Barracuda Load Balancer ADC vs NGINX Plus comparison

Barracuda Networks and F5 are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. Barracuda Networks is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.0, while F5 is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1. Barracuda Networks holds a 1.5% mindshare in ADC, compared to F5’s 7.5% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Barracuda Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of F5 users who would recommend it.

Barracuda Load Balancer ADC

Read 5 Barracuda Load Balancer ADC reviews

529 Views
513 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 31 NGINX Plus reviews

4,361 Views
2,747 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Barracuda Load Balancer ADC

NGINX Plus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Barracuda Load Balancer ADC and NGINX Plus compete in the application delivery and load-balancing market. NGINX Plus generally holds the upper hand due to its superior performance and scalability features, making it ideal for those prioritizing these aspects.

Features: Barracuda Load Balancer ADC provides robust security features, comprehensive traffic management, and integration with various network environments. NGINX Plus offers high-performance load balancing, advanced application monitoring, and support for microservices architectures, providing flexibility and scalability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Barracuda Load Balancer ADC is known for its straightforward deployment and strong customer support, which aids setup. NGINX Plus, while more complex to deploy, benefits from extensive documentation and a vibrant community for support. Barracuda Load Balancer ADC has an advantage in ease of deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Barracuda Load Balancer ADC is a cost-effective solution with a favorable initial setup cost, leading to better ROI for small to medium enterprises. NGINX Plus, despite its higher initial cost, provides significant long-term benefits for larger organizations seeking tailored solutions, making it a worthwhile investment for those leveraging its full features.

To learn more, read our detailed Barracuda Load Balancer ADC vs. NGINX Plus Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Load Balancer ADC vs. NGINX Plus

July 2025

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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

Barracuda Load Balancer ADC

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

14th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NGINX Plus

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (4th)

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 NGINX Plus is 7.5%, down from 8.3% 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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Michael Olayemi

Senior Software Engineer at Checkit

Enables public access and secure configurations through reverse proxy

The primary valuable feature of NGINX for me is its ability to provide a reverse proxy. I have found that this feature supports our local server, and I am able to connect through our DNS system, making it accessible publicly. Additionally, the integration with SSL certificates and the configuration capabilities make it a valuable solution for my use case. Without NGINX, users would not be able to access our application, which means there is positive ROI from using NGINX as it is crucial for the functioning of my organization.

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

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

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

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

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

"Nginx is extremely efficient in terms of the connection rate to the CPU cycles ratio, and in terms of the bandwidth to CPU cycles."

"The web proxy and the database proxy are excellent."

"The product is resilient."

"The product is lightweight and fast."

"The best solution, by far, for web traffic control for things in production and just around the house."

"Nginx is simple to configure, very stable in a highly utilized environment and very modular, allowing DevOps to create it's own modules for interactive use with Nginx."

"Application Gateway with application-level firewall tool and load distributor and balancer (also serves for A/B testing)."

"Its versatility and capabilities make it invaluable for implementing patches and fixes when necessary."

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

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

"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."

"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."

"One area of improvement could be that NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates."

"I would suggest adding GUI-based configuration panels to NGINX Plus to simplify setup and management tasks."

"I would like the configuration process to be more simplified."

"Initially, I experienced hiccups whenever I installed the application."

"Lack of a feature to print data on the terminal for verification of network traffic during debugging and testing."

"I would like it to have a more user-friendly graphical interface."

"The drawback is that you must obtain a license for everything."

"It would be good if NGINX provided a graphical user interface."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."

"NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it."

"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."

"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."

"It's an open source solution, so it's free."

"The cost is reasonable."

"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."

"You pay for each feature that you want."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Educational Organization

Retailer

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Government

Comms Service Provider

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 benefits and efficient operation, balancing the initial financial outlay.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Barracuda Load Balancer ADC?

There are areas of Barracuda Load Balancer's security that have room for improvement, particularly concerning handling traffic. Also, more could be done to enhance the initial setup, as it can be c...

See all answers

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 to maintain system performance. Clients use Barracuda Load Balancer ADC for its a...

See all answers

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,...

See all answers

What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Plus?

My use case involves using the free and open-source version of NGINX, making it cost-effective as I haven't incurred any costs.

See all answers

Comparisons

NetScaler vs Barracuda Load Balancer ADC

Compared 37% of the time

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

Compared 31% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs Barracuda Load Balancer ADC

Compared 13% of the time

HAProxy vs Barracuda Load Balancer ADC

Compared 11% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs Barracuda Load Balancer ADC

Compared 8% of the time

More Barracuda Load Balancer ADC Competitors

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 15% of the time

Apache Web Server vs NGINX Plus

Compared 12% of the time

NetScaler vs NGINX Plus

Compared 11% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 11% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NGINX Plus

Compared 11% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

July 2025

Download Barracuda Load Balancer ADC product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

August 2025

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

Barracuda Load Balancer

NGINX

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

NGINX Plus is a versatile solution that offers load balancing, caching, proxying, and API deployment capabilities. It can be deployed on private or public clouds and is ideal for building CDN solutions. The solution can also be used to secure web applications and replace web services like Apache.

NGINX has helped organizations improve functioning, reduce downtimes, and offer a DevOps-friendly solution. Its community support and documentation are highly regarded, and its configuration is more straightforward, making it a recommended choice over HAProxy.

Sample Customers

Fenwal Blood Technologies

Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA

Buyer's Guide

Barracuda Load Balancer ADC vs. NGINX Plus

July 2025

Free Report: Barracuda Load Balancer ADC vs. NGINX Plus

Find out what your peers are saying about Barracuda Load Balancer ADC vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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