affordable products, so I assume Alteon is cost-effective because the government chose it."

"Price-wise, the solution is a reasonable one."

More Radware Alteon 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

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

University

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

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.

What do you like most about Radware Alteon?

It saves us a lot of work in terms of management since it has tasks already defined automatically. That enables us to...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Radware Alteon?

We have a three-year contract with Radware. It is beneficial to have a longer-term contract because you can obtain mo...

What needs improvement with Radware Alteon?

It is a fairly complete service and it is difficult for me to think of what can be improved. A feature that I would l...

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

Comparisons

Compared 26% 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

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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

NetScaler vs Radware Alteon

Compared 17% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Radware Alteon

Compared 17% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Radware Alteon

Compared 11% of the time

NGINX Plus vs Radware Alteon

Compared 7% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Radware Alteon

Compared 5% of the time

More Radware Alteon Competitors

Product Reports

Download A10 Networks Thunder ADC product report

A10 Networks Thunder ADC

July 2025

Download HAProxy product report

August 2025

Download Radware Alteon product report

Radware Alteon

August 2025

Also Known As

Thunder ADC, AX Series

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

Alteon, Radware AppWall

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.

Radware Alteon is an application delivery controller (ADC) solution that provides global load balancing for all web, cloud and mobile-based applications. The solution is designed to help your organization simplify operations while ensuring resilience and SLA. It manages application traffic across both data and cloud center locations, optimizing availability and performance. In addition, Radware Alteon integrates multiple application protection services to provide protection against an array of cyberthreats.

Radware Alteon Features

Radware Alteon has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Robust
Load-balancing reverse proxy
Stable
Flexible
Guaranteed application availability
Application aware traffic redirection capabilities
Faster web application response time
Application specific optimized configuration guides
Configuration templates
Built-in virtualization
Built-in application and network security

Radware Alteon Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Radware Alteon. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Flexible deployment options: Radware Alteon is deployable in a multitude of form factors, including on-premises, virtual, and cloud, and provides a consistent application delivery and security service in any application environment.

Automation scripts library: To support faster time to service for complex application delivery and security services, Alteon is supported by an extensive range of automation scripts library. This also enables seamless integration of Radware Alteon services into the DevOps CI/CD processes.

Integrated application protection: The solution offers comprehensive application protection via embedded WAF, bot management, threat intelligence, and API protection capabilities. This ensures application availability and helps to minimize false positives, as well as keep applications along with their data secure.

Actionable visibility: With Radware Alteon you can stay ahead of issues and threats. The solution provides real-time visibility and actionable insights for proactive management of application availability and security issues before the user experience is impacted.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the solution.

PeerSpot reviewer Jefe de implementaciones de Datos at RETO Industrial S.A. de. C.V., mentions, “The simple and well-documented configuration allows us to be able to implement new balancing services at the request of the user with the same conditions and good service that they expect. We can also make changes to services that are already running, as I mentioned before, the graphical interface is very intuitive and you can almost always make the most common changes quickly. Radware has been characterized by being extremely robust. This gives us the confidence to offer our users a continuous service.”

A director of consulting says, “The most valuable features are the load-balancing and reverse proxy. Global-load balancing as well is valuable. I also find it to be stable. To date, we have not had any issues with it.”

An SOC Specialist at a tech services company explains, “The interface is easy, it's friendly, and has good alerting. When you have a problem with a server, it will alert you. It is useful in many areas, especially for web applications and load balancing. It's something that the customer can see on the internet.”

Radware

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

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