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F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition vs LoadBalancer Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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
5.7
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition enhances performance and reduces costs by improving application uptime, security, and operational efficiency.
Sentiment score
5.2
LoadBalancer Enterprise enhances network reliability and security, crucial for VoIP, despite challenges in quantifying precise ROI.
Overall, I can say the ROI includes a twenty-five to thirty percent cost reduction, with some areas achieving forty percent cost reduction in our expenses.
Network Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
There is a significant performance improvement in the website and website speed.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
With F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition, we have not faced any RMAs, which has made a positive operational impact.
Senior Network And Security Engineer at Mobily
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition support is effective and knowledgeable, though off-hour delays and access issues occasionally occur.
Sentiment score
8.1
LoadBalancer Enterprise provides exceptional customer service with highly praised, responsive, and professional support staff consistently rated 10 out of 10.
I would rate the customer support on a scale of one to ten as a perfect ten based on all of the experience I have had so far.
Senior Network And Security Engineer at Mobily
I rate customer support a 10 out of 10, as they are knowledgeable and provide straightforward troubleshooting.
Network Engineer at Thryv
Customer support for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is excellent.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
They respond immediately when we do reach out.
Senior Information Technology Security Consultant at Mideast Data Systems
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.7
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition offers scalable, flexible resource expansion, supporting high availability and adaptability for increased traffic and demand.
Sentiment score
7.9
LoadBalancer Enterprise is scalable and flexible, managing high connection volumes effectively, though costs can affect scalability desires.
It is the most scalable and reliable system.
Cybersecurity Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Within ten minutes of time, we can scale and boot as many virtual machines as needed in the environment.
Network Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Being a virtual edition, we were able to scale resources such as CPU, memory, and throughput based on our demand without major architectural changes.
Network Security Engineer at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
LoadBalancer Enterprise is easy to scale, maintain, and modify, which makes adding or removing servers a simple process.
Senior Information Technology Security Consultant at Mideast Data Systems
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is highly stable, offering strong performance and security, with minimal downtime apart from updates.
Sentiment score
7.9
LoadBalancer Enterprise is stable and reliable, with minimal disruptions and quick support resolutions for occasional issues.
The load balancing module still performed admirably.
Sr network engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
The performance increased significantly and the response times of the application improved.
Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The uptime improvements with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition are almost close to 100%, as it only goes down if a failover happens.
Sr. Consutant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
In 90% to 99% of cases, I can say it is seamless.
Senior Information Technology Security Consultant at Mideast Data Systems
 

Room For Improvement

F5 BIG-IP VE requires interface upgrades, better microservices support, improved logging, clearer licensing, easier upgrades, and enhanced Azure integration.
Users seek simplified configuration, enhanced security, better integration, advanced insights, scalability, cost reductions, and improved update notifications.
The primary concern I noted regarding F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is its scalability during high-load situations.
Sr network engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
It is a somewhat expensive solution, and the price needs to be improved based on what our customers have told us.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
With FortiWeb, we have a dashboard where I can check the policy status with just one click, and everything is easily accessible.
Senior Network And Security Engineer at Mobily
Documentation needs improvement because having information is essential for working with advanced configurations.
Senior Information Technology Security Consultant at Mideast Data Systems
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users appreciate F5 BIG-IP VE's ROI and scalability, but licensing costs and pricing transparency remain concerns.
Enterprise users value LoadBalancer Enterprise for its cost-effectiveness, transparent pricing, and affordable unlimited licenses despite varied setup costs.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's pricing structure was significantly more advantageous and aligned with our budgetary considerations.
Sr network engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
My experience with pricing and setup costs for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition was mixed, as they do not have an option for 10 gig licensing, which was costly for us.
Analyst at Accenture
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition solves a very significant problem of high availability and performance.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
The setup cost is cheap and licensing is also reasonably priced.
Senior Information Technology Security Consultant at Mideast Data Systems
 

Valuable Features

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition boosts user experience and efficiency with load balancing, security features, high availability, and cost reduction.
LoadBalancer Enterprise excels in reliability, load distribution, and ease of use, with praised failover, analytics, and integration capabilities.
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition helped our customers increase the high availability and performance of their applications, specifically their web applications.
IT consultant at Beginning Solutions IT
If ten thousand, fifty thousand, or even a million people want to access the application simultaneously, we have configured auto-scalability.
Network Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition has impacted my organization positively with cost savings by saving public IP addresses, and its performance and stability, which give almost 100% uptime for the application because we have high availability.
Sr. Consutant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Now, we achieve about 99% availability across all servers thanks to the health check feature in the load balancer.
Senior Information Technology Security Consultant at Mideast Data Systems
 

Categories and Ranking

F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
LoadBalancer Enterprise
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
13th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition is 1.6%. The mindshare of LoadBalancer Enterprise is 4.7%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition1.6%
LoadBalancer Enterprise4.7%
Other93.7%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2800392 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Architect at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Cloud deployment has simplified traffic distribution and now supports flexible multi-zone DR
Regarding F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition's improvement areas, the current dashboard is very useful, but I believe the registration process should be simplified in the virtual edition. Especially in the Azure environment, many features are not currently aligned and working with Azure. We need to make efforts to ensure it is well integrated with Azure. Currently, if we want to integrate route tables with the virtual F5 edition, we need to deploy scripting inside the virtual F5 instances, and then that script performs the virtual IP route table changes in the Azure environment. This feature should be auto-configured, and efforts are needed to ensure the virtual edition is very much aligned with the Azure environment. I am expecting this improvement in the next edition. The failover capability is also not as good as it should be. We have tested the failover functionality, and sometimes we have observed that failover fails. F5 does not successfully fail over to other instances perfectly, so that also needs to be improved. Security should also be enhanced, as in the past I have seen some security loopholes. Tightening of security should be included in the new software. These improvements should be present in near future editions.
R Nandasana - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Information Technology Security Consultant at Mideast Data Systems
High availability design has simplified managing clustered servers and improved uptime
LoadBalancer Enterprise offers two types of load balancers: application-based and traffic-based. This is the main feature, allowing it to route based on traffic and server. It always sends data to one server, and once that is down, it picks the second. We rely more on server-based routing in our environment because we work with many servers for important tools such as Splunk, Cribl, and Dynatrace. We always have standby servers, so if the primary encounters an issue, we can easily route our traffic to the active secondary server in our active-passive scenario. LoadBalancer Enterprise has a good user interface, making it easy to manage, and the failover functionality is also impressive. The product itself is very stable. LoadBalancer Enterprise has positively impacted my organization by allowing me to manage my Splunk cluster indexers with 10 servers behind one load balancer. I don't need to remember all 10 IPs, and I can easily add new servers to the group managed by the load balancer. This approach has reduced many errors. Previously, when a server went down, it took a long time until someone reported it. Now, we achieve about 99% availability across all servers thanks to the health check feature in the load balancer.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise14
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
Improvements for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition could include a more straightforward process for major updates where we could pre-schedule upgrades to avoid downtime.
What advice do you have for others considering F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition did not impact anything positively, as during core network activities, backend servers stopped responding due to being legacy servers, which may create issues. F5 BIG-IP V...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition?
Regarding pricing, I believe it is high, but the setup cost is low and licensing is fine, though I do not have the complete analysis from our sales team. I understand that F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition...
Do you recommend Loadbalancer.org?
Since Loadbalancer.org is an open-source solution, I would recommend this solution for smaller businesses that don’t have major scaling requirements and don’t have the budget for a commercial solut...
What needs improvement with Loadbalancer.org?
There is room for improvement in Loadbalancer.org in certain areas.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Vodafone, NASA, Mercedes, NBC, Siemens, AT&T, Barclays, Zurich, Penn State University, Fiserv, Canon, Toyota, University of Cambridge, US Army, US Navy, Ocean Spray, ASOS, Pfizer, BBC, Bacardi, Monsoon, River Island, U.S Air Force, King's College London, NHS, Ricoh, Philips, Santander, TATA Communications, Ericcson, Ross Video, Evertz, TalkTalk TV, Giacom, Rapid Host.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition vs. LoadBalancer Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,495 professionals have used our research since 2012.