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Fortinet FortiDDoS vs HAProxy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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

Fortinet FortiDDoS
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
15th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HAProxy
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (15th), Bot Management (6th), Service Mesh (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiDDoS is 1.9%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 1.5%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HAProxy1.5%
Fortinet FortiDDoS1.9%
Other96.6%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

MO
IT Analyst at Evapco, Inc.
Reliable protection and smooth setup enhance company security
Currently, I have two firewalls, with one located in Sorocaba, model 90D, and the other in São Paulo, model 30D. They are connected by VPN. I use the firewalls for VPN and final protection for my company, and my equipment is maintained by an internet company called Multiprox The equipment works…
Shrinivas Devarkonda - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
Handles high traffic efficiently and simplifies complex routing with rule-based logic
I think HAProxy is good as it stands now, but I believe there could be improvements. gRPC has recently been implemented, which is great, along with TLS 1.2 and 1.3 support, and HTTP 2.0 is also available. However, I'm unsure about the benchmark of those HTTP 2.0 requests on HAProxy. If there were any other protocol with better performance than HTTP 2.0, or perhaps mTLS and other similar features, including that in HAProxy would be really great. For improvements, I think that during setup and configuration, the steps provided are neat and clear. Anyone can easily install and configure it. There are many kernel tuning parameters also available, which is great. For specific improvement, in terms of logging, I think printing the full object of the request may help, or if there's a way to reference two requests, it would be beneficial to find a complete session history from a logged-in customer, as it would help analyze customer and user analytics.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product allows the users to adjust the thresholds."
"Among its key features: Detects and mitigates DDoS attacks at L3 to L7; negligible to zero false-positives; Generates and sends reports without the need for an expensive third-party solution."
"This solution can protect Layer 3, Layer 4 and Layer 7 attacks of applications for us, and this is important."
"Compared to other DDoS mitigation solutions with similar deployment, FortiDDoS does not require a 24x7 NOC and has lower TCO."
"We use it to protect our users and their data."
"We've been completely satisfied with the product."
"We have researched them all, and it's a good solution all around."
"It is a user-friendly product in terms of monitoring and updating policies."
"The licensing fee for the entire WAF solution is very affordable with Loadbalancer.org, and there are no separate charges for HAProxy and WAF."
"I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good."
"Once the container is set up, the time it takes to deploy is typically under a minute, which gives me a full-blown solution with all the plugins and images that I am planning on using."
"The ease of use of the configuration, and great documentation, are the most valuable features for us."
"Software defined load balancing allows us to dynamically adjust and codify routing decisions, which speeds up development."
"We use the solution for load balancing."
"HAProxy Enterprise Edition has been rock solid. We have essentially had no downtime caused by our load balancers in the last 10 months, because they’ve worked so well. Previously, our load balancers caused us multiple hours per year in downtime."
"It improves our scalability and responsiveness services to meet our demanding customer requirements."
 

Cons

"The main improvement would be to change the firewall model, however, currently, everything is fixed and working well."
"The solution can be a little more user-friendly and it can be more affordable."
"I find that there have been issues in the past year with the solution hanging. It freezes often."
"There aren't really any aspects of the solution we are unhappy with. It's been a positive experience overall."
"Alerts and reporting features must be improved."
"Earlier versions of firmware had bugs that limit my options."
"All those thresholds that need to be configured should be included in the default so that user will not forget or misconfigure."
"I would like to see analytics, big data."
"The deployment and configuration of HAProxy are not easy if we compare it with other solutions, such as F5."
"The solution has bad performance issues."
"I would like to see a two (or more) native cluster support without third parties or DNS manipulations."
"Also, having multiple HAProxy nodes in High Availability mode requires the use of clustering software such as Pacemaker and Corosync which are very complex."
"We would like to see dynamic ACL and port update support. Our infrastructure relies on randomly allocated ports and this feature would allow us to update without restarting the process."
"I would like to evaluate load-balancing algorithms other than round robin and SSL offloading."
"There are three main areas to improve: 1) Make remote management more modern by adding API. 2) Propose a general HA ​solution for HAProxy (no I'm using keepalived for this). 3) Thread option should be a bit more stable."
"The configuration should be more friendly, perhaps with a Web interface. For example, I work with the ClusterControl product for Severalnines, and we have a Web interface to deploy the HAProxy load-balancer."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."
"The solution is reasonably priced."
"It's quite pricey."
"The product is open source."
"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."
"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."
"The tool is open-source."
"HAProxy is free open-source software."
"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."
"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."
"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Construction Company
6%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would prefer Arbor.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiDDoS?
Fortinet FortiDDoS offers lower costs compared to other solutions. The licensing costs are annually renewed.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiDDoS?
There is a need for more features that protect personal information, especially given the PDP issue in Indonesia.
Do you recommend HAProxy?
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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HAProxy?
Since we used the open-source version, we were not concerned about pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
What needs improvement with HAProxy?
For the limited use that I have of HAProxy, I don't have any points to improve. I think I need more time with this tool, or perhaps I simply don't have areas that need to get better. I don't have a...
 

Also Known As

Fortinet DDoS, FortiDDos
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiDDoS vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.