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Amazon Elastic Load Balancing vs NetScaler comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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
NetScaler
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (5th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Amazon Elastic Load Balancing is 1.4%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 14.5%, down from 16.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

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.
DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is known for its scalability and stability."
"Amazon Elastic Load Balancing has improved our application availability by routing client requests only to healthy EC2 instances."
"We use the solution for internet-exposed websites and internal load-balancing purposes."
"Security and monitoring for high-performance applications are some of the top features."
"Overall, I would rate the ELB solution ten out of ten."
"I would recommend Amazon Elastic Load Balancing for its flexibility and scalability, which is ideal for AWS workloads."
"Amazon Elastic Load Balancing transfers the data securely from servers to users and splits the traffic based on peak times."
"The tool integrates well with Amazon native services. Its valuable feature is integrations."
"Available on any device and can be accessed on a wide area network."
"We appreciate that this solution facilitates our access to Citrix internet."
"The web application firewalling component is a powerful feature."
"This solution allows the user to easily scale out application delivery, and provides secure remote access."
"The GSLB feature allows us to move services between data centers. We can do this in either a planned or unplanned manner. We have experienced service provider outages at our primary data center and GSLB will kick in to automatically modify DNS records to point to a secondary data center (active/passive). We also make use of GeoIP information to point clients to the closest data center for accessing applications."
"Citrix is good for application protection."
"We use the solution's IP Reputation and bot protection features."
"HTTP analysis and action. We have a lot of custom web applications that sometimes require custom header insertions. Some of these custom apps are external and, via the content switching, we can use one IP and leverage various back-end web app servers."
 

Cons

"The tool could enhance the internal load balancer with better health monitoring. The external load balancer needs more security parameters to protect it from the internet, as it currently lacks protection. It's okay for basic load balancing and those looking for basic functionality in an application load balancer. However, if someone is going to onboard a critical application, like in the banking sector, I wouldn't suggest Amazon Elastic Load Balancer because of security issues. There are no firewall restrictions."
"It would be good if we had a product that integrates well with third-party vendors. Some of our customers want a multi-cloud solution. They don't want to be tied up to or be in just one cloud."
"They charge for technical support depending on the support model required."
"The ELB would benefit from allowing deployment in a single availability zone for test servers to avoid unnecessary costs."
"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."
"Clients sometimes face issues with Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, and it can take a long time to detect these issues."
"They could improve provisioning speed."
"The routing policies and waiting policies could be improved for better performance."
"Development team's response time could be better."
"An area for improvement would be the difficulty in finding information about standard licensing costs over the internet. They should provide some reference prices on the net to be quickly referred to."
"The licensing model and technical support of the solution could be improved."
"The user interface could be more friendly. Some wizards and other documentation for administrators, as well as some use cases, helps us to understand the solution."
"We would like the licensing model for this product to be improved, as it isn't currently very transparent. There isn't a standard package available, and each extra feature creates an additional cost."
"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."
"Quality assurance could improve by ironing out security vulnerabilities before releasing upgrades."
"I think the documentation should be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The product is not cheap."
"I have no issues with the tool's pricing."
"The solution's pricing is low and I rate it a nine out of ten."
"There is a yearly license."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is $30 per month."
"The cost for using the application load balancer is approximately $18 to $21 per month."
"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."
"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten since it is expensive."
"It is very pricey, but we get it. If you need the best, money shouldn't be a problem."
"NetScaler does the same thing as an F5 and it's cheaper."
"Citrix NetScaler VPX is not the cheapest solution out there, but you get what you pay for."
"We are quite happy with price. It's not too high."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight or nine out of ten."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
36%
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Government
4%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
9%
 

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 Citrix ADC?
The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic enters our environment.
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 expensive.
What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?
Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexity. While it could be easier to manage, it is like transitioning from driving a ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Elastic Load Balancing vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.