Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus vs NetScaler comparison

Read 107 NetScaler reviews

7,147 Views
5,282 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 31 NGINX Plus reviews

3,277 Views
2,778 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, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC).

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

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

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Helped 850,349 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 May 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Kemp LoadMaster is 7.5%, up from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetScaler is 14.4%, down from 15.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 7.9%, down from 8.6% 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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Ritesh-Bakhru

Major Account Manager at Check Point Software

Quick installation and very easy to manage while doing orchestration or automation

NGINX cannot be a replacement for your traditional load balancer with what we use in the network today. However, with applications going toward microservices, NGINX is definitely a way forward. F5 has many traditional load balancing features, so they still need to bring some of those features to NGINX. NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5. I think F5 is trying to implement those features in NGINX so they can improve the balancing on NGINX, but I think that will take some time. With the traditional F5 set up, the same OS can do load balancing, firewalls, and even policy enforcement. If we are able to bring some of those capabilities to NGINX, I think it would become a versatile solution and usage would definitely increase.

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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

"We really like the performance of this solution."

"It has been functional. We don't have any outages."

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

"Edge Security Pack is valuable because of the way it separates between critical infrastructure and the public internet."

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

"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."

"It is an easy-to-use, user-friendly interface, and you can set up a new VIP in a couple of minutes."

"It has greatly fortified the performance and uptime of our front-door email ingress, simplified and segmented mail routing, and reduced admin overhead for mail issue resolution and troubleshooting."

More Kemp LoadMaster pros

"Content Switching provides flexibility for routing traffic as desired to designated real servers. It also provides good geo capabilities through its GSLB feature."

"The flexibility in configuration options is impressive."

"The web application firewall which protects our services on the internet, and then of course services like our ability to provide high availability for the services we are offering are the most valuable features."

"We appreciate that this solution facilitates our access to Citrix internet."

"The GSLB feature allows us to move services between data centers. We can do this in either a planned or unplanned manner. We have experienced service provider outages at our primary data center and GSLB will kick in to automatically modify DNS records to point to a secondary data center (active/passive). We also make use of GeoIP information to point clients to the closest data center for accessing applications."

"For NetScaler, our major use cases are database load balancing, PowerVPN VPN access gateway, WAF (Web Application Firewall), and content switching."

"Its customer support service is good."

"The analytics are a great feature."

More NetScaler pros

"-"

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

"The best solution, by far, for web traffic control for things in production and just around the house."

"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."

"The robust software architecture allows for it to be scalable and very stable."

"NGINX provides a cost advantage, value addition, and effective support."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is simple to configure."

"This solution has everything."

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"When we go serverless, we may again have to revisit this because the configuration needs to be changed. With this change, we can run into a lot of other configurations that we haven't got into, which involve additional expenses. It would be challenging to convince management to buy at that price point. It would be a balancing act of justifying that expense and the value, that is, how it is going to save a bit of time and make our platform secure. It can have better configuration ability. A lot of iterations happen when we have multiple servers pointing to the same domain. If we do not orchestrate carefully, it gets into a loop, which takes away the precious time of the user who is trying to subscribe to a service. It takes a little longer time to realize services as well as web pages."

"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."

"Hardware version needs a dual power solution."

"I would like to see more automation and control of overactive and inactive resources. If I could schedule these around our updates then it would be all automated. I would like to set up an automated script to coincide with the scripts I use to update resources and servers."

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

"In the next release, they can introduce 360 views in the same dashboard to make it easier for users to view. The graphical information should be displayed on the dashboard."

"Over the last several major versions, the GUI has remained virtually unchanged and still seems lacking."

"They were still in the process of development, and for example, we set it up in a cluster. So it was one logistical unit built out of two physical devices. And the expected behavior, which I know from other devices, will be formed into a logic cluster. It's that you configure one unit. Then you bring the second unit into this cluster with the already configured primary unit. So the secondary box pulls all the configured ones from its neighbor, does everything automatically, and then synchronizes with this primary neighbor. And then it works, like, one logical unit. And this didn't work with the Kemp's initially, where they caused a lot of issues when building up a cluster, so there were some specials on how to set this up. When we built or set them up for the first time and the months afterward with no new software releases, there were a couple of problems, but in the end, they worked fine. So, they developed a lot and learned from what they've responded to, what we responded to them, and what needs fixing."

More Kemp LoadMaster cons

"Citrix is more expensive than Horizon."

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

"Maybe creating policies with simple regular expressions."

"The solution is a bit more expensive than some of the available solutions in this region. One solution in particular that I noticed was cheaper was Kemp."

"The SLB could be better, and they should improve it."

"It was challenging explaining to customers that it's no longer NetScaler but ADC, and now it's not just ADC but also the rebranding from NetScaler."

"In every release - and it doesn't matter if it's a minor release or a major release - they keep moving things around and they keep changing the mechanism. So certain things can work in one version one way, and everything works really well, then when you upgrade it to the next version, it breaks everything because they have a new way of doing it."

"The user interface could be more friendly. Some wizards and other documentation for administrators, as well as some use cases, helps us to understand the solution."

More NetScaler cons

"Only improvement needed that I would point to is scalability. With it, I mean clusterized organisation on a low level. At the moment, the best alternative is RHEL HA."

"Initially, I experienced hiccups whenever I installed the application. As with any application, there were initial issues, however, after receiving support, everything was rectified."

"If NGINX brings some features for health check in the open source version, it would be better. "

"NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5."

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

"NGINX Plus is moderately priced, but it could give better value for money."

"I would like the configuration process to be more simplified."

"One area of improvement could be that NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is a cost-efficient product."

"The Kemp LoadMaster is a tremendous value."

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

"From a cost perspective, Kemp is very competitive and is not hard to justify by any means."

"The price is lower than other options."

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

"They have multiple tiers of licensing and you can upgrade it easily."

"Download Kemp's VLM trial and take it for a test drive; you will be impressed."

More Kemp LoadMaster pricing and cost advice

"I rate the pricing an eight out of ten since it is expensive."

"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."

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

"The firewall license is included by default, with no additional costs."

"The client pays for the Citrix NetScaler license annually."

"Its licensing cost is much higher than other products, but it is acceptable because it is a one-time investment, and we are getting our requirements fulfilled when we buy this product. So, there is no issue with the pricing."

"When compared to other solutions, the cost is high."

"We have all the features and functions of Citrix because we have a premium license."

More NetScaler pricing and cost advice

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

"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."

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

"NGINX Plus is an open-source solution with limited additional features. When you try to get additional features in the solution, then you need to pay an extra amount to NGINX Plus."

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

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

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

"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."

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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850,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

56%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

University

Computer Software Company

16%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

18%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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 18% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs Kemp LoadMaster

Compared 16% 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

HAProxy vs NetScaler

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler

Compared 11% 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

A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs NetScaler

Compared 5% of the time

More NetScaler Competitors

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 17% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 15% of the time

Apache Web Server vs NGINX Plus

Compared 10% of the time

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

Compared 10% of the time

VMWare Avi Load Balancer vs NGINX Plus

Compared 5% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Kemp LoadMaster

Download Kemp LoadMaster product report

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)