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Azul Zulu vs NGINX Plus 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

Azul Zulu
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
AI Customer Experience Personalization (21st), AI Content Creation (11th)
NGINX Plus
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Azul Zulu is 3.6%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 7.9%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NGINX Plus7.9%
Azul Zulu3.6%
Other88.5%
Application Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Standardized our Java estate and have reduced licensing costs while maintaining strong support
Azul Zulu's ability to allow us to standardize our Java estate on a single and well-supported platform stands out as one of its best features. This standardization simplifies our compliance audits and ensures all our applications receive timely security updates.Azul Zulu positively impacts our organization by providing a platform that allows us to standardize Java on a well-supported platform. Without the high cost associated with other proprietary vendors, Azul Zulu provides an excellent platform for running our applications.
Nadeem-Inamdar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Information Security Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Advanced policies and web firewall have strengthened application protection and reduced attack traffic
There were some vulnerabilities in F5. They tried to fix it, but the fixes were not available at the time because they were zero days, so they attempted to fix it, but their support was not proper. Their support should be improved because sometimes features which we need for customization take time, and they are sometimes feasible and sometimes not feasible by the team, so their support and the engineering team should improve their product. I would like to see more features regarding customization which should be built into the application, and the tool optimization should be good, and the dashboard should be more crisp and clear.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We achieved specific outcomes from using Azul Zulu by reducing our Java licensing and support costs by approximately 70% when compared to our previous Oracle contract."
"We've had no issues with stability."
"NGINX is the best available tool today for the tasks it covers."
"Recently, we’ve needed to deploy sites over a number of servers to balance the load, which was not only painless but also super valuable."
"It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX."
"NGINX has created a resilient infrastructure for us which has reduced our downtimes."
"The robust software architecture allows for it to be scalable and very stable."
"The load balancing module, which is equivalent to LTM, is the focus of the PSE. So far, the features of both are identical. I believe NGINX has more features for securing these services, but in terms of load balancing, both are massive solutions."
"Application Gateway with application-level firewall tool and load distributor and balancer (also serves for A/B testing)."
"The overall product rating is ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"It needs a better update daemon. At this time the process is manual and could be an issue on multiple desktop deployments."
"Improvements for Azul Zulu could include more automated tools for unused code visibility integrated directly into the standard portal to help further optimize our cloud footprints."
"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."
"Only improvement needed that I would point to is scalability. With it, I mean clusterized organisation on a low level. At the moment, the best alternative is RHEL HA."
"Our most challenging part was to run an older PHP website reverse-proxied through NGINX. That was not fun."
"The user interface could be improved."
"Make modules easier to enable or disable. The beauty and ugly side of the NGINX modules is you have to know how to compile the module. For beginners or non-very technical aspirant(s) going for NGINX, they have to learn how to compile the modules.​"
"NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5."
"Our most challenging part was to run an older PHP website reverse-proxied through NGINX. That was not fun."
"The scaling should be built into the software rather than configured from an outside source."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"​NGINX Plus is worth it, if you need it. If you do not need the features or support, the free and open source package is more than capable. ​"
"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."
"It's an open source solution, so it's free."
"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."
"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."
"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."
"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Construction Company
11%
Retailer
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Azul Zulu?
Improvements for Azul Zulu could include more automated tools for unused code visibility integrated directly into the standard portal to help further optimize our cloud footprints. The other core J...
What is your primary use case for Azul Zulu?
Azul Zulu serves as our primary Java runtime, providing a stable, 100% open-source, and certified solution for our production microservices. We utilize it to ensure cross-platform compatibility acr...
What advice do you have for others considering Azul Zulu?
My advice for others looking into using Azul Zulu is to perform a pilot migration with one non-critical application first. You will likely find that it is truly a drop-in replacement, which will gi...
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 architecture can handle the most demanding tasks. From media streaming to web applications,...
What do you like most about NGINX Plus?
It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
NGINX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Kyocera, OKI, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, Voya Financial
Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA
Find out what your peers are saying about Azul Zulu vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.