HAProxy vs Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus comparison

HAProxy and Progress Software are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. HAProxy is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.6, while Progress Software is ranked #9 with an average rating of 9.0. HAProxy holds a 12.4% mindshare in ADC, compared to Progress Software’s 7.5% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of HAProxy users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Progress Software users who would recommend it.

HAProxy

Read 42 HAProxy reviews

6,168 Views
3,972 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Kemp LoadMaster

Read 49 Kemp LoadMaster reviews

3,515 Views
2,271 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 31 NGINX Plus reviews

3,038 Views
2,561 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

HAProxy

Kemp LoadMaster

NGINX Plus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between HAProxy, Kemp LoadMaster, and NGINX Plus based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about NetScaler, F5, Microsoft and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC).

To learn more, read our detailed Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

June 2025

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Helped 857,028 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 12.4%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kemp LoadMaster is 7.5%, up from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 7.7%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

Kaushlendra Singh

Manager - IT Infrastructure and Network at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Used for load balancing, but its dashboard and reporting could be improved

We use the solution for load balancing The solution's implementation and troubleshooting are not easy. The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved. I have been using HAProxy for 12 years. We didn’t face any issues with the solution’s stability. I rate the solution’s stability an…

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PeterForster

Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

A highly stable and scalable load-balancing software that offers great technical support

My company is really happy with Kemp LoadMaster as a product. My company is also happy with the support we receive from Kemp LoadMaster. I want Kemp LoadMaster to provide users with better reporting capabilities in relation to TCP packets. In general, the connections that are present in the system require improvement. Feature-wise, Kemp LoadMaster has everything that our company's customers require. Kemp LoadMaster also has features that have supported our company's past projects.

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Michael Olayemi

Senior Software Engineer at Checkit

Enables public access and secure configurations through reverse proxy

The primary valuable feature of NGINX for me is its ability to provide a reverse proxy. I have found that this feature supports our local server, and I am able to connect through our DNS system, making it accessible publicly. Additionally, the integration with SSL certificates and the configuration capabilities make it a valuable solution for my use case. Without NGINX, users would not be able to access our application, which means there is positive ROI from using NGINX as it is crucial for the functioning of my organization.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I like best about the product is its simplicity and speed. When you need to set up a load balancer quickly, HAProxy offers options like sticky sessions and round-robin. It's also fast to configure, including adding SSL for security. While it may have fewer options than other solutions like F5, HAProxy gets the job done for basic load-balancing tasks."

"The feature that I have found the most valuable is that it works for my use case of application load balancing. I'm using it for PeerSense, and it's easy enough for PeerSense."

"HAProxy's TCP load balancer is excellent and super stable."

"It reduced the load on our main load balancers."

"It improves our scalability and responsiveness services to meet our demanding customer requirements."

"The most valuable feature of HAProxy is that its open source."

"The anti-DDOS PacketShield filtering solution (embedded in the physical appliances) as well as the BGP route injection are great features and heavily used."

"We were able to use HAProxy for round robin with our databases, or for a centralized TCP connection in one host."

More HAProxy pros

"The most valuable feature is the load balancing and allowing for high availability of our web services."

"Persistence is very valuable. This holds the connection information of the source and that connection is important to RDP and our APO calls. The connection has to be persisted to the original source to operate properly. We also use the subsections for sub-services to create services inside our services for our API resources, this is most awesome. We would not be able to do this without Kemp and offer this type of sub-service to route based on an API instance. It routes the traffic properly based on the sub-service type."

"The base feature of Kemp LoadMaster load balancing ticks all the boxes but the most valuable features would be the security features Intrusion Prevention (IPS) and Web Application Firewall (WAF)."

"Failover is seamless and our services are rock solid."

"I like that this is a Network Load Balancer that can be used practically with any application in the backend. They have how-to guides on how to set up Kemp NLB with Exchange, but you can use it as well for Sharepoint, RDS, or any other back end server."

"Great web balancing and remote access balancing."

"One of the most valuable features I like is the ability to block specific cipher suites like RC4, and older protocols like SSL 3.0."

"We really like the performance of this solution."

More Kemp LoadMaster pros

"The load balancing module, which is equivalent to LTM, is the focus of the PSE. So far, the features of both are identical. I believe NGINX has more features for securing these services, but in terms of load balancing, both are massive solutions."

"It's lightweight software that can handle heavy loads efficiently."

"Using NGINX Plus for web traffic distribution is fantastic. It offers performance similar to physical load balancers but with added flexibility."

"Its versatility and capabilities make it invaluable for implementing patches and fixes when necessary."

"The most valuable features are the gateway and the ability to publish to sites."

"The web proxy and the database proxy are excellent."

"I think installation only took a couple of minutes — no more than 10 minutes."

"The product is resilient."

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"The web stats UI, which provides the status of the health and numbers, could greatly benefit from having a RESTful interface to control the load-balanced nodes. Although there is a hack around the UI (by issuing a POST request to HAProxy with parameters), a RESTful interface would greatly improve the automation process (through Chef and Ansible)."

"HAProxy is very weak in the logging and monitoring part and requires improvement."

"The logging functionality could use improvement, as it is a little cryptic."

"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."

"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."

"We've changed solutions as it doesn't fit with our current needs."

"We need to handle new connections by dropping, or queuing them while the HAProxy restarts, and because HAProxy does not handle split config files."

"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."

More HAProxy cons

"Third, the password history restriction needs improvement. For example, the password policy will restrict the user to always use a unique password combination. The password should not be reused for a minimum of three generations of passwords."

"In my opinion, the layer seven loads balancing that we're mainly using for web servers, doesn't seem to pick up when there are issues at the application level."

"Although Kemp is very user-friendly, it lacks a more custom configuration."

"Perhaps Kemp could offer some training videos."

"The configuration of the basic services is pretty straight forward but for more complex solutions, there needs to be better documentation or knowledge base articles."

"I want Kemp LoadMaster to provide users with better reporting capabilities in relation to TCP packets. In general, the connections that are present in the system require improvement."

"I want to have the ability to pull a particular server. The DevOps portion was challenging for me, like if I needed to redirect from one IP to another URL. I needed to look that up, and the knowledge base is not well organized. When I look for information about Kemp on the Internet, I don't find many articles or something like that."

"It would be much easier to have the management interface directly integrate with the Kemp Support library, allowing you to choose the desired template from the online catalog to then directly download to the LoadMaster."

More Kemp LoadMaster cons

"The scalability could be improved."

"The user interface could be improved."

"I would like to see the Grafana integration in NGINX which is already present in HAProxy. Grafana integration will help the solution visualize all the data analytics on the dashboard which is currently not present."

"It would be good if NGINX provided a graphical user interface."

"The scaling should be built into the software rather than configured from an outside source."

"Improvement needed in NGINX Plus could focus on optimizing memory usage for users."

"I would like it to have a more user-friendly graphical interface."

"Make modules easier to enable or disable. The beauty and ugly side of the NGINX modules is you have to know how to compile the module. For beginners or non-very technical aspirant(s) going for NGINX, they have to learn how to compile the modules."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Test/lab virtual machines can be installed without a licence. They can't be used for performance testing but otherwise behave like production nodes."

"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."

"The tool is open-source."

"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."

"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."

"It is free of cost."

"HAProxy is a free open-source solution."

"HAProxy is an open-source solution."

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

"Pricing for the perpetual licensing was fair to us for the features and ease of use we received."

"The price is lower than other options."

"I have control on the licensing and all the prices since I work for a partner."

"This product has good value and features for the money."

"The license varies according to the number of megabits."

"The price is great and the value is definitely there."

"This is a cost-efficient product."

"It is well-priced and licensing is very flexible."

More Kemp LoadMaster pricing and cost advice

"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."

"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."

"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."

"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."

"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."

"You pay for each feature that you want."

"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."

"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

43%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

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What do you like most about HAProxy?

The solution is effective in managing our traffic.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HAProxy?

HAProxy is an open-source solution.

See all answers

What do you like most about Kemp LoadMaster?

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten...I rate the technical support a ten out of ten...The initial ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kemp LoadMaster?

LoadMaster is cheaper than some other solutions. It has a perpetual license, so it's a one-time cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Kemp LoadMaster?

There are some challenges with updates on certain models that don't have a few features. The support team often takes...

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Which is better - IIS or NGINX Plus?

IIS is a flexible, secure, and manageable web server to host anything on the web. IIS’s scalable and open architectur...

See all answers

What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Plus?

My use case involves using the free and open-source version of NGINX, making it cost-effective as I haven't incurred ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs HAProxy

Compared 14% of the time

NetScaler vs HAProxy

Compared 12% of the time

Istio vs HAProxy

Compared 12% of the time

Envoy vs HAProxy

Compared 10% of the time

Loadbalancer.org vs HAProxy

Compared 5% of the time

More HAProxy Competitors

Fortinet FortiADC vs Kemp LoadMaster

Compared 15% of the time

NetScaler vs Kemp LoadMaster

Compared 11% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Kemp LoadMaster

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs Kemp LoadMaster

Compared 7% of the time

Loadbalancer.org vs Kemp LoadMaster

Compared 6% of the time

More Kemp LoadMaster Competitors

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 16% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NGINX Plus

Compared 12% of the time

Apache Web Server vs NGINX Plus

Compared 11% of the time

NetScaler vs NGINX Plus

Compared 11% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs NGINX Plus

Compared 5% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy

June 2025

Download HAProxy product report

Buyer's Guide

Kemp LoadMaster

June 2025

Download Kemp LoadMaster product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

May 2025

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

LoadMaster Load Balancer

NGINX

Overview

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.

HAProxy

Kemp LoadMaster is a powerful load balancing solution that also serves as a web application firewall. Its primary use case is load balancing and application load balancing, making it an ideal solution for organizations that must distribute traffic across multiple servers. Kemp's integration with an active directory for ESP usage, hosting/deployment of SSL certificates, and pricing are some of its most valuable features.

Using Kemp has helped organizations mitigate cross-scripting vulnerabilities, cookie-related issues, and content security policy issues. It has also allowed them to handle everything with Kemp instead of working on each application individually.

Progress Software

NGINX Plus is a versatile solution that offers load balancing, caching, proxying, and API deployment capabilities. It can be deployed on private or public clouds and is ideal for building CDN solutions. The solution can also be used to secure web applications and replace web services like Apache.

NGINX has helped organizations improve functioning, reduce downtimes, and offer a DevOps-friendly solution. Its community support and documentation are highly regarded, and its configuration is more straightforward, making it a recommended choice over HAProxy.

Sample Customers

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp

Kent County Council, KEMP, SMA Solar Technology AG, RT Player , Victrix (Quebec, Canada), Texas A&M, Macmillan Cancer Support, Cisco, Austin Bank

Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA

Buyer's Guide

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

June 2025

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