F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Linode comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st)
Linode
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (6th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is 13.1%, down from 15.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Linode is 0.2%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
Unique Categories:
No other categories found
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
11.8%
 

Featured Reviews

AA
Jun 3, 2024
Policies and machine learning are one of a kind, efficient, and provide minimal disturbance to the servers
From an ASM perspective, the most valuable feature was the DOS protection, SQL injection protection, bot protection, bot URLs, and many other features. There were a lot of good features. The most beneficial for maintaining server health included the algorithms for the virtual IP, which segment traffic between servers, authentication profiles, and many other things. The load-balancing capabilities have increased efficiency because servers can handle connection requests one at a time. There are no dropped connections, and the server health is always under the threshold. Moreover, AI enhances LTM's performance in network management. It made it much more secure and efficient by understanding normal traffic patterns and learning the behavior of traffic within the environment. Any suspicious traffic is captured and flagged.
RW
Aug 2, 2022
Prompt and professional service, easy to set up, supports many versions of Linux
Given our business model, it is very important that Linode offers a focused set of cloud computing services because it means that we can then mirror our software in the cloud. When we do want to do things like developing web service interfaces then the environment is available. We chose SUSE Linux but we could have chosen Fedora. They offer quite a number of Linux solutions. Initially and at this point, the fact that Linode offers worldwide coverage via multiple data centers is not important to us. However, our software is becoming obsolete and when they finally stop using it, we'll offer an archive, online inquiry for them. At that point, it will be an important feature. We have accessed it using SSH on a number of different platforms and it works every time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The combination of ADC and WAN is good."
"If I were to choose one key feature in particular, perhaps it would be the iRule feature. It’s a really versatile tool."
"The solution is easy to install. It's a straightforward process."
"The most valuable feature I found is iRules."
"Great load balancing."
"We use F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager to balance traffic."
"The solution has good load balancing capabilities."
"It also has an AVR feature: application, visibility, and recording. It's good for customers looking for what is actually happening in their network and where the latency is."
"The most valuable features are the simple scalability and ease of starting a new virtual machine."
"Because of the way that their pricing model is set up, I can scale up or down the size of a customer's server very easily. It makes life very easy for me when they run out of space, need more speed or RAM, etc. I can very easily pay the difference and reboot the machine, and now I have the upgrade that I wanted. That just makes it extremely simple."
"The simplicity by which you can handle your inventory is one of the things I like the most."
"When I started using Linode, I found its functionality easy to navigate, user-friendly and responsive to my needs. It provides clear reminders about services I'm not using, like DNS zones, which I appreciate."
"The virtual machine configuration tool is very helpful for setting up a new server or for modifying an existing server."
"We can scale up and down as we require."
"The fact that you can get a person on the phone has just been fantastic."
"The most valuable feature is the domain settings page."
 

Cons

"The cost of the solution is pretty high. It would be ideal if it was more reasonable."
"Its price can be better. It is a bit expensive."
"My only point of contention would be that it is a little pricey."
"The price for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is very high. This aspect could be improved."
"The synchronization does works fairly well. However, if I were to make changes, I would make it easier to start the sync process."
"The GUI needs improvement."
"I'm not very sure about the security with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). We have our own private data center, but we are going to migrate our private data center into the Azure cloud environment. Security will then be a major concern when we migrate our own whole infrastructure to the public cloud."
"In terms of native integrations, there is a lot of instability. Also, integration is not robust with F5."
"Our primary concern is always the latency."
"Because they are a smaller company, they do not have, for example, all of the ways for authentication that Amazon or Azure has."
"I'm not sure what could be improved at Linode since they're likely already making enhancements, especially with the Akamai acquisition and, I don't have any specific suggestions as I haven't encountered any major issues. I might consider using API for managing DNS records, but overall, I'm satisfied with Linode."
"They are already working on the firewalls and VLANs, which need improvement, and are now in beta. I am on the beta program for the firewalls, but I can't use it yet because they are only in Mumbai and Australia, and I am not in those data centres. This is the one thing that I have been waiting for almost since the day that I joined them, so it is nice that they are doing that. The VLANs will be an improvement as well, and I am keen and waiting for that."
"The suitability of this solution depends on the features that you need. If you're an Uber-sized company then you're probably not going to want to start using Linode. If you are a large-sized organization then you're going to want to start using one of the bigger providers that gives you the scalability and the feature set that you are probably going to be needing in the future."
"When it comes to marketing and exposure, Linode needs improvement because I just randomly found them by looking for Linux solutions."
"It would be helpful if they provided the additional Linux distributions that I prefer using. But there is still a workaround. I can do it without direct support. It's a bit more complicated, but it can still be done."
"One thing that I'd really like to see is auto-scaling node pools for their Kubernetes. I don't think that they have that. That's a huge one and would be very helpful. Specifically, what I would like is auto-scaling node pools that would scale down to zero nodes, which is tricky. That's very important for certain use cases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to using open-source products, the prices are not cheap."
"You can buy it on a yearly basis, or you can go for a subscription. For on-premise boxes, it is just the RMA."
"F5 isn’t cheap but is worth the price."
"The price of F5 BIG-IP LTM could improve."
"Check other vendors like Cisco, Citrix or A10 Networks. There are plenty in the market with which you can achieve same thing."
"This product is costly from a licensing perspective considering its competitors."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was good. We chose to go through the AWS Marketplace because everything that we needed was a soft appliance. We needed something to work in Amazon, and this product was available there."
"F5 pricing is too high, compared to Citrix."
"Overall, it is cost-effective. They offer flat, no lock-in pricing. We also get discounts. As compared to its competitors, it is costly, but at the same time, it has many features."
"The biggest benefit of Linode is the pricing. It's the best deal in the business... Their pricing model is also very simple compared to Azure. I don't understand why Azure doesn't price things the way that Linode does."
"At this point, I'm paying more like $35 per month for a slightly bigger machine, and the backup, and the object service."
"is a little cheaper than Google or Amazon, more or less on par with the other competitors."
"The pricing model is very simple. If you have very small applications, you can use the plan which costs $5 per month. That gives you 50 GB of memory and almost 1 GB of RAM. If you need more than you have to select the next plan which is $10 per month, which has about 70 GB of data and 2 GB of RAM."
"Compared to other service providers, like AWS and Google, the cost of services are much less and more affordable. We are saving about 90 percent by going with Linode versus other cloud providers."
"I pay just over £20 per month and have done so ever since I started eight years ago, which to me is good value."
"There might be something a little bit cheaper but I find it very fair and competitive, and nothing to complain about."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about F5 BIG-IP?
The support from F5 BIG-IP LTM is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 BIG-IP?
There are a few licensing options available for F5 BIG-IP LTM. You can have a perpetual license which is a lifetime license. You then only need to renew the support, if you choose to open a ticket ...
What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?
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.
What do you like most about Linode?
When I started using Linode, I found its functionality easy to navigate, user-friendly and responsive to my needs. It provides clear reminders about services I'm not using, like DNS zones, which I ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Linode?
Compared to other providers, I find Linode's pricing a bit higher. Storage could be more affordable.
What needs improvement with Linode?
I'm not sure what could be improved at Linode since they're likely already making enhancements, especially with the Akamai acquisition and, I don't have any specific suggestions as I haven't encoun...
 

Also Known As

F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
No data available
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Best Buy, Panasonic, Giphy, Marco Polo, World Health Organization, Font Squirrel
Find out what your peers are saying about F5, Citrix, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC). Updated: June 2024.
793,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.