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HAProxy vs Kemp LoadMaster vs NetScaler 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 12.4%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kemp LoadMaster is 7.5%, up from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 14.4%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

Mehdi El Filahi - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful for for small and quick load-balancing tasks
What I like best about the product is its simplicity and speed. When you need to set up a load balancer quickly, HAProxy offers options like sticky sessions and round-robin. It's also fast to configure, including adding SSL for security. While it may have fewer options than other solutions like F5, HAProxy gets the job done for basic load-balancing tasks. The reliability features of HAProxy were particularly useful in a scenario where I needed to test load balancing between two Tomcats. Since these domains were inaccessible, I set up a third Docker with HAProxy, which had access to the Tomcat domains. I then configured HAProxy to handle the load balancing. This setup allowed the client to interact with HAProxy. The solution's integration with other elements is easy.
PeterForster - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of HAProxy is that its open source."
"The VRRP redundancy is also a mission-critical feature that works seamlessly. I can bring down a server live with minimal downtime because of this."
"Advanced traffic rules, including stick tables and ACLs, which allow me to shape traffic while it's load balanced."
"I am also able to make configuration changes during the day, in production, with no worries of problems and/or downtime occurring."
"Scalable and inexpensive."
"It is a crucial tool in ensuring smooth service provision without any interruptions."
"I have found HAProxy very helpful in replicating production environment architecture in a development and testing environment."
"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."
"It has greatly fortified the performance and uptime of our front-door email ingress, simplified and segmented mail routing, and reduced admin overhead for mail issue resolution and troubleshooting."
"From my personal experience, many firewalls provide Load Balancing functionalities, but Kemp Loadmaster has a lot of features and functionalities like what you can configure. So there are a lot of features but we use only five percent of it."
"Mitigates content security policy issues."
"We are most impressed with the ease of use and great support."
"With Kemp 360 Central, our customers get a nice overview of their Kemp products and an easy way to upgrade firmware on all devices from a single interface."
"The most valuable features are synchronizing email with mobile devices and synchronizing with Outlook."
"The most valuable feature so far has been the high-availability options that allowed us to add an additional Kemp LoadMaster VLM virtual appliance into our VMware vSphere environment, to provide failover for our existing LoadMaster."
"It has been functional. We don't have any outages."
"We like the periodic upgrades and backups, also made via ADMs, and it makes our environment much more robust and reliable."
"Citrix Web App API Protection allows you to enable a blocking mode"
"Its flexibility, agility, and robustness are the most valuable. Its management and implementation are also quite easy."
"The load balancing feature of this solution is very good."
"The stability is good. If there is a problem, the load will be shifted to other sites automatically, which has been a good experience for us."
"I find all of it to be valuable, because of the flexibility that is built into this product."
"Citrix NetScaler offers robust security features, including SmartAccess and customizable policies, making it a reliable choice for safeguarding user data."
"We have good customer support."
 

Cons

"I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit"
"There is no standardized document available. So, any individual has to work from scratch to work it out. If some standard deployment details are available, it would be helpful for people while deploying it. There should be more documentation on the standard deployment."
"HAProxy could improve by making the dashboards easier to use, and better reports and administration tickets."
"Pricing, monitoring, and reports can be improved."
"There are three main areas to improve: 1) Make remote management more modern by adding API. 2) Propose a general HA ​solution for HAProxy (no I'm using keepalived for this). 3) Thread option should be a bit more stable."
"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."
"The visibility could be improved."
"The solution can be improved by controlling TCP behavior better and mandating to clients what the expected outcome must be in order to avoid receiving contestant timeout logs."
"They need to improve the UI environment. Currently, it's hard to navigate and use product."
"The cost of the GEO upgrade is not cost-prohibitive but it's something that would be a nice add-in, out of the box."
"UI is very basic and unattractive."
"SNMP and/or RESTCONF management, in order to collect many counters, for plotting in a central application need to be improved."
"In the next release, Kemp should include the ability for LoadMaster to create different DNS record types."
"There is room for improvement in the stability of the solution."
"We have experienced at least one problem with stability, although it was fixed with an upgrade."
"Overall, the Kemp LoadMaster has been an all-rounder great product and stable. The free trial and virtual edition make it a breeze for any potential customer to give it a spin before actually deciding to put it on the infrastructure or even talk to the CFO."
"Technical support could be improved."
"If one device or switch fails, the failover to another device is not seamless which is painful."
"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."
"The configuration for its web application firewall is complicated."
"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."
"The solution is a bit more expensive than some of the available solutions in this region. One solution in particular that I noticed was cheaper was Kemp."
"It does not have a sandbox cloud service and antivirus. It should have on-prem or cloud sandboxing and antivirus."
"Its GUI should be improved. Its CLI is powerful, but GUI needs more features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."
"HAProxy is free open-source software."
"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."
"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
"The tool is open-source."
"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."
"HAProxy is an open-source solution."
"The product is open source."
"KEMP gives away free trials for 30 days. This can be stretched if you want. During the test, you will have access to KEMP support.​"
"The product definitely provides what the organization needs and its cost is reasonable considering the value it brings."
"Nowadays, going with the virtual appliance is the easiest way and the cost is reasonable."
"The price is lower than other options."
"It is well-priced and licensing is very flexible."
"The pricing is alright and we pay a monthly licensing fee"
"The price of the solution is cheap."
"Pricing for the perpetual licensing was fair to us for the features and ease of use we received."
"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten since it is expensive."
"The licenses for this product are payable as a yearly subscription, and carry a high price-point. The subscription scheme is quite complicated, and costs will increase with each additional feature that is required, outside of the basic setup."
"For the specific use case that my customers primarily engage with, I would give the pricing a rating of seven out of ten."
"When compared to other solutions, the cost is high."
"Costly product and complicated licensing."
"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."
"The licensing costs for this solution vary depending on which model is being used."
"Its price is comparable to others and affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
57%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Government
3%
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
 

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...
What do you like most about HAProxy?
The solution is effective in managing our traffic.
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...
 

Also Known As

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
LoadMaster Load Balancer
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
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
Find out what your peers are saying about NetScaler, F5, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC). Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.