HAProxy vs NetScaler comparison

HAProxy

Read 41 HAProxy reviews

9,973 Views
6,602 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

NetScaler

Read 85 NetScaler reviews

8,745 Views
6,641 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

HAProxy

NetScaler

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between HAProxy and NetScaler based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed HAProxy vs. NetScaler Report (Updated: July 2024).

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy vs. NetScaler

July 2024

Download the complete report

Helped 793,295 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

HAProxy

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Service Mesh (4th)

NetScaler

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 14.1%, up from 13.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 13.5%, down from 15.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Unique Categories:

Service Mesh

10.6%

No other categories found

Featured Reviews

AANKITGUPTAA

Consultant at Pi DATACENTERS

Oct 14, 2022

Open-source, cuts costs, and is straightforward to set up

The product is an open-source load balancer. We deploy it for our application as a front-end server where all the users come on that particular HAProxy server, and it is redirected to our back-end servers It helps include the reverse proxy or more security modules for enhancing security. It helps…

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Mohammed Shamseldin Hassan

Manager - Cybersecurity & Cloud Solutions at Paramount Computer Systems

Dec 11, 2022

Easy to manage and affordable with good security, performance, and high availability

It has many use cases. It is used for the high availability of the service and for connecting local sites or geolocation sites called GSNP. We are selling all of its models. Citrix ADC can be deployed on the cloud or on-premises Citrix ADC has increased the productivity of the staff by keeping…

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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

"It is stable. Period. Will not fail unless you do something wrong."

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

"The support for all major Linux distros makes running and testing a breeze."

"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."

"The solution is effective in managing our traffic."

"Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind."

"The solution is user-friendly and efficient."

"I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good."

More HAProxy pros

"The solution is easy to work with and manage."

"Citrix Director has been great. It gives us one pane of glass to be able to monitor what's going on with the user sessions as well as to keep on top of the virtual desktops, any servers that may be offline or behaving suspiciously, or any troublesome spots like disconnections. We also use Citrix Studio for maintaining the actual servers that are hosting these applications. We use it for delivery groups in case we need to modify delivery groups in regards to which groups have access to which applications. It has been very helpful."

"The feature that I have found most valuable is its load balancing."

"I like the monitoring ability as it enables me to identify when an internal (load-balanced) resource is having issues before it becomes a problem in production."

"I would say the rewriting and redirection functions are must-have's for us."

"From a security standpoint, It is a comprehensive solution in a single box."

"The most valuable features are the VDA Delivery, Gateway Fort, and the load balancing."

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

More NetScaler pros

Cons

"The web stats UI, which provides the status of the health and numbers, could greatly benefit from having a RESTful interface to control the load-balanced nodes. Although there is a hack around the UI (by issuing a POST request to HAProxy with parameters), a RESTful interface would greatly improve the automation process (through Chef and Ansible)."

"I would like to evaluate load-balancing algorithms other than round robin and SSL offloading. Also, it would be helpful if I could logically divide the HAProxy load-balancing into multiple entities so that I would install one HA Proxy LB application which could be used for different Web servers for different applications. I am not sure if these features are available."

"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."

"It needs proper HTTP/2 support."

"The GUI should be more responsive and show the detailed output of logs."

"Pricing, monitoring, and reports can be improved."

"Dynamic update API. More things should be possible to be configured during runtime."

"Sometimes it's challenging to get through the log, and you need a log to understand what is going on. It isn't easy to map the logging with the documentation, and every time I read the log, I have to pull out the documentation to understand what I'm reading."

More HAProxy cons

"I would like to see more integration for single sign-on."

"Technical support sometimes takes a little longer because of the multilevel ticket priority."

"Citrix ADC can be really complex. It isn't very simple like some other appliances that I've worked with. You need a lot of skill and experience to manage it. I'm not talking about a year or two. You need at least four years to understand it very well. It is not that easy to learn. They should make it a lot simpler for users to understand the management of it. They can also provide some additional training. The material they have on the site is not sufficient enough for you to understand how to manage it. Their training is expensive, and not everyone has the funds and experience for it. Citrix isn't very popular around these parts of the world. So, it can use some more marketing, sales, enlightenment, and advertisement. These could bring more market for them. Basically, there are just a few companies that really go for Citrix. Most of the companies go for VMware because they marketed themselves more than Citrix. There isn't much difference between Citrix and VMware. VMware is a little more robust than Citrix. Citrix has focused more on desktops rather than server virtualization, and that's the advantage VMware has over Citrix. Citrix also needs to educate and inform users about the infrastructure that is supported with a version. Currently, if the customers don't look at the datasheet, they might miss this important information."

"It does not have a sandbox cloud service and antivirus. It should have on-prem or cloud sandboxing and antivirus."

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

"We would like to see some fairly large scale improvement in the configuration process for this solution."

"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."

"Should offer more flexible cost-effective licensing for small to medium sized organizations."

More NetScaler cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."

"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 tool is open-source."

"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."

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

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

"It is an enterprise solution. Thus, its costs are reasonable."

"We have a yearly licencing fee, and there are no additional costs."

"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."

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

"You get the value for your money. There aren't any hidden fees."

"Our licensing fees including technical support are approximately $3,500 USD."

"We get value for money. Its price is fair. I don't think it is overpriced."

"Citrix ADC could improve the price and make it less expensive, other competitors have a better prices. This would allow Citrix ADC to keep dominating the market."

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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793,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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-source product. HAProxy is also a good choice for someone looking for a stable ...

See all answers

What do you like most about HAProxy?

The solution is effective in managing our traffic.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HAProxy?

The product is open source.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs HAProxy

Compared 17% of the time

NGINX Plus vs HAProxy

Compared 15% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs HAProxy

Compared 12% of the time

Envoy vs HAProxy

Compared 9% of the time

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

Compared 8% of the time

More HAProxy Competitors

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 20% of the time

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

Compared 19% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Loadbalancer.org vs NetScaler

Compared 6% of the time

Avi Networks Software Load Balancer vs NetScaler

Compared 6% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy

July 2024

Download HAProxy product report

Buyer's Guide

NetScaler

July 2024

Download NetScaler product report

Also Known As

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX

Learn More

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HAProxy

NetScaler

Overview

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

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

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

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy vs. NetScaler

July 2024

Free Report: HAProxy vs. NetScaler

Find out what your peers are saying about HAProxy vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: July 2024.

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