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HAProxy vs Radware Alteon comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2025

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
6.5
Cloudflare users experienced increased performance, security, and cost-effectiveness, leading to improved loyalty and revenue despite difficult ROI calculations.
Sentiment score
7.1
HAProxy's open-source load balancer cuts costs, boosts efficiency, improves uptime, reduces staffing, and enhances scalability for users.
Sentiment score
7.3
Radware Alteon offers quick implementation, affordability, robust threat blocking, boosting performance and satisfaction with immediate return on investment.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
Security Specialist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
In terms of return on investment with Cloudflare, it costs my time to set them up, but basically once they're set up, it's done.
Owner at Hga consulting
Operational efficiency has improved; we no longer have staff consistently monitoring backend servers during deployment or scaling events, as HAProxy's health checks and hitless reloads allow us to push changes with minimal manual intervention.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
This resulted in a drastic decrease in costs and, at the same time, the accuracy of the hits coming on HAProxy was almost around 100% or 99.99%.
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
I estimate seeing a return on investment with HAProxy, as it significantly reduced staff requirements and enhanced scaling capabilities, particularly when transitioning from NGINX, which faced issues.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Cloudflare's customer service is quick, but technical support feedback is mixed, with improvement needed in responsiveness and detailed assistance.
Sentiment score
6.5
HAProxy's customer service and technical support are highly rated for quick, expert assistance, though documentation could improve.
Sentiment score
7.5
Radware Alteon support is praised for responsiveness and Spanish assistance but criticized for delays and specific regional challenges.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
Senior Consultant CDN at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.
Owner at Hga consulting
I have primarily worked not with the tool's customer support but with the product's sales engineers and technical sales engineers, who seem to know their stuff.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Since we are utilizing the open-source edition, community forums, mailing lists, and GitHub have been invaluable, with typically someone having encountered the same problems we faced.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
My interactions with HAProxy's customer support were limited, but the feedback from my team indicated satisfactory service.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
We never face support issues, and their team resolves any critical issues quickly once they are involved.
Project Manager at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
There is a dedicated expert answering even the toughest questions.
Senior System Administrator at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
The customer service and support are excellent.
IT Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Users praise Cloudflare for seamless scalability, effective traffic management, easy upgrades, and robust global infrastructure without disruptions.
Sentiment score
7.9
HAProxy efficiently handles scalability, easily adapting configurations for growing traffic, ideal for small to medium businesses and larger environments.
Sentiment score
8.0
Radware Alteon offers seamless scalability and integration, supporting easy expansion and high performance under heavy loads for enterprises.
It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.
Independent Consultant at Unaikui
We manage an automatic load balancing feature where we add HAProxy servers dynamically behind the application load balancer to handle more traffic.
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
HAProxy's scalability is excellent; as our traffic expands, it handles load increases effortlessly.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
For scalability, HAProxy meets my needs, supporting our initial horizontal scaling and then adapting to vertical scaling in a VMware environment.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
It handles peak loads and thousands of concurrent connections without exceeding 10% utilization.
Project Manager at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
We have it deployed across multiple geographic locations, benefiting from load balancing resiliency.
IT Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.
Senior System Administrator at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cloudflare is highly rated for stability and uptime, with few past issues, especially on higher-tier plans.
Sentiment score
8.1
HAProxy is reliable, handles heavy traffic efficiently, with minimal downtime, quick support, and frequent updates enhancing stability and performance.
Sentiment score
8.3
Radware Alteon offers high stability with minimal downtime, effective updates, and user ratings of nine to ten for reliability.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
Independent Consultant at Unaikui
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
This reliability serves as a key reason for our choice, providing us with confidence even when faced with heavy traffic.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
The hot reload feature of HAProxy also really helped us so that we never had to shut it down to reload it.
Co-Founder, CEO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
We have reduced a lot of servers, replacing them with one or two HAProxy servers which deliver better performance, accuracy, and an almost 100% success rate with requests.
Head of DevOps at TripFactory
We've never faced downtime, even during peak transaction hours.
Project Manager at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
There is minimal downtime, and the solution is quite stable.
IT Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
There are no difficulties with the deployment of Radware Alteon; it is quite straightforward.
Technical Manager at Secur Links
 

Room For Improvement

Enhancements needed in Cloudflare: analytics, CDN latency, API integration, user support, DNS, pricing, documentation, server coverage, WAF, and cache.
HAProxy needs a revamped GUI, improved APIs, better AWS integration, real-time config, enhanced docs, and stronger monitoring and security.
Radware Alteon needs improvements in automation, user interface, customer support, integration, security, and educational resources to enhance competitiveness.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
Managed Services Manager at Adapture Technology Group
Areas like how assessment, discovery, and payload are dealt with and how it all comes into your organization can be considered when trying to make suggestions to Cloudflare for improvements.
Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)
There are some performance considerations when it comes to dynamic content that involves fetching data from databases or using APIs.
Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions
The configuration syntax is powerful yet can become overwhelming for newcomers; a more beginner-friendly interface or a native GUI without relying on third-party tools would ease the onboarding process.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
An easier desktop interface to connect to a remote server and make changes on my PC would be beneficial.
DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The reloading functionality is effective as it allows soft reloads without interrupting traffic patterns.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
They keep integrating new features that sometimes break our production, but we use clustered systems, so we can test those software releases.
Senior System Administrator at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Other OEMs offer free courses and hands-on labs on new technologies and features, which we find useful.
Project Manager at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
In the future, I would like to see some other security features added, such as DDoS, which is Distributed Denial of Service.
Technical Manager at Secur Links
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare offers scalable pricing, from free to enterprise plans, providing significant value especially for mid-sized companies.
Enterprise users value HAProxy's competitive pricing and cost-effective licensing, especially compared to F5 and Citrix, despite initial setup costs.
Enterprise buyers favor Radware Alteon for its competitive pricing, strong performance, and flexible, simple licensing options.
I find it to be cheap.
Engineer at SITMEXICO
I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.
Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions
The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Since we use the open-source edition, there are no licensing fees, with the main cost being the infrastructure running on EC2 instances in AWS, which helps maintain low expenses.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Setting up HAProxy didn't cost anything for me.
DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The pricing remains competitive compared to other vendors.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
For our solution, it was right in the middle of price performance.
Senior System Administrator at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
The cost of the Radware solution is reasonable and stable.
Project Manager at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
The implementation and running costs are quite high.
IT Engineer at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare enhances performance and security with CDN caching, DDoS protection, and an easy-to-use dashboard, benefiting many users.
Users praise HAProxy for reliable load balancing, customization, low latency, open-source benefits, and advanced features like secure traffic management.
Radware Alteon excels in availability, security, and load balancing with user-friendly GUI, scalability, and robust support services.
The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security.
Senior Cloud Solution Architect at Integrated Technology Solution Group (ITSG)
Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.
Senior Solutions Architect at Think Power Solutions
The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.
Principal Cyber Prevent and Defense Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
By moving all SSL termination to the load balancer, I now manage certificates in a single place, and I can also utilize Let's Encrypt with HAProxy's built-in ACME support, making renewal automatic.
Junior System Administrator & DevOps at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
HAProxy positively impacted our organization by exceeding scalability expectations, initially projected at 200k requests but ultimately handling over 15 million transactions per second without any issues.
Principal Engineer Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees
As a production engineer at that time, I definitely wanted to ensure that the system could handle massive connections, especially since we operated an e-commerce platform where we could not lose any customer calls.
Co-Founder, CEO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The product allows us to manage multiple networks and VLANs into a single box and add numerous web services and farms efficiently.
Project Manager at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
The best feature of Radware Alteon is basically the configuration; how we configure it is very straightforward, and it is very simple to configure.
Technical Manager at Secur Links
I find the best features to be the flexibility and ease of use.
Senior System Administrator at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
HAProxy
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (14th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (7th), Bot Management (8th), Service Mesh (2nd)
Radware Alteon
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (5th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (11th)
 

Featured Reviews

HA
Owner at Hga consulting
Has helped manage client domains with streamlined access control and threat visibility
I don't know what areas could be improved with Cloudflare WAF; Cloudflare is constantly improving and adding features to their feature set. They're doing a good job, and as far as DNS and support for any domains that I create or my clients create, it's mandatory for me to make sure that they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider. The Cloudflare load balancing capability hasn't really helped in enhancing my website's uptime and resiliency because we don't really get that much traffic; it's mostly remote users, and web hosting is done by a web hosting service. It doesn't pay to try to host your own website.
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.
reviewer2663061 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
Manages SSL load balancing and offload efficiently while providing excellent support
The most valuable feature is the support from the engineering team. They quickly resolved a VLAN issue that other vendors could not. The product allows us to manage multiple networks and VLANs into a single box and add numerous web services and farms efficiently. The SSL management and integration capabilities are also standout features.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
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...
What do you like most about HAProxy?
The solution is effective in managing our traffic.
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 do you like most about Radware AppWall?
It saves us a lot of work in terms of management since it has tasks already defined automatically. That enables us to...
What needs improvement with Radware AppWall?
There is room for improvement in reducing the number of false positives I receive. We could benefit from more configu...
What is your primary use case for Radware AppWall?
We primarily use Radware Alteon for load balancing our servers to ensure there are no bottlenecks and to have resilie...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
Alteon, Radware AppWall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Convergys
Find out what your peers are saying about HAProxy vs. Radware Alteon and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.