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F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Safe-T Secure Application Access comparison

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Executive Summary

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

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
124
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st)
Safe-T Secure Application A...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (26th), Access Management (35th), ZTNA (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and Safe-T Secure Application Access aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is designed for Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) and holds a mindshare of 11.4%, down 15.7% compared to last year.
Safe-T Secure Application Access, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Infrastructure VPN, holds 1.8% mindshare, up 0.4% since last year.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)11.4%
NetScaler11.7%
HAProxy8.3%
Other68.6%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Safe-T Secure Application Access1.8%
OpenVPN Access Server9.1%
Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks6.4%
Other82.7%
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
 

Featured Reviews

edshyaa - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at Stryker
Load balancing has improved traffic distribution and currently supports high availability upgrades
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) offers effective load balancing methods that help distribute traffic across our servers, whether we have two or several. This load balancing feature stands out as it is the fundamental work we do with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). While I recognize there are many features, such as iRules, which I have not explored yet, we primarily work on VIPs, pool members, and traffic distribution. The load balancing algorithms' flexibility makes them very useful for our team, enabling us to choose different servers and manage load effectively. We use various methods based on user or application requirements, making the algorithms set up by F5 in the backend quite helpful. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) positively impacts our organization primarily through its load balancing capabilities. We avoid traffic overload on individual servers by placing backend servers behind F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) VIP. This load balancing helps us manage traffic effectively. Since the configuration of the I-series, we have had smooth performance, and with the recent migration to the R-series, it is working faster than before, providing positive outcomes for our operations. Since moving to the R-series, I notice improved performance; it is user-friendly and handles traffic efficiently. The upgrading process is different as we create tenants and a main host. R-series has better CPU and memory, leading to higher throughput with minimal downtime, making it a significant improvement over the I-series.
it_user787671 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer
Needs to be easier to configure and to display logs more simply
We use only it for scanning files for viruses. That's the only feature we use in this product It needs to be easier to configure, it should be something that's working well with other sources. It should be something that allows me to see the logs simply. One to three years. Sometimes it doesn't…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In terms of our primary use cases, all our web services, our main web portals, and our TV service sit behind the F5, so any customer would have to traverse our F5 for the services at the back of it."
"We're able to do load balancing and global load balancing. When you marry those two products together, you can do a lot more. We're able to deliver our applications more securely and faster. It has improved our deliverability where we have more service across the shared data centers. We can intelligently reach all of those client connections across all of the servers and do it fairly quickly. It has helped improve our application delivery and performance."
"I was able to simply and quickly set up the WAF rules and security, and also set up easily complex policies and rules which gave me some great features to redirect."
"Our experience has been a positive one."
"This solution is very good and the product stability is excellent."
"Stability has never been an issue with F5 BIG-IP, as the product is geared predominantly at providing stability and resiliency across your infrastructure."
"I've checked out the market and I think Big-IP/Viprion is the best ADC your money can buy at the moment."
"This solution is the best security platform."
"If you need a solution for sending big files to customers or for receiving large files from them, this is a very good solution."
"Safe-T SDA has allowed my organization to secure my office applications and makes it harder for hackers to be able to hack into my internal office web applications."
"At the end of the day it's really good and really improved."
"the security level is very high. After we tested it and checked all the security aspects of the product, we found that it's highly secure."
"This product allows us to actually send it straight from our email to the other person's email in a safe way, where we can meet all our regulations and still keep the data in our control."
"From a technical point of view, products are stable and scalable, and we do appreciate the personal touch the sales engineers (SE) support and development bring, as well as the personal touch of the sales support, the free online, and web-based training."
"If you want a very flexible system that you can easily integrate, and develop interfaces for it or plug-ins to other application environments, it's probably the most flexible"
"Safe-T is very good for users because it has a plug-in for Outlook."
 

Cons

"The user experience for dashboards and reports can be improved. They should make dashboards and the reporting system easier for users. They need to add more reports to the dashboard. Currently, for complicated reports, I have to do the customization. It should have more integration with network firewalls to be able to gather all the information required for traffic management."
"Ultimately, the service has not affected our customers. However, there was a failure in one of the nodes that became infected. F5 BIG-IP did not sense that the virus was there. The security didn't function."
"Bugs are the part of program and they are fixed with every release, as with any vendor."
"There are some aspects of F5 BIG-IP that could be improved, the main one being virtual machine support. We have seen that even with the virtual editions, there are some things that we would like to do that are currently not possible with virtual machines."
"I have encountered an issue with technical support; not all the time, but a few times we have observed that we have not received proper support or on-time support, and sometimes the person assisting us is not properly skilled, but we have only observed this issue very few times."
"The price should be reduced because it is expensive when compared to the competition."
"It would be good to have better traffic and better data. It would be nice to have more granularity to see packets in terms of the header details, the analytics, etc. It would be nice if that was also part of it and to have analytics added to the traffic."
"When WAF is enabled, you can see a decrease in performance."
"The Outlook agent is not working well for installing it in the entire office."
"When we have something that we want improved, it takes a little bit of time until it can be fixed."
"In terms of improvement, they need to be much more strict regarding the roadmap, about timelines and when new features will be up in production."
"I'm not sure what advice I would give others about this product because I don't like Safe-T."
"Better UI. A better UI for the people that manage all the processes of Safe-T. Some of the UI is not as intuitive as you would like it to be."
"One important thing that we haven't found in this product is the ability to provide a read-only view for documents. Also, the ability for the customer to add annotations to these documents."
"Setting up Safe-T SDE is very complex. It is not straightforward, and it requires much understanding on the concepts of the product."
"The cloud solution is not that great especially with Swiss customers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost that they have with AWS are almost prohibitive. I'm being forced to use F5 WAF. I would not simply use it based on cost. I agree that they have some great features, but for me, cost is key in terms of AWS."
"Unless the price difference is large, this is not the primary concern for the product. The performance and product-related issues (secure for VPN, multi-function for network device, etc.) are the keys."
"The licensing strategy for F5 is good."
"The licensing model of F5 BIG-IP LTM is highly complex. The operation cost of the solution is high. The overall cost is high."
"F5 BIG-IP can be expensive, although there are trial versions available which are helpful to find out if the solution is right for your company."
"The only area that has room for improvement would be pricing, so its competitors do not have a say."
"Take a look at the modules that you are going to use. Look into the best bundles for them."
"This solution comes with a standard license, and there are also extra licenses that can be obtained. The licenses are purchasable for durations of one, two, three, and five years. The hardware is something to consider when purchasing"
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Transportation Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise32
Large Enterprise86
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) could improve file upload speeds when opening cases and attaching files; sometimes, downloading files like QKView takes time, depending on size. I expect faste...
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?
My main use case for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is placing our applications on F5 and the backend servers on the pool. We also regularly renew SSL certificates before they expire, usuall...
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Also Known As

F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
Safe-T SDA, Safe-T, Safe-T Software-Defined Access
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Government of Israel, eviCore Healthcore, Glen Imaging, Sarin, LBG, Rollomatic, Boegli-Gravures SA, Banque Heritage, Groupe Minoteries, Temenos, ZEK, RLM Finsbury, Harel Insurance, Meitav Dash
Find out what your peers are saying about F5, HAProxy, NetScaler and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC). Updated: November 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.