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F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager offers cost savings, quick ROI, and enhances security by ensuring crucial access and reducing costs.
Sentiment score
5.5
OpenVPN Community Edition is favored for its ease, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness despite lacking centralized management.
Having a centralized interface that combines user management, live session visibility, and route monitoring would drastically reduce administrator overhead.
Professional Services Engineer at Next7 IT
Our internal dashboard, admin panels, and servers are no longer directly exposed to the internet.
Founder at Cipheroot Cybersecurity Solutions
It is effective because within five to ten minutes you can configure it from the marketplace, and you are all set up to let your development and users access the environment in a secure manner.
Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems India Private Limited
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
F5 BIG-IP APM customer service receives mixed reviews, with some praising responsiveness and others citing delays and communication issues.
Sentiment score
6.1
OpenVPN Community Edition is praised for excellent customer support, with users confident in its effective and timely responses.
Even if they respond, they don't update me with the process or what's going on.
Professional Services Specialist at a security firm with 51-200 employees
Most of the technical support is managed in-house due to our extensive experience with F5 products.
Business Development Manager at Pylones
F5 technical support is responsive and helpful.
Solutions Manager at Macroview Telecom Limited
Customer support for OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey is fantastic.
Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems India Private Limited
Customer support for OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey is really good, and the portal documentation is very well maintained.
Angular Developer at Flourish Software
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
F5 BIG-IP APM scales for diverse deployments, offering flexibility and effective tools, though hardware limitations might challenge scalability.
Sentiment score
6.4
OpenVPN Community Edition by TurnKey offers scalable, secure remote access, efficiently handling many connections, ensuring reliable performance and guidance.
The product's flexibility and company culture contribute to resolving these challenges.
Business Development Manager at Pylones
I would rate the scalability of F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) between seven and eight.
Solutions Manager at Macroview Telecom Limited
If you want to opt for a certain number of concurrent connections, we always have to look forward to a vertical scaling of OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey server.
Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems India Private Limited
No matter the number of concurrent connections that need to be made, if one follows those recommendations of compute and memory configuration for OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey server deployment, it is really quick and efficient.
Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems India Private Limited
For small and medium-sized enterprise organizations, it is very helpful and scalable.
Angular Developer at Flourish Software
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
F5 BIG-IP APM is praised for reliability, performance, and minimal bugs, with minor suggestions for log clarity improvement.
Sentiment score
8.3
OpenVPN Community Edition is stable, supports 20-25 connections, and users rate its reliability highly once properly configured.
On a scale from one to ten for stability, I would rate F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) a ten.
Solutions Manager at Macroview Telecom Limited
Sometimes, the logs are not quite informational or easy to understand.
Professional Services Specialist at a security firm with 51-200 employees
We are able to ensure around 20 to 25 concurrent connections, and they are stable enough while connecting to the public cloud.
Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems India Private Limited
With the configuration recommendation given by OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey, if you follow it, it is really scalable and redundant.
Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems India Private Limited
It is an extremely stable solution.
Analista de Infraestrutura de TI at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
 

Room For Improvement

F5 BIG-IP APM requires improvements in pricing, cloud integration, user interface, documentation, support, and additional features for enhanced performance.
Users seek better centralized management, simplified configuration, enhanced monitoring, and improved scalability for OpenVPN Community Edition powered by TurnKey.
If I could copy and paste objects instead of picking and configuring them from scratch each time, it would be great.
Professional Services Specialist at a security firm with 51-200 employees
The main improvement needed for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is to integrate into the cloud-delivered services from F5.
Business Development Manager at Pylones
The ability to run the Anycast feature would be valuable, as the current solution only operates on-premises.
Senior Cyber Security Consultant at KoçSistem
Performance is a key point for improvement.
Analista de Infraestrutura de TI at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Security-wise, OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey is one of the strongest areas, supporting strong encryption and authentication mechanisms, ensuring that everything is encrypted and authorized each time, which increases security.
Senior Lead Analytics Engineer at a outsourcing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
I do not see any problems with the configurations or recommendations provided by OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey for 100 or 200 users simultaneously.
Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems India Private Limited
 

Setup Cost

F5 BIG-IP APM is costly but valued for high performance, with unpredictable cloud pricing and additional fees for features.
OpenVPN Community Edition on AWS Marketplace offers cost-effective, intuitive use for enterprises but requires expertise for advanced management.
F5 products are more expensive than other solutions but are valued for their quality and reliability.
Business Development Manager at Pylones
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is really minimal.
Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems India Private Limited
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is really efficient and not on the higher side.
Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems India Private Limited
For regular engineers or help desk staff, the workflow is usually simple: launch the VPN client, select the client profile, authenticate the credentials or MFA, connect, and verify access.
Professional Services Engineer at Next7 IT
 

Valuable Features

F5 BIG-IP APM offers secure remote access with SSL VPN, multi-factor authentication, and comprehensive integration and security features.
OpenVPN Community Edition by TurnKey provides flexible, encrypted access, efficient setup, and scalable deployment for secure multi-device connectivity.
APM is quite flexible for customers to use, providing secure remote access through various host-checking conditions for both machines and users.
Solutions Manager at Macroview Telecom Limited
It provides robust security and offers integration with multi-factor authentication systems, which is crucial for an organization's security policy.
Business Development Manager at Pylones
A lot of features are useful to me, including mostly the authentication, SAML, or SSO, with no sign-on.
Professional Services Specialist at a security firm with 51-200 employees
OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey has measurably reduced our timelines and effectively given secure access to our clients' development resources with quick and efficient service.
Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems India Private Limited
The features we use the most include secure encrypted remote access, cross-platform compatibility, client profile configuration, certificate-based authentication, stability and reliability, vendor-neutral deployment, flexible routing and subnet access, and logging and troubleshooting visibility.
Professional Services Engineer at Next7 IT
The best features OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey offers include strong encryption and flexibility in deployment, along with useful cross-platform support and extensive configuration options that enhance our organization's security.
Senior Lead Analytics Engineer at a outsourcing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Man...
Ranking in SSL VPN
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (19th), Network Access Control (NAC) (11th), Remote Access (18th), Access Management (15th)
OpenVPN Community Edition -...
Ranking in SSL VPN
5th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the SSL VPN category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is 4.6%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey is 2.7%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
SSL VPN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey2.7%
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)4.6%
Other92.7%
SSL VPN
 

Featured Reviews

Senior Cyber Security Consultant at KoçSistem
Has provided reliable policy controls and secure web access for large enterprises
I consider Cloudflare when evaluating centralized access control features; Cloudflare utilizes multi-factor authentication and full API support, while F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) needs to enhance its API support. I recommend F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) for large companies such as Tüpraş and Ford. Tüpraş is one of the biggest companies in Turkey, along with other customers such as Tofaş, Euroko, Koç Holding, and more. For on-premises deployment, I would rate it a 10. For cloud deployment, I would rate it a seven. I primarily use it on-premises. I rate F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) eight out of ten.
Manmohan Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems India Private Limited
Secure cloud migrations have accelerated as our teams access critical workloads remotely
OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey can be improved by looking forward to recommendations regarding compute sizing, which is necessary. I have seen multiple third-party solutions demanding configurations based on compute and memory aspects. However, what I have learned from OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey is that it comes with minimal configuration, but I am always stringent about how many client VPN connections it can handle. There has to be some bifurcation regarding this. I have not experienced any access lag so far or any performance issues. I do not see any problems with the configurations or recommendations provided by OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey for 100 or 200 users simultaneously, but I still foresee a need for some recommendations from OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey regarding the number of user connections it can handle given certain configurations.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
Construction Company
6%
Construction Company
26%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
F5 products are more expensive than other solutions but are valued for their quality and reliability, akin to purchasing a Bentley as opposed to an Audi.
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) is not user-friendly and operates slowly. Additional features for architecture such as Anycast would be beneficial. The ability to run the Anycast feature woul...
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM)?
I am using F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) along with Bot Management, API Gateway, API Security, and F5 Cloud. I am using F5 Advanced WAF, but I switch between ZTNA solutions such as FortiSAS...
What needs improvement with OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey?
OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey can be improved, but not really because I think it already does the job excellently. Nothing comes to mind regarding needed improvements.
What advice do you have for others considering OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey?
OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey works as intended, so there is not much else to add regarding the features. My advice to others looking into using OpenVPN Community Edition - powered...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, it is free, so there are no issues.
 

Also Known As

F5 Access Policy Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) vs. OpenVPN Community Edition - powered by TurnKey and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.