Barracuda Load Balancer ADC vs HAProxy vs NetScaler comparison

Read 42 HAProxy reviews

7,217 Views
5,485 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Barracuda Load Balancer ADC

Read 107 NetScaler reviews

7,489 Views
6,066 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Barracuda Load Balancer ADC, HAProxy, and NetScaler 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

Download the complete report

Helped 865,164 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 Barracuda Load Balancer ADC is 1.5%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 11.9%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 14.4%, down from 16.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Roni Wijaya

Vice President of It Operations at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

A simple and powerful solution with WAF feature

The solution is simple and powerful. I find the Barracuda Load Balancer ADC's load balancing function most valuable. It balances the traffic well. The security features, like the Web Application Firewall, are also very helpful. I use the SSL offloading feature too. It's very helpful because it prevents overload. Our application runs on HTTP, but we upload HTTPS on the load balancer. This means there are no performance issues. I think it's very helpful.

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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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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The price is very good, and it's not very expensive."

"I would rate the stability of Barracuda Load Balancer as a ten out of ten; it has high stability."

"The solution is simple and powerful. I find the Barracuda Load Balancer ADC's load balancing function most valuable. It balances the traffic well. The security features, like the Web Application Firewall, are also very helpful."

"The most useful features in Barracuda Load Balancer are its security capabilities, load balancing efficiency, and scalability."

"Barracuda's technical support is good - whenever we have an issue, they immediately connect and resolve it."

"It is scalable."

"The most valuable feature of HAProxy is that its open source."

"The ease of use of the configuration, and great documentation, are the most valuable features for us."

"HAProxy's TCP load balancer is excellent and super stable."

"It solves a problem for me where I can build files, not based on the health of the check, but rather the speed of the check."

"The most important features would be the load-balancing of HTTP and TCP requests, according to multiple LB-algorithms (busyness, weighted-busyness, round robin, traffic, etc). Another important feature that we cannot live without is the username/passwd authentication for legacy systems that had none."

"Tech support is super-quick to respond, and always on target with answers specific to the current issue."

"HAProxy potentially has a good return on investment"

More HAProxy pros

"The solution was very easy to deploy."

"The solution is very stable. We don't have any downtime or issues of that nature."

"I like the ease of use. It's easy to manage. I also like it's ease of use with virtualization technologies with applications."

"Enables a Web service that offers persistent client-server connections, IP restriction, URL rewrite (such as remove "/assets/" path from client-side URL path), and cache for CSS or JS files... You can easily use the GUI to set up all these requirements on the same network device within 20-30 minutes. (If you do the same steps on CLI, it might take less time.)"

"Helped us a lot with load balancing."

"It is a very stable solution."

"The most valuable features are for the ADMs and the overall monitoring environment."

"The load balancing feature of this solution is very good."

More NetScaler pros

Cons

"The quality of the solution's performance could be improved."

"There are areas of Barracuda Load Balancer's security that have room for improvement, particularly concerning handling traffic."

"The Barracuda Load Balancer ADC could be improved with more customization features. For example, F5 uses iRules for custom configurations. I haven't found something similar in Barracuda yet. The load balancer and WAF's basic and common features are enough, but we need more customization options."

"Load Balancer ADC is competitively priced, but it's not feature-rich, and its technology is not that advanced."

"There are areas of Barracuda Load Balancer's security that have room for improvement, particularly concerning handling traffic."

"Maybe HAProxy could be more modular."

"Documentation could be improved."

"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."

"We need to handle new connections by dropping, or queuing them while the HAProxy restarts, and because HAProxy does not handle split config files."

"If nbproc = 2, you will have two processes of HAProxy running. However, the stats of HAProxy will not be aggregated, meaning you don't really know the collective status in a single point of view."

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

"The configuration should be more friendly, perhaps with a Web interface. For example, I work with the ClusterControl product for Severalnines, and we have a Web interface to deploy the HAProxy load-balancer."

"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."

More HAProxy cons

"Citrix should offer a demo or free-trial version of NetScaler. Several other vendors do, but Citrix does not. Pricing should also be more readily available."

"The reporting is not so good. They don't have an application to connect the logs."

"In every release - and it doesn't matter if it's a minor release or a major release - they keep moving things around and they keep changing the mechanism. So certain things can work in one version one way, and everything works really well, then when you upgrade it to the next version, it breaks everything because they have a new way of doing it."

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

"I would like to see multifactor authentication added to this solution to improve the security."

"We face challenges with the solution's firmware upgrades frequently."

"The SLB could be better, and they should improve it."

"I would like to see them make it easier to do some of the more complex things. For example, a web re-direct requires two pieces to it. You have two ports and when people want to go to a web page, they just type in the webpage that on the backend it will redirect them to a secure link. The initial setup of that is cumbersome because you have to do it twice. There are things that can be replicated. The IP address, for example, is the same. This change would go a long way. Don't make me do it twice and don't make me have to read tons of documentation to figure out how to do it. Ease of configuration for some of the more complex processes would be a good improvement."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Load Balancer ADC is cost-effective and is about half the price of F5."

"I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten."

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

"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."

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

"The price is well worth it. HAProxy Enterprise Edition paid for itself within months, simply due to the resiliency it brings. It was a bit more expensive than we were originally interested in paying, but we are thankful we chose to go with HAProxy."

"The product is open source."

"HAProxy is free in the initial offer. However, pricing can be improved."

"Test/lab virtual machines can be installed without a licence. They can't be used for performance testing but otherwise behave like production nodes."

"HAProxy is an open-source solution."

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

"I give the price of the solution a seven out of ten."

"The license for Citrix NetScaler is on an annual basis and it is reasonably priced."

"It's an expensive product but it works well."

"We have all the features and functions of Citrix because we have a premium license."

"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."

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

"It all depends on the features that will be used and the number of accesses."

More NetScaler 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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865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Educational Organization

Retailer

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Barracuda Load Balancer ADC?

Pricing for Barracuda Load Balancer ADC can be a consideration. However, it offers good value with its cost-saving be...

What needs improvement with Barracuda Load Balancer ADC?

There are areas of Barracuda Load Balancer's security that have room for improvement, particularly concerning handlin...

What is your primary use case for Barracuda Load Balancer ADC?

The typical use case for Barracuda Load Balancer ADC involves managing and distributing network traffic efficiently t...

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 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...

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Barracuda Load Balancer ADC

Comparisons

Compared 31% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs Barracuda Load Balancer ADC

Compared 13% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs Barracuda Load Balancer ADC

Compared 8% of the time

More Barracuda Load Balancer ADC Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs HAProxy

Compared 13% of the time

Istio vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

Envoy vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

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

Compared 10% of the time

More HAProxy Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 9% 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

NGINX Plus vs NetScaler

Compared 7% of the time

Imperva Web Application Firewall vs NetScaler

Compared 2% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

Product Reports

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

July 2025

Download Barracuda Load Balancer ADC product report

Download HAProxy product report

August 2025

Download NetScaler product report

August 2025

Also Known As

Barracuda Load Balancer

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

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

Overview

Barracuda Load Balancer is ideal for organizations looking for a high-performance, yet cost-effective application delivery and security solution. With the broadest range of hardware and virtual models, Barracuda Load Balancer provides maximum flexibility for organizations looking to build highly secure and scalable application infrastructure, whether it's deployed on-premises or in the cloud.

Barracuda 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.

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.

Sample Customers

Fenwal Blood Technologies

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp

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