HAProxy vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

HAProxy and VMware are both solutions in the Service Mesh category. HAProxy is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.6, while VMware is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.5. HAProxy holds a 13.7% mindshare in SM, compared to VMware’s 2.6% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of HAProxy users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of VMware users who would recommend it.

HAProxy

Read 42 HAProxy reviews

1,522 Views
880 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

VMware Tanzu Platform

Read 22 VMware Tanzu Platform reviews

418 Views
298 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

HAProxy

VMware Tanzu Platform

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

HAProxy and VMware Tanzu Platform offer robust solutions for load balancing and application modernization. VMware Tanzu Platform has the upper hand with its comprehensive features and strong customer support, while HAProxy is preferred for its pricing and support.

Features: HAProxy users find reliability, high performance, and wide protocol support valuable. VMware Tanzu Platform users value comprehensive container orchestration, advanced security, and integrated DevOps tools.

Room for Improvement: HAProxy users suggest enhancing GUI functionalities, better documentation for complex setups, and streamlined configuration. VMware Tanzu Platform users seek improvements in simplifying configuration processes, better integration capabilities, and more user-friendly interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HAProxy is straightforward to deploy but has mixed customer support experiences. VMware Tanzu Platform has a similarly appreciated deployment process and exceptional customer support.

Pricing and ROI: HAProxy is commended for low setup cost and steady ROI. VMware Tanzu Platform users report higher setup costs but acknowledge satisfactory ROI due to its comprehensive feature set.

To learn more, read our detailed HAProxy vs. VMware Tanzu Platform Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

June 2025

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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

HAProxy

Ranking in Service Mesh

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (4th)

VMware Tanzu Platform

Ranking in Service Mesh

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Build Automation (13th), PaaS Clouds (13th), Cloud Management (25th), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (3rd), Agile and DevOps Services (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Service Mesh category, the mindshare of HAProxy is 13.7%, up from 9.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 2.6%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Service Mesh

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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DarshanChaudhari

Solutions Architect Hybrid Cloud Practice US/Europe at Tech Mahindra Limited

Empowers seamless connectivity and integration through APIs while offering robust auto-scaling

I am involved in IT services and we provide a solution to customers. We work with VMware, Nutanix, OpenShift, and Microsoft Hyper-V The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible. It offers native services for autoscaling and integrations through APIs, allowing seamless…

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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

"I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good."

"I estimate that this product has saved our company hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in possible downtime from previous load balancers. We make a lot of our money from online sales, so it is critical to have 99.9% uptime."

"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."

"Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind."

"The VRRP redundancy is also a mission-critical feature that works seamlessly. I can bring down a server live with minimal downtime because of this."

"It is scalable."

"We don't have a problem with the user interface. it's good."

"HAProxy potentially has a good return on investment"

More HAProxy pros

"Tanzu is easy to upgrade and scale, whether we're talking about horizontal or vertical scaling. It is as smooth as possible without any downtime. The platform maintenance, upgrading, and operations part is very smooth."

"The Day 2 operations support is the most vital feature"

"We never experienced any problems with scalability."

"The most valuable feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is the management functionality of the cluster life cycle. Additionally, the solution integrates well with other vendors, such as Velero for backups and Sonobuoy for compliance. Additionally, it works well in multi-cluster environments."

"The observability platform and end-to-end service portal provided by Tanzu are the most valuable features."

"The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible."

"The most important thing about the solution is its flexibility."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pros

Cons

"The product does not have any new technologies."

"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."

"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."

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

"The visibility could be improved."

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

"There is room for improvement in the pricing model. It could be cheaper."

"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)."

More HAProxy cons

"The solution is currently focused on VMware infrastructure and I would like to see more options made available."

"Customers have noticed a considerable price increase after VMware's acquisition by Broadcom."

"Addressing the high upfront costs could improve the product. Implementing a subscription-based model with tiered service options could make it more accessible to a broader range of customers."

"Tanzu could provide more granular control over whatever networking is being done on the containers. I would also like to see a slightly more detailed view of application-level tracing. I'm referring to the connections between different microservices. If they added a service-matching feature, that would be helpful for the customers to build or be more effective."

"It is not easy to build a solution with containers. It has a graphical user interface, but you need to have a lot of knowledge of Linux and how to work in the command mode. Its support can also be improved. Currently, its biggest disadvantage is that it is a new product, and the clients prefer to go for a solution that has been in the market for a long time. There are not that many people who know this product."

"The network control and security policies must be improved."

"Tanzu provides better manageability as compared to OCP, but when it comes to tagging it with other products, it's a bit rigid. If I have to bring in any new product or something out of the box from a different vendor, working with Tanzu becomes a little difficult. For example, if I want to use the F5 services, I have to add one more layer of Avi, but I don't want to do that. If I have a list of the products that I want to use, such as for firewall services, with Tanzu, I will have to go through another layer, which creates complexity."

"The infrastructure is quite challenging."

More VMware Tanzu Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible."

"It is free of cost."

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

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

"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."

"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."

"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."

"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."

"VMware Tanzu Mission Control is cheaper than Red Hat OpenShift."

"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."

"There are different licenses available. You have to upgrade your license if you want to scale the solution more."

"The licensing cost is expensive."

"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."

"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."

"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

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-source product. HAProxy is also a good choice for someone looking for a stable ...

See all answers

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

Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...

See all answers

What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

It definitely gives the end customer a good overview and perspective of running applications in terms of overall workload footprint. TMC provides a very detailed description of your cloud-native ap...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 14% of the time

NetScaler vs HAProxy

Compared 12% of the time

Istio vs HAProxy

Compared 11% of the time

Envoy vs HAProxy

Compared 10% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs HAProxy

Compared 9% of the time

More HAProxy Competitors

Rancher Labs vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 16% of the time

Kubernetes vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 14% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 7% of the time

More VMware Tanzu Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy

June 2025

Download HAProxy product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Tanzu Platform

May 2025

Download VMware Tanzu Platform product report

Also Known As

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu

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

VMware Tanzu Platform is designed for cloud-native development and management of Kubernetes, CI/CD processes, microservices, and containerized workloads. It supports deployments both on cloud and on-premises, providing centralized management via Mission Control.

VMware Tanzu Platform offers seamless integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN, supporting centralized cluster management and lifecycle management. The platform provides a GUI for monitoring CI/CD pipelines and network policies, enhancing multi-tenancy and Day 2 operations. Users can easily manage Kubernetes clusters, monitor applications, and integrate with tools such as GitHub, GitLab, Cloud Foundry, and Azure. It ensures compliance and security for service providers, financial institutions, and businesses.

What are the key features of VMware Tanzu Platform?

Integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN: Enhances compatibility and flexibility.
Seamless Cluster Management: Centralized control over Kubernetes clusters.
CI/CD Pipelines and Network Policies: Simplifies monitoring and management.
Multi-tenancy Support: Facilitates resource sharing among multiple users.
Comprehensive Lifecycle Management: Streamlines deployment and scalability.
Observability Platform: Provides enhanced visibility and control.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in VMware Tanzu Platform reviews?

Centralized Management: Simplifies operations and reduces manual effort.
Enhanced Compliance and Security: Meets regulatory requirements.
Flexibility in Deployment: Supports both cloud and on-premises options.
Seamless Integration: Works with multiple vendors and tools.
Developer-Friendly Environment: Improves productivity and innovation.

Industries such as financial institutions, service providers, and businesses requiring rigorous compliance and security deploy VMware Tanzu Platform. These entities benefit from centralized management, streamlined DevOps processes, and integrated tools, enhancing their capabilities in cloud-native developments and containerized workloads.

VMware

Sample Customers

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

Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq

Buyer's Guide

HAProxy vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

June 2025

Free Report: HAProxy vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

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