F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Kemp LoadMaster vs NetScaler comparison

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...

Read 107 NetScaler reviews

7,835 Views
6,425 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Kemp LoadMaster

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), Kemp LoadMaster, 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: June 2025).

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Download the complete report

Helped 861,390 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 July 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is 15.3%, up from 15.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kemp LoadMaster is 7.3%, up from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 14.6%, down from 16.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Bonieber Orofeo

IT Manager at Chong Hua Hospital

Identifying compromised traffic and securing data has been a significant advantage

One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) ( /products/f5-big-ip-local-traffic-manager-ltm-reviews ) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication. Additionally, the security aspect of it provides a significant advantage as it helps us secure our data, which is a major investment and benefit for us. Before using this system, we had difficulties in storing our data and managing the traffic that comes in and out.

Read full review

PeterForster

Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

A highly stable and scalable load-balancing software that offers great technical support

My company is really happy with Kemp LoadMaster as a product. My company is also happy with the support we receive from Kemp LoadMaster. I want Kemp LoadMaster to provide users with better reporting capabilities in relation to TCP packets. In general, the connections that are present in the system require improvement. Feature-wise, Kemp LoadMaster has everything that our company's customers require. Kemp LoadMaster also has features that have supported our company's past projects.

Read full review

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.

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

"We're able to do load balancing and global load balancing. When you marry those two products together, you can do a lot more. We're able to deliver our applications more securely and faster. It has improved our deliverability where we have more service across the shared data centers. We can intelligently reach all of those client connections across all of the servers and do it fairly quickly. It has helped improve our application delivery and performance."

"The most valuable features are the WAF and the big IP."

"The tech support we got from F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager directly was pretty good."

"We always use technical support and the team helps us very well. They're able to effectively find and fix issues and they respond very quickly."

"If I were to choose one key feature in particular, perhaps it would be the iRule feature. It’s a really versatile tool."

"It is an easy way to build application policies (graphical)."

"It offers features Kemp doesn't provide. For example, there are predefined templates for handling Office 365. You can download them for automatic configuration."

"Valuable features include Link Controller and Server Load Balancer."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pros

"Managing and maintaining multiple servers is done in a single place."

"Using Kemp as a front-facing service appliance, it allows me to have the flexibility of swapping out real servers behind the scenes without any intervention from my network team."

"The most valuable feature that I found is the load balancing feature, it is the core function of the product."

"The old process of manually having to redirect Outlook Web Access traffic and Email traffic to a second server is a thing of the past."

"The most valuable features for us are the Load Balancing and Web Application Firewall, as we have a lot of web applications."

"Load-balancing is a great feature that is very easy to configure and it is always working fine."

"When you configure the listening services, you can implement a lot of security features like the Edge Security Pack that intercepts the requests and processes those before they are sent to the real servers."

"The most beneficial function of using the ADC is to ensure this resiliency."

More Kemp LoadMaster pros

"The load balancing feature and the fact that you can do context switching in the WAF are the most valuable. We majorly use it for load balancing, but we also use it for context switching in the WAF. It is also robust and very easy to work with and manage."

"My customers have told me that the performance of this solution is good."

"We use the solution's IP Reputation and bot protection features."

"The web application firewall is one feature I found valuable in the solution."

"Its flexibility, agility, and robustness are the most valuable. Its management and implementation are also quite easy."

"The solution can scale."

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

"The solution can be configured very granularly and has good control over security."

More NetScaler pros

Cons

"F5 BIG-IP LTM can improve on the SSL loading which includes the authentication of certificates. Although, most of these issues have been solved there are still some issue that persists."

"I would like them to expand load balancing, being able to go across multiple regions to on-premise and into the cloud. This could use improvement, as it is sometimes a little cumbersome."

"It would possibly help to get more training, even better in local languages."

"There is a challenge in Pakistan. This is when there is a hardware failure. Sometimes, it takes more time to get a replacement because it is sent out from the U.S. or some other regional outpost. Thus, it takes two to three days to receive a replacement."

"The auto logout feature after three minutes is terrible. I wish they would make that longer, since it is not a feature that we can change."

"The price needs improvement as it is quite costly."

"In the LTM solution, it would be beneficial to have more algorithms for traffic segmentation or the ability to create user-defined algorithms rather than being restricted to predefined ones."

"The analytics should provide insight into latency across various traffic routes and virtual servers."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) cons

"Some of the support documentation seems to make assumptions that the person installing or configuring is experienced with the product or concepts."

"Third, the password history restriction needs improvement. For example, the password policy will restrict the user to always use a unique password combination. The password should not be reused for a minimum of three generations of passwords."

"I really don't like the way the logs are presented in the software."

"They were still in the process of development, and for example, we set it up in a cluster. So it was one logistical unit built out of two physical devices. And the expected behavior, which I know from other devices, will be formed into a logic cluster. It's that you configure one unit. Then you bring the second unit into this cluster with the already configured primary unit. So the secondary box pulls all the configured ones from its neighbor, does everything automatically, and then synchronizes with this primary neighbor. And then it works, like, one logical unit. And this didn't work with the Kemp's initially, where they caused a lot of issues when building up a cluster, so there were some specials on how to set this up. When we built or set them up for the first time and the months afterward with no new software releases, there were a couple of problems, but in the end, they worked fine. So, they developed a lot and learned from what they've responded to, what we responded to them, and what needs fixing."

"So far, the only hitch we have run into is that would have been nice to have an easier method to add allow/whitelist entries into the Access Control lists for virtual services."

"We experienced a brief period of instability."

"Several elements of the GUI need work. For example, if you have many content switches, it’s difficult to find the ones you need. And where is the search feature?"

"The product is really good as-is out of the box. If there is one thing I would change is to have the license file not be coupled with the MAC address of the device. This is actually not really useful in a virtual environment where if you have a single VM with KEMP LoadMaster and you have not set up static MAC Address, if you, for example, recreate the VM and just load the disk file on a new VM it will get new MAC address and the NLB will not work as it will not see a proper license."

More Kemp LoadMaster cons

"The interface needs to be improved because the competition is coming up with ones that are more eye-catching, straightforward, and sophisticated."

"We are looking for some in-depth monitoring and analytics and more information that Citrix Director doesn't provide. ControlUp has insights that not only give you an overview but also allow you to do some drill-down troubleshooting for what's going on in your environment. We are looking for some more analytical and monitoring data to be able to monitor the environment better, not only from an application standpoint but also from the standpoint of the infrastructure to everything it sits on. They can provide more data to the administrators about what's going on within the application. They can provide data not only on the application side but also about what the application sits on. They're making strides with Citrix Analytics in regards to that."

"Citrix ADM needs to improve on its additional features and reduce the communication ports."

"The only thing customers told me that could be improved is that they would like to be able to purchase and receive the products in one box, rather than two boxes. This is something related to marketing, though."

"They need to make the solution a little more familiar with easy study guides, learning videos, etc."

"The solution could be more secure."

"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."

"The technical support could be better. Whenever I contacted support, I rarely got the solution that we needed. And most of the time, I finished fixing the problem by looking on the internet or by finding documents about the problem on Google."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"F5 BIG-IP is a stable solution. It is quite mature and does not have many concerns."

"I am not aware of the exact cost of the product. However, it is expensive."

"This product is costly from a licensing perspective considering its competitors."

"In my view, the cost is somewhat on the higher side. There are discounts available, but I wouldn't say it's overpriced. It's not cheap either, and the value for money is a bit higher from that perspective."

"I found F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) an expensive product. The costs would depend on the appliance and infrastructure size. However, my company didn't have to pay extra to use additional features."

"BIG-IP LTM isn't a cheap solution - I'd rate its pricing as three out of five."

"They are expensive."

"The price is little bit on higher side compared to the cost of NGINX."

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) pricing and cost advice

"The Kemp LoadMaster is a tremendous value."

"Pricing for the perpetual licensing was fair to us for the features and ease of use we received."

"Any decent product will cost money and if you want great support and a great product, then you will want to spend the money on it."

"I have control on the licensing and all the prices since I work for a partner."

"It has a very attractive ratio of price/performance."

"The pricing is alright and we pay a monthly licensing fee"

"Setup is easy, the cost is affordable, and the licensing is quick and simple."

"The setup cost and pricing plan is reasonable and will ultimately give you a worthy return."

More Kemp LoadMaster pricing and cost advice

"Regarding pricing, while it's expensive, I can't comment on the exact ROI without a budget analysis. However, in terms of service quality, it's worth the price."

"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."

"It is very pricey, but we get it. If you need the best, money shouldn't be a problem."

"Citrix Web App and API Protection are in the middle when we talk about pricing and licensing"

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

"Citrix NetScaler VPX is not the cheapest solution out there, but you get what you pay for."

"In Turkey, everything is good, but it seems expensive for us due to the currency exchange. I don't have a specific rating scale, but if I had to rate the price, I would say it's around a six out of ten."

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

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.

See recommendations

861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?

The price needs improvement as it is quite costly.

What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?

We're using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) ( /products/f5-big-ip-local-traffic-manager-ltm-reviews ) for our a...

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)?

The solution is robust and reliable.

What do you like most about Kemp LoadMaster?

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten...I rate the technical support a ten out of ten...The initial ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kemp LoadMaster?

LoadMaster is cheaper than some other solutions. It has a perpetual license, so it's a one-time cost.

What needs improvement with Kemp LoadMaster?

There are some challenges with updates on certain models that don't have a few features. The support team often takes...

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...

Fortinet FortiADC vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Comparisons

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 8% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 8% of the time

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

Compared 7% of the time

Loadbalancer.org vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

Compared 3% of the time

More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Competitors

HAProxy vs Kemp LoadMaster

Compared 19% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs Kemp LoadMaster

Compared 15% of the time

NGINX Plus vs Kemp LoadMaster

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Kemp LoadMaster

Compared 8% of the time

Loadbalancer.org vs Kemp LoadMaster

Compared 6% of the time

More Kemp LoadMaster Competitors

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 10% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

NGINX Plus vs NetScaler

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon Elastic Load Balancing vs NetScaler

Compared 3% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

Product Reports

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

July 2025

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) report

Download F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) product report

Kemp LoadMaster

Download Kemp LoadMaster product report

Download NetScaler product report

Also Known As

F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP

LoadMaster Load Balancer

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

Overview

F5 BIG-IP LTM optimizes the speed and reliability of your apps via both network and application layers. Using real-time protocol and traffic management decisions based on app and server and connection management conditions, and TCP and content offloading, BIG-IP LTM dramatically improves application and infrastructure responsiveness. BIG-IP LTM's architecture includes protocol awareness to control traffic for the most important applications. BIG-IP LTM tracks the dynamic performance levels of servers and delivers SSL performance and visibility for inbound and outbound traffic, to protect the user experience by encrypting everything from the client to the server.

BIG-IP LTM provides enterprise-class Application Delivery Controller (ADC). You get granular layer 7 control, SSL offloading and acceleration capabilities, and advanced scaling technologies that deliver performance and reliability on-demand. The highly optimized TCP/IP stack combines TCP/IP techniques and improvements in the latest RFCs with extensions to minimize the effect of congestion and packet loss and recovery. Independent testing tools and customer experiences show LTM's TCP stack delivers up to a 2x performance gain for users and a 4x increase in bandwidth efficiency.

Kemp LoadMaster is a powerful load balancing solution that also serves as a web application firewall. Its primary use case is load balancing and application load balancing, making it an ideal solution for organizations that must distribute traffic across multiple servers. Kemp's integration with an active directory for ESP usage, hosting/deployment of SSL certificates, and pricing are some of its most valuable features.

Using Kemp has helped organizations mitigate cross-scripting vulnerabilities, cookie-related issues, and content security policy issues. It has also allowed them to handle everything with Kemp instead of working on each application individually.

Progress Software

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

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.

Kent County Council, KEMP, SMA Solar Technology AG, RT Player , Victrix (Quebec, Canada), Texas A&M, Macmillan Cancer Support, Cisco, Austin Bank

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

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)