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Amazon Elastic Load Balancing vs F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Elastic Load Balancing
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Mohd Farhan - PeerSpot reviewer
Manage complex traffic routing with ease and ensure system availability
The ELB would benefit from allowing deployment in a single availability zone for test servers to avoid unnecessary costs. Additionally, the ability to directly block specific IP addresses without additional service integration would be beneficial. Furthermore, sometimes ALB has a delay in recognizing the need to scale the system based on CloudWatch metrics, which could use improvement.
Lilian Blaitt - PeerSpot reviewer
Virtual deployment boosts efficiency and support is quick
In my company, we use NGINX. I don't work with NGINX. For us, it is better to have the virtual solution because we have more virtual VJPs on fewer machines. This is the reason we are using it today It's easy to use, and they have good support. When we open tickets, they are answered quickly, and…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The network load balancer is really fast."
"Amazon Elastic Load Balancing transfers the data securely from servers to users and splits the traffic based on peak times."
"It is straightforward to deploy."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon Elastic Load Balancing is scaling."
"I find it valuable that you can provide rule prioritization and set priorities for path-based routing."
"The best part about ALB is its ability to connect with different services including EC2, ECS, API Gateway, or Lambda functions, offering a lot of benefits like attaching a WAF."
"The feature that I like the most is the scalability. The solutions I build often have many pieces, which are very complicated. If a client comes to me with a design, my developer has made this as a template or a cloud formation script. It's a design on paper, and I want it executed a certain way. I can do that quickly and repeatedly with AWS. That is a considerable advantage because I can take that template and do it five times in different zones. That is an excellent feature based on a template, et cetera."
"Amazon Elastic Load Balancing helps me efficiently distribute incoming application or network traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances."
"The integration capabilities of the product are easy to use, and there is no complexity involved in it."
"I have a specific issue with the network interface connector, the NIC. We're limited to a maximum of two NICs in a virtualized environment. It's a limitation of the tool."
"The features that I like include LTM and Global Traffic Manager (GTM)."
"It has DoS layer 7 protection, which not many vendors have."
"It's easy to use, and they have good support."
"The tool's investment is less than a physical device."
 

Cons

"Improvements could involve making Amazon Elastic Load Balancing a global service, as currently, it is region-specific."
"They charge for technical support depending on the support model required."
"We faced some issues with the health check."
"The reporting could be simplified so that the client sees a report of what they cached at the end of the month and the number of hits. It should have metrics above and beyond their Google analytics, etc. You can't do that with the solutions from AWS. You have to build sophisticated cloud trails, reports, dashboards, etc. The setup is significant, and it's hard to manage. You'll need to hire someone or pay a consultant on a regular basis to manage it, and it's not for the faint of heart."
"The latency compared to the network load balancer could be improved."
"The product should be made as an alternative to Amazon services. It would be easier for us if you got one service that is available everywhere."
"The solution needs to guarantee stability because multiple loads behind a load balancer can cause service unavailability."
"Sometimes the target group takes too much time to configure or to be seen on the internet, especially when configuring through ISV tools."
"F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is a heavy system that needs a lot of CPU, memory, and hard disk."
"On-the-go upgrades are an option that the tool currently lacks, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The tool has limitations with respect to code and RAM."
"It's expensive and could be cheaper."
"BIG-IP could improve in supporting microservices, for example, in Docker and Kubernetes environments."
"I have a specific issue with the network interface connector, the NIC. We're limited to a maximum of two NICs in a virtualized environment. It's a limitation of the tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I have no issues with the tool's pricing."
"The cost for using the application load balancer is approximately $18 to $21 per month."
"There is a yearly license."
"The solution's pricing is $30 per month."
"The solution's pricing is low and I rate it a nine out of ten."
"The product is not cheap."
"The solution is expensive."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of connections one uses. It is a free tool for a certain amount of connections, which runs into thousands, and after that, there is a certain amount to be paid to Amazon."
"My company's customers need to make payments for the licensing charges attached to the product. It is an expensive product."
"I would rate the pricing a three out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"The pricing is standard."
"F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is an expensive solution, but it's worth the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
32%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Media Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Retailer
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Elastic Load Balancing?
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing transfers the data securely from servers to users and splits the traffic based on peak times.
What needs improvement with Amazon Elastic Load Balancing?
Although I haven't faced any issues, improvements could involve making Amazon Elastic Load Balancing a global service, as currently, it is region-specific. Simplifying components required for load ...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Elastic Load Balancing?
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing ( /products/amazon-elastic-load-balancing-reviews ) helps me efficiently distribute incoming application or network traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2...
What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
The integration capabilities of the product are easy to use, and there is no complexity involved in it.
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
I find it too complex to assess the impact of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's automated deployment and integration with container orchestration platforms, such as Kubernetes and OpenShift, on my applic...
What advice do you have for others considering F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
I do not use the load balancing and traffic management features of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. I use other container orchestration platforms, but they are not relevant to F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition. ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Elastic Load Balancing vs. F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.