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Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
Microsoft Azure Application...
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd)
NetScaler
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st), Network Management Applications (5th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (14th)
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Bonieber  Orofeo - PeerSpot reviewer
Application gateway optimizes performance and simplifies cloud transitions
There are a lot of things I appreciate about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is beneficial for us as it helps in publishing our website, providing us comfort when it comes to the availability of our applications. The autoscaling feature in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is very obvious, and I have no issues with it; it is well planned and organized. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway impacts our cost savings while maintaining higher performance. The Web Application Firewall (WAF) in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has been very effective in protecting applications from security threats. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway helps us manage our AI-driven applications by enabling faster transactions, improving our work.
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 UI is good."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"It's very user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."
"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"I rate Microsoft Azure Application Gateway's scalability a ten out of ten. My company has more than 1000 users who use it daily."
"Microsoft has a vast variety of tools, and it blends very well."
"Microsoft has a vast variety of tools, and it blends very well."
"The security feature in all the layers of the application is the most valuable."
"The tool is easy to use and quite flexible. It has policy management features as well. The solution screens all traffic to our web applications before passing it to the application. We recently tested it on one of our poorly developed applications, and the upgrade gave us a 100% result based on our tests. It's very effective as a security measure, and people can detect threats even through the web application."
"Some of the key features of this solution are the low-level maintenance required, floating proxy service, and load balancing."
"Load balancing and web application firewall features are the most valuable."
"Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the performance side of things, which is why we use it."
"Helped us a lot with load balancing."
"I find all of it to be valuable, because of the flexibility that is built into this product."
"The most valuable features of Citrix ADC are load balancing and application firewall."
"When our primary link goes down I can still get to my Cisco devices and the NetScaler devices on-prem because of the SDN solution. If the internet connection at one of the branches goes down, we can still route them, they still get internet based on the SDN solution through one of the other sites. They can carry on working."
"Provides resiliency for applications that reside on servers, as well as connectivity to remote applications."
"It is a complete solution for those looking for an all-in-one."
"What I like most about Citrix NetScaler is its stability, and I didn't see a lot of issues with it."
"The most valuable feature is the SSL VPN."
 

Cons

"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."
"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"Support response time could be improved."
"Needs easier integration with the existing SIAM."
"The solution could improve by increasing the performance when doing updates. For example, if I change the certificate it can take 30 minutes. Other vendors do not have this type of problem."
"The solution should provide more security for certificate-based services so that we can implement more security on that."
"The solution can sometimes feel a little cumbersome unless you're a professional infrastructure person."
"I believe that there is room for improvement in terms of additional functionality. It is an advantage to have features readily available for configuration without needing customer-defined rules."
"The graphical interface needs improvement because it is not user friendly."
"The pricing of the solution is a bit high. The solution should offer different pricing systems."
"The monitoring on the solution could be better."
"Some of our customers have questioned the security of this solution lately, wondering whether it is safe or not, so enhancements in this respect would be good."
"The GUI should be improved."
"Getting to use some of the advanced tools, even with the assistance of Citrix support, can be challenging."
"Development team's response time could be better."
"We would like to see some fairly large scale improvement in the configuration process for this solution."
"Improvements are needed to address the issue of machines becoming unregistered, ensuring stability for end users. Troubleshooting with Citrix support can be challenging, so clearer diagnostics would be beneficial. As for global server load balancing, it works well on-premises, depending on user volume and service stability. Overall, it's satisfactory for us."
"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."
"The solution can improve their support and send tickets directly to a Citrix ADC engineer in order to avoid having to escalate each support call."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"I rate the pricing seven out of ten because some third-party solutions are even costlier than this."
"We use the tool's basic subscription. Its licensing costs are monthly."
"There is some additional cost, such as extended support."
"There is a need to pay a fixed price per month to use the product. There are no additional payments to be made to Microsoft apart from the charges paid towards the monthly licensing costs attached to the solution."
"Regarding pricing for Azure Application Gateway, I would rate it at seven."
"It is not expensive."
"The solution is reasonably priced compared to other solutions."
"The solution is paid monthly. The solution is highly expensive."
"Our licensing fees including technical support are approximately $3,500 USD."
"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."
"We have been evaluating F5, Citrix, and other ADC products. Citrix is the most expense of all of them."
"There isn't much of a difference between the cost of Citrix and that of other similar solutions."
"The solution is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"When compared to other solutions, the cost is high."
"I give the price of the solution a seven out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the...
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

Cloudflare DNS
Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.