A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs NetScaler vs Radware Alteon comparison

Read 107 NetScaler reviews

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91% willing to recommend

Radware Alteon

Read 48 Radware Alteon reviews

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1,428 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Radware Alteon

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between A10 Networks Thunder ADC, NetScaler, and Radware Alteon based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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

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

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

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Helped 852,098 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 May 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Thunder ADC is 5.0%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 14.4%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Radware Alteon is 4.9%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

SatishBabu

Vice President at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Known for its load balancing capabilities, the WAF features need to be improved

The solution's initial setup process was easy. For the installation, it takes around five minutes. One person can do the maintenance since it is not required much. So, it's a one-time solution, and its maintenance is fine. The number of people required for maintenance depends on the clients as well. One or two engineers are fine to serve around a hundred clients. If you have a number of devices, more people are needed for their maintenance because of the patching it requires during regular operations. Only for the maintenance, one engineer's fine. However, for regular operations, we need multiple people.

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DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking

Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

Read full review

MaverickHurley

Sr network arch at Mohawk Industries

Makes it easier and quicker to spin up services when we deploy applications

The most valuable aspect is the ability to customize the types of load-balancing scenarios needed for customized applications. Some of the load balancers on the market today are strictly out-of-hand load balancers for SSL or HTTP. Radware Alteon is most useful for customizing in-house applications based on ports and protocols. Another great feature is integrated application protection. There are many features you can activate. Some of them are add-ons, such as WAF protection, DDoS, rate-limiting, and connections-per-second per application. We also use Radware where we do all the programming.

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

"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."

"The ADCs are pretty straightforward and easy to use. There is a GUI base where you can go in and see everything, but they also have a CLI base where you can use a command and get the information that you want, very fast."

"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."

"The DNS application firewall and load balancing are very valuable."

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

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

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

"The SLB and GSLB load balancing are the most valuable features. They meet our need to do server-side load balancing and global site load balancing so we can distribute traffic, not only intra-data center, but inter-data center."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC pros

"The program is easy to install and to set up."

"Content filtering, security layer, and application customization features are the most valuable."

"One of the most beneficial features for application delivery is its integration with Citrix Storefront, facilitating user logins and ensuring continuity during data center outages."

"The NetScaler appliance has provided a lot of customers with greater high availability for their enterprise applications within a single site and across multiple locations."

"This solution allows the user to easily scale out application delivery, and provides secure remote access."

"My clients use it for load balancing."

"The most valuable feature is the content switching."

"Very stable."

More NetScaler pros

"The best features are the security through the web application firewall, the functionality that the solution offers, being a load balancer with the security functionality on top of it, and the ease of administration."

"The most valuable features of Radware Alteon are the reverse proxy functionality and the SSL offload and hardware."

"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 health status information, with its highly detailed reporting, has saved us time on troubleshooting. We have the precise information needed that helps us find different types of situations."

"The command line interface is simple and very user-friendly."

"The performance and stability are the most valuable features."

"I am finding SSL-TLS acceleration the most valuable function, with certificate management. It is easy to generate certificates and assign them to services"

"The solution has been very stable."

More Radware Alteon pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

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

"There are competitors that have more features."

"The product is expensive."

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

"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."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC cons

"Integration with other third party providers and third party applications could be better because it can be a bit complex at present."

"Citrix ADC can improve if it provides a more user-friendly interface and clear working protocols. Citrix is not working with classic RFC, it is working with Citrix RFC, which is not common in the world. If engineers of Citrix can provide us with more information on working with the classic IP networks it would be a benefit."

"The only thing customers told me that could be improved is that they would like to be able to purchase and receive the products in one box, rather than two boxes. This is something related to marketing, though."

"They can improve the scalability and the multi-tenancy feature. We recently tried to configure an authentication, and we ran into some issues while using the web-based GUI. It was very slow when you log in with your credentials in the web-based GUI. Each time we clicked on the menu, it tried to do the authentication. It works properly in the console."

"Currently, the support team's responsiveness is lacking, and the technical personnel on calls often seem unfamiliar with the issues or inadequately trained."

"The technical support has room for improvement."

"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 customization has always been a key area where some improvements are required. In the beginning, everything was for customizing the outer shell of it. You had to use the command-based utility and you had to do a lot of manual work. They have improved it a little bit and now there are some GUI-based functionalities that can be used. However, more can be done that doesn't require a lot of intervention. Right now there are some features, there are some customizations that can be done, but it's still very tedious, very cumbersome, a lot of work. So that could be simplified."

More NetScaler cons

"The user interface can be improved."

"Radware LinkProof's marketing efforts need improvement to raise awareness about its capabilities and compete effectively in the market."

"Support is an area that needs improvement."

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

"Performance could be improved."

"The solution could be more robust."

"We recently had a problem with the tables Obsolete ARP which was observed by the support team. It would be good to diagnose and solve this problem with a patch since it is not documented that it will be solved in later updates."

"The community portal does not have a place to find scripts."

More Radware Alteon cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is a third of the price of the F5 competition."

"The price is good they are very comparative."

"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."

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

"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."

"Pricing is one of the features of the product that influence customers to use the product."

"The solution costs less than its competitors."

"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."

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC pricing and cost advice

"The pricing could be lower."

"You get the value for your money. There aren't any hidden fees."

"In Turkey, everything is good, but it seems expensive for us due to the currency exchange. I don't have a specific rating scale, but if I had to rate the price, I would say it's around a six out of ten."

"The solution is undoubtedly very good, but it is expensive."

"Its licensing cost is much higher than other products, but it is acceptable because it is a one-time investment, and we are getting our requirements fulfilled when we buy this product. So, there is no issue with the pricing."

"The pricing for Citrix Web App and API Protection is unreasonable. I don't know the exact price, but I heard it's tens of thousands and it's a bit too much for the small country I live in."

"Citrix NetScaler's pricing is slightly above average but not overly expensive. I would consider F5 BIG IP to be the most expensive, Citrix NetScaler to be the second most expensive, and then Kemp Load Balancer to be the third."

"Citrix ADM costs us approximately $5000 per month."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

"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 pricing is better than the competition. It is getting more pricey as the years go on, as more people are migrating to it, and as the technology gets better."

"The price conforms to what the tool provides. It is not an inexpensive tool and not all companies can afford an ADC solution such as Alteon. However, it justifies its price with the options it offers."

"Radware Alteon is less expensive than many of the other competitors."

"Its pricing is very good. It is very competitive. Radware Alteon is the leader in the market. At a lesser price, we get a good product and also good support. Other vendors who are providing load balancers charge separately for two items. You have the hardware cost, and you have the support cost, whereas, in the case of Radware, you get both in a single package."

"The cost of Radware Alteon is mid-ranged."

"I'm content with Alteon's pricing."

"The solution is cost-efficient."

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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852,098 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

14%

University

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

11%

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.

What do you like most about Citrix ADC?

The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?

After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...

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 24% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 14% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 7% of the time

NGINX Plus vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 6% of the time

HAProxy vs A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Compared 5% of the time

More A10 Networks Thunder ADC Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon Elastic Load Balancing vs NetScaler

Compared 3% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

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

Compared 17% of the time

F5 Advanced WAF vs Radware Alteon

Compared 12% of the time

HAProxy vs Radware Alteon

Compared 7% of the time

NGINX Plus vs Radware Alteon

Compared 7% of the time

Fortinet FortiWeb vs Radware Alteon

Compared 4% of the time

More Radware Alteon Competitors

Product Reports

A10 Networks Thunder ADC

Download A10 Networks Thunder ADC product report

Download NetScaler product report

Radware Alteon

Download Radware Alteon product report

Also Known As

Thunder ADC, AX Series

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

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

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

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

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk

Convergys

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)