Fortinet FortiADC vs HAProxy comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Fortinet FortiADC and HAProxy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Fortinet FortiADC vs. HAProxy Report (Updated: March 2023).
687,256 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution provides high-level services such as availability, redundancy, and load balancing between servers.""I like the solution's load balance with DNS intelligence.""Ease of use in deploying and having it up and running requires minimal knowledge.""The GSLB, the DR side, is the best part. Because we had our main side in one city, we created another, and we had a complete MPLS over the internet. We used the GSLB and data loss for our business applications."

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"The features I find valuable in this solution are session control which automatically disconnects users that forget to log off, and the ability to write rules to either allow or block certain file requests.""Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind.""The solution is user-friendly and efficient.""The most valuable thing for me is TCP/IP Layer 4 stuff you can do with HAProxy. You can go down to the protocol level and make decisions on something.""We don't have a problem with the user interface. it's good.""The most valuable feature of HAProxy is that its open source.""Load balancing is valuable, and we are also using the WAF feature.""It is scalable."

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Cons
"There is a mismatch between the number of features they are offering and the device capacity on how much it can handle.""Because it is so generic, the documentation requires special attention. A person who has not worked on Fortinet FortiADC or a similar product will struggle to understand what the document is trying to say. The documentation could be more specific, and more detailed.""The solution's WAF needs an upgrade because it is not as good as FortiWeb, VMware, F5, or Imperva.""The configuration is relatively complex."

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"I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit""Sometimes it's challenging to get through the log, and you need a log to understand what is going on. It isn't easy to map the logging with the documentation, and every time I read the log, I have to pull out the documentation to understand what I'm reading.""There is no standardized document available. So, any individual has to work from scratch to work it out. If some standard deployment details are available, it would be helpful for people while deploying it. There should be more documentation on the standard deployment.""The solution can be improved by controlling TCP behavior better and mandating to clients what the expected outcome must be in order to avoid receiving contestant timeout logs.""While troubleshooting, we are having some difficulties. There are no issues when it is running; it is stable and very good; however, if there is a troubleshooting issue or an incident occurs, we will have issues because this is open-source.""The GUI should be more responsive and show the detailed output of logs.""The reconfigurability in terms of the tooling could be improved and maybe an editor plugin can be added.""HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The solution could be more cost-effective."
  • "They offer a perpetual license."
  • "The solution is less expensive than F5 or Imperva and is the most reasonably priced option available."
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  • "It is free of cost."
  • "HAProxy is free open-source software."
  • "When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."
  • "HAProxy is a free open-source solution."
  • "The licensing fee for the solution is $690 per unit annually."
  • More HAProxy Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc. 
    Top Answer:I recommend Fortinet FortiADC. My experience with Fortinet has been very positive. Our company has been using it for around five years. We mainly use FortiADC for the load balancing of application… more »
    Top Answer:Ease of use in deploying and having it up and running requires minimal knowledge.
    Top Answer:I do recommend HAProxy for more simple applications or for companies with a low budget, since HAProxy is a free, open-source product. HAProxy is also a good choice for someone looking for a stable… more »
    Top Answer:The features I find valuable in this solution are session control which automatically disconnects users that forget to log off, and the ability to write rules to either allow or block certain file… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    6,816
    Comparisons
    5,394
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    613
    Rating
    8.0
    Views
    11,919
    Comparisons
    8,862
    Reviews
    12
    Average Words per Review
    451
    Rating
    7.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    FortiADC Application Delivery Controller, FortiADC
    HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
    Learn More
    HAProxy
    Video Not Available
    Overview

    Fortinet FortiADC is a robust application delivery controller (ADC) that delivers application optimization, application security, and application availability. FortiADC is a valued offering from Fortinet, which is widely recognized as a trusted supplier of dynamic security solutions worldwide. FortiADC offers dynamic security functions (AV, DDoS, and WAF) in addition to advanced application connectors for a simplified deployment and complete transparency to an organization's networks and applications. FortiADC offers three primary deployment options: physical machine, virtual machine, (VM) and cloud solution options.

    Fortinet FortiADC Benefits

    • FortiADC security protocol: FortiADC integrates with FortiSandbox to improve the overall antivirus security protections where every file is scanned for known and unknown malicious risks. If a file is identified as malicious or problematic, it will be blocked in the future.

    • SSL protocol: FortiADC securely uses the most up-to-date cryptography to provide exceptional encryption and decryption using a hardware-based SSL ASIC. FortiADC offers complete transparency to inspect all traffic for threats, improves server response time, and reduces backend server load, SSL inspection and SSL offloading. FortiADC integrates seamlessly with Gemalto’s SafeNet Hardware Security Module (HSM).

    • FortiADC connectors: FortiADC Fabric Connectors offer open API-based integration and coordination with numerous software-defined networks (SDNs), third-party partners, and cloud management providers. Fortinet Fabric Connectors provide deep open and turnkey integration with recognized third-party vendors such as AWS, K8s, OCI, and SAP, in multi-vendor solutions, improving scalability, simplified management, and automation.

    • Business stability: FortiADC load balancing for on-premise global server load balancing (GSBL) and in the cloud (FortiGSBL Cloud) will ensure users can maintain a reliable and available network by improving the ability of scaling applications throughout numerous data centers to reduce application response times and enhance disaster recovery. Users are able to define protocols based on network latency concerns, overall data performance, and site availability.

    Fortinet FortiADC Features

    • Application availability

      • 4-7 application load balancing: DNS, HTTPS, RTMP, RADIUS, MySQL and more

      • External fabric connectors: Splunk Integration, AWS/OCI Connector, Kubernetes Service.

      • Security fabric connectors: FortiSIEM, Fortigate BanIP Integration, FortiAnalyzer, and more.

      • Deployment modes: High availability (AA/AP Failover), Router mode, transparent mode (switch), one-arm mode (proxy with X-forwarded for support.

    • Web application firewall (WAF)

      • Security services: Captcha support, cookie support, HTTP header security, XML/SOAP/JSON validation, CSRF protection, API gateway, and more.

      • Application security: Web attack signature, bot detection, web vulnerability scanner, OWASP Top-10 Wizard, API protection and more.
    • Application enhancement

      • HTTP and TCP improvement: TCP buffering, HTTP compressions/decompression, HTTP caching (dynamic and static objects), Bandwidth monitoring using quality of service (QoS), TCP buffering, and more.

      • Authentication offloading: Two-factor authentication (Fortitoken/Fortitoken Cloud and Google Authentication), NTLM, AUTH2.0, SAML 2.0 (SP and Idp) RADIUS, LDAP, Kerbos, and local.

      • Networking: Integration with Ansible, Cisco ACI, OpenStack and Nutanix, NVGRE and VXLAN support, VLAN and port trunking support, IPv6 Support (SLB, firewall, routing and interfaces), Dynamic NAT, Hide NAT, Static NAT for added scalability and flexibility.

      • Management: Syslog support, SNMP using private MIBs with threshold-based traps. REST APIs, VDOMS, data analytics, real-time monitoring graphs, role-based monitoring, intuitive reporting, FortiView integration, and more.

    HAProxy is considered by many in the industry to be one of the fastest and most popular and trusted software load balancer products in the marketplace today. Organizations are able to immediately deploy HAProxy solutions to enable websites and applications to optimize performance, security, and observability. HAProxy solutions are available to scale to any environment.

    HAProxy is an open-source product and has a robust, active, reliable community. The solutions are continually tested and improved on by the community. HAProxy offers a dynamic design to support the most modern architectures, microservices, and deployment environments (appliances, containers, virtual, and cloud).

    HAProxy utilizes a cloud-native protocol, which makes it a complete solution for cloud services such as Red Hat OpenShift, OVH, Rackspace, Digital Ocean, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and more. It also can be used as the reference load balancer in OpenStack.

    HAProxy Products

    • HAProxy One: This is a next-gen end-to-end application delivery platform created to secure and streamline modern application architectures. It offers a complete suite of solutions, such as application delivery software, turnkey, and appliance services observed and administered through a central control plane. The product supplies application acceleration, CDN, DDoS, bot management, WAF capabilities, and load balancing.
    • HAProxy Fusion Control Plane: This product enables organizations to streamline workflows, arrange traffic routing and security protocols, enhance the speed of delivery, and scale out of the organization’s applications. HAProxy Fusion Control Plane offers an intuitive user interface to observe and control the complete product lineup and API for administering numerous fleets of HAProxy Enterprise servers, either in the cloud or on premises.
    • HAProxy Edge: This product offering is an application delivery network (ADN) that provides a broad array of turnkey application services with amazing scale and complete visibility. Services include application and content acceleration, advanced security, and load balancing.
    • HAProxy ALOHA Hardware or Virtual Load Balancer: This product is a virtual load balancer or plug-and-play hardware constructed upon HAProxy Enterprise that is designed to support proxying at Layer 4 and Layer 7. It has a user-friendly GUI, simple deployment, and no limit on backend servers, making it a complete product for organizations desiring a reliable system to provide high-end load distribution for critical services.
    • HAProxy Enterprise Kubernetes Ingress Controller: This product is designed to facilitate smooth traffic flow into a Kubernetes cluster. It is able to automatically discover anomalies and changes in an organization's Kubernetes infrastructure and provide precise distribution of traffic to healthy pods, with no downtime caused by poor pod health or scaling changes. The product comes with an embedded WAF to optimize the security of an organization’s applications running in Kubernetes.
    • HAProxy Enterprise: This product is the enterprise-class edition of HAProxy offering a dynamic and sturdy code base with next-generation features, an enterprise suite of add-ons, professional services, and trusted support. 

      • Cluster-wide tracking and rate limiting
      • Advanced DDoS and bot management
      • Web application firewall
      • Reliable expert support
      • High performance modules
      • Device detection and geolocation
      • Real-time dashboard

    Reviews from Real Users

    Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind.” - Nathanel S., Platform Architect at SES

    “I use HAProxy for individuals who can not buy low balancers. I built NFV in a box and send individuals a pathway into an HAProxy VM. The setup was not difficult; it usually takes a day to complete for a VPC. When it comes to pricing, HAProxy is free.” - Nasir O., Network & Cloud Architect at Koala Compute Inc.

    Offer
    Learn more about Fortinet FortiADC
    Learn more about HAProxy
    Sample Customers
    Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
    Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company24%
    Comms Service Provider15%
    Government10%
    Financial Services Firm6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm33%
    Retailer17%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business50%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise30%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise52%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise38%
    Large Enterprise32%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise63%
    Buyer's Guide
    Fortinet FortiADC vs. HAProxy
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiADC vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
    687,256 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Fortinet FortiADC is ranked 6th in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 4 reviews while HAProxy is ranked 5th in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 12 reviews. Fortinet FortiADC is rated 7.8, while HAProxy is rated 7.2. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiADC writes "Feature-rich, robust, and the technical support is responsive ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of HAProxy writes "You can go down to the protocol level and make decisions on something". Fortinet FortiADC is most compared with Fortinet FortiWeb, F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), Citrix NetScaler, Kemp LoadMaster and A10 Networks Thunder ADC, whereas HAProxy is most compared with NGINX Plus, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, Kemp LoadMaster, F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and Citrix NetScaler. See our Fortinet FortiADC vs. HAProxy report.

    See our list of best Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) vendors.

    We monitor all Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.