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F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd)
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (4th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (4th), Application Control (3rd), ZTNA as a Service (1st), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (10th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (8th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform 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 15.2%, down 16.3% compared to last year.
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform, on the other hand, focuses on ZTNA as a Service, holds 21.4% mindshare, down 25.8% since last year.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
ZTNA as a Service
 

Featured Reviews

Richard Polyak - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 21, 2022
Reduces maintenance downtime and has a strong user community
Our primary use cases for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager are high availability for applications and SSL offload certificates F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager helps reduce our downtime for maintenance purposes. It also offers us ease of use for the deployment of certificates onto a central…
Vikram Srirama. - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 4, 2023
A VPN alternative that delivers a zero trust model
The primary use cases for the Zscaler include secure channel access for applications, private file service access, and remote connectivity to the active directory. These are the top three essential functionalities provided by Zscaler Previously, we utilized HubSpot, which required connecting to…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It offers features Kemp doesn't provide. For example, there are predefined templates for handling Office 365. You can download them for automatic configuration."
"One of the greatest things about F5 Load Balancer is that it provides additional capability for handling huge workloads and routing them to an SAP or non-SAP application. It is capable of supporting a large amount of user workload and application connectivity workload. This was the main reason why we chose F5."
"Secure and scalable traffic management solution for applications. Good for bigger environments."
"If I were to choose one key feature in particular, perhaps it would be the iRule feature. It’s a really versatile tool."
"ASM for WAF."
"Stable and scalable network traffic management solution for applications. It has good performance."
"The most valuable features are DNS, APM, and ASM. Additionally, it is easy to use and you have a lot of flexibility to use the solution within a network."
"F5's attack signatures and automation are the most valuable features. The disaster recovery capabilities are also excellent. You don't need to do anything. It has automatic failover from production."
"The scalability of the solution is great."
"The ZPA is a unique feature which offers VPN along with all the additional security needed."
"You can close your data protection gaps with Zscaler. You can quickly find all the classified, sensitive data across the cloud."
"The product provides a seamless user experience."
"The most valuable feature of Zscaler Private Access is we do not have to connect to a VPN, it is seamless. It is more convenient for us because we use one agent to cover the internet and VPN access."
"SASE's most valuable features are proxy and content filtering."
"The scalability is pretty good."
"The VPN is great for the stability on offer and for the cloud updates and insights you can get."
 

Cons

"BIG-IP LTM is taking a long time to mature in cloud environments. They plan to improve cloud integration in the next version, but it isn't out yet. It's essential because more companies are moving to the cloud these days and using things like Kubernetes or microservices. F5 needs to improve in that direction, and they are."
"The solution's hardware quality needs improvement."
"Native support for containers should be added to future releases, as this is the future of load balancing."
"Performance: Using the product, applications are jittery.​"
"Internet and cloud support could be improved."
"A more hybrid approach would be beneficial for users."
"The pricing model has caused some frustration. My clients implemented the solution and later wanted to upgrade the features but the pricing structure was complicated. There are other solutions with better pricing models."
"The synchronization does works fairly well. However, if I were to make changes, I would make it easier to start the sync process."
"An area for improvement would be the ease of configuration."
"You won't find anything that can help you with the configuration part and other areas related to the product if you search for proper or exact details of Zscaler Cloud DLP online in very easy language."
"There are some performance issues with the solution once the module addition begins"
"It has a limitation, if you are creating a rule or something for a web application or something, you could only add five users, not more than that. Five or four users are only included in a rule. If you want to create a rule for more than five or four users, you have to go through other methods, not particularly with the application. Working within the application with this method would be quite easy as compared to listing a URL or a normal IP address."
"There could be additional ways to define proximity. Additionally, they should provide some exclusion options for specific policies and an ability to control the DLP engine."
"The granularity in blocking is not sufficient, as new domains are automatically blocked for 30 days without further information."
"There is improvement in enhancing proper manageability, policies, and logs. So, log management could be improved."
"SCMP support would be one of the biggest improvements in my opinion. More speed improvements are also required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing model of F5 BIG-IP LTM is highly complex. The operation cost of the solution is high. The overall cost is high."
"When we purchased additional licenses for our other locations, we received a discount of between 20% and 25%."
"The licensing strategy for F5 is good."
"It is sort of a commodity product. A load balancer is a load balancer. What will be, at the end of the day, the cheapest option or have the best performance, that is what it will come down to."
"It's not a cheap product, but there are no other replacements for what we do with it."
"BIG-IP LTM is considered a premium product, so it's quite expensive and isn't affordable for all customers."
"The cost is high for this product, so it's not suitable for small customers, e.g. those with small environments."
"I am a fan of using AWS natively. It is much cheaper."
"The product is a bit expensive."
"Zscaler Private Access is extremely expensive."
"It's an affordable solution"
"The technical support is good."
"In the long run, cloud services are not inherently costly."
"The pricing is expensive and on the higher end. Honestly, in my opinion, it is not worth the price."
"Zscaler Private Access can be an expensive solution, depending on the license type you will purchase."
"The pricing is quite high, especially when it comes to the gateway."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?
Price is an area of the tool where improvements are required. I want to see CDN capabilities in the product.
What is the better solution - Prisma Access or Zscaler Private Access?
We looked into Prisma Access before choosing Zscaler Private Access (ZPA). Palo Alto’s Prisma Access is a secure access service edge (SASE) designed to deliver network security in a cloud-deliver...
What do you like most about Zscaler SASE?
The most valuable features of Zscaler Private Access are reliability, scalability, and availability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zscaler SASE?
Zscaler SASE is quite expensive compared to other solutions. The price is not fixed and it does not include all of the features, so my advice for organizations would be to evaluate their specific n...
 

Also Known As

F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
Zscaler SASE, Zscaler DLP, Zscaler CASB, Zscaler CSPM, Zscaler Browser Isolation, Zscaler Posture Control
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Siemens, AutoNation, GE, NOV
Find out what your peers are saying about NetScaler, F5, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC). Updated: October 2024.
813,418 professionals have used our research since 2012.