Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus vs NetScaler comparison

Read 107 NetScaler reviews

7,835 Views
6,425 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 31 NGINX Plus reviews

4,545 Views
2,818 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Kemp LoadMaster

NGINX Plus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Kemp LoadMaster, NetScaler, 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).

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

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Helped 862,077 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 July 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Kemp LoadMaster is 7.3%, up from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 14.6%, down from 16.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 7.4%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

Featured Reviews

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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DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU

Cloud Consultant at Migros Ticaret A.Ş.

A tool for centralized management including inventory and sales tracking

Citrix ADM has the ability to implement policies to tighten security. For instance, you can restrict access to your network from outsiders or lack necessary security measures such as antivirus programs. Additionally, there's the Delivery Controller, which allows for comprehensive monitoring and management tasks such as remote restarts, maintenance, and registration. Another essential component is the Director, which provides detailed insights into sessions, including identifying session failures, connection issues, user lockouts, etc. It presents a list of problems to address, enabling you to click on them and resolve them efficiently.

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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

"When you configure the listening services, you can implement a lot of security features like the Edge Security Pack that intercepts the requests and processes those before they are sent to the real servers."

"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 DNS Load Balancer makes it so that I don't have to worry about site failures."

"The pricing of the solution is valuable."

"Using Kemp as a front-facing service appliance, it allows me to have the flexibility of swapping out real servers behind the scenes without any intervention from my network team."

"The feature that allows us to easily disconnect a server when we need and bring back online is the most valuable. It's a click of a button. This allows us to keep all systems up. We can then run updates, perform reboots whatever we need to one of the servers without taking production down."

"The feature I find most valuable is load balancing with different algorithms."

"We needed a Microsoft Threat Management Gateway server replacement solution for a customer and were impressed with the simplified deployment of the Kemp LoadMasters."

More Kemp LoadMaster pros

"From a security standpoint, It is a comprehensive solution in a single box."

"The solution can be configured very granularly and has good control over security."

"The load balancing is one of the most valuable features."

"It is a stable solution. It crashed only once, four years ago...There is a return on investment using the solution."

"I find all of it to be valuable, because of the flexibility that is built into this product."

"Available on any device and can be accessed on a wide area network."

"The solution improves security performance."

"Load balancing, cache redirection, content switching, all connected with traffic management."

More NetScaler pros

"Nginx is extremely efficient in terms of the connection rate to the CPU cycles ratio, and in terms of the bandwidth to CPU cycles."

"The overall product rating is ten out of ten."

"I need to highlight that the number one thing about NGINX is that it is free."

"The flexibility of its modules allow it to be scalable."

"Supports IMAP, POP and SMTP protocols for the reverse proxy."

"Zero Downtime has always been a strength in recommending infrastructure web services. NGINX allows me to execute such infrastructure with less complications and the ability to switch from server to server easily."

"Application Gateway with application-level firewall tool and load distributor and balancer (also serves for A/B testing)."

"This solution has everything."

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"The cost of the GEO upgrade is not cost-prohibitive but it's something that would be a nice add-in, out of the box."

"If there is anything that needs to be updated, the GUI can get a refresh to make it look more like 2020, although it is just a cosmetic change."

"Perhaps Kemp could offer some training videos."

"Some of the support documentation seems to make assumptions that the person installing or configuring is experienced with the product or concepts."

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

"The GUI is rather technical and complex, so it could be improved by making it simpler and more user-friendly."

"I definitely think that the WAF can be improved."

"In the web interface, there are a lot of settings in the different menus and it would be helpful if there were an interactive help system or tooltips to help the administrators find and configure the right settings."

More Kemp LoadMaster cons

"The vendor provides frequent patches, however, the security of the website has room for improvement."

"We would like to see some fairly large scale improvement in the configuration process for this solution."

"Development team's response time could be better."

"Deployment is complicated."

"We had some bugs in the previous firmware. These were not big issues, but more testing on the firmware would be key to happier customers."

"Integration with other third party providers and third party applications could be better because it can be a bit complex at present."

"Too many bugs in the software and it's always difficult when you need to update."

"There are some drawbacks, such as using EUG for specific configurations. It could be improved."

More NetScaler cons

"It would be great if there was even more automation to make it even easier to maintain."

"The solution needs to be easier to setup and deploy."

"The scalability 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."

"The biggest room for improvement would be to allow NGINX Core machines to cluster for memory zones in some way with a plug and play module. "

"They should do in the open source version of what they did to Advanced HTTP, TCP, and UDP load balancing."

"I would suggest adding GUI-based configuration panels to NGINX Plus to simplify setup and management tasks."

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

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nowadays, going with the virtual appliance is the easiest way and the cost is reasonable."

"At $2,500 USD, this is absolutely a fantastic buy for the money!"

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

"Currently, no cost is involved with a virtual load balancer. They have used open source. We did not pay for software. We paid for the expertise. We are only paying the consulting charges, which are very reasonable, that is, around a thousand dollars."

"Any decent product will cost money and if you want great support and a great product, then you will want to spend the money on it."

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

"It has a great price for the solution they offer."

"KEMP gives away free trials for 30 days. This can be stretched if you want. During the test, you will have access to KEMP support."

More Kemp LoadMaster pricing and cost advice

"It all depends on the features that will be used and the number of accesses."

"This product is more expensive than some of the competitors."

"Ninety day free trial makes it easy to try out this solution."

"In Turkey, everything is good, but it seems expensive for us due to the currency exchange. I don't have a specific rating scale, but if I had to rate the price, I would say it's around a six out of ten."

"F5 BIG-IP is much more expensive than Citrix ADC. For example, If we choose two platforms, Citrix ADC, 3000 version, and we choose F5, F4200 version. F5 BIG-IP has connections, timers, and throughput similar to Citrix ADC, but the price is very expensive."

"The licenses for this product are payable as a yearly subscription, and carry a high price-point. The subscription scheme is quite complicated, and costs will increase with each additional feature that is required, outside of the basic setup."

"We get value for money. Its price is fair. I don't think it is overpriced."

"Our licensing fees including technical support are approximately $3,500 USD."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

"It's an open source solution, so it's free."

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

"NGINX Plus is worth it, if you need it. If you do not need the features or support, the free and open source package is more than capable. "

"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours."

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

"The cost is reasonable."

"NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it."

"You pay for each feature that you want."

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.

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862,077 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

19%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

17%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 ...

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.

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...

What do you like most about Citrix ADC?

The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic ente...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Citrix ADC?

After deployment, Citrix Netscaler shifted to a subscription-based license scheme for support, which is slightly more...

What needs improvement with Citrix ADC?

Citrix NetScaler is a robust product, but mastering it requires significant learning and training due to its complexi...

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...

What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

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

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 ...

HAProxy vs Kemp LoadMaster

Comparisons

Compared 19% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs Kemp LoadMaster

Compared 15% 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 8% of the time

Loadbalancer.org vs Kemp LoadMaster

Compared 6% of the time

More Kemp LoadMaster Competitors

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 10% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs NetScaler

Compared 9% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs NetScaler

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon Elastic Load Balancing vs NetScaler

Compared 3% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 16% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 12% of the time

Apache Web Server vs NGINX Plus

Compared 12% of the time

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

Compared 12% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs NGINX Plus

Compared 5% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Download Kemp LoadMaster product report

Kemp LoadMaster

July 2025

Download NetScaler product report

NGINX Plus

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

LoadMaster Load Balancer

Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall

NGINX

Overview

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

One platform for a consistent application delivery and security experience because nobody has time to learn multiple systems to manage ADC deployments. NetScaler is built with a single code base using a software-based architecture, so no matter which ADC form factor you choose — hardware, virtual machine, bare metal, or container — the behavior will be the same.

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

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

ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk

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

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)