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Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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

Kemp LoadMaster
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
9th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NGINX Plus
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, 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

PeterForster - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Michael Olayemi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"​Simple to install with good documentation."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten...I rate the technical support a ten out of ten...The initial setup of Kemp LoadMaster is very simple."
"The Global WAF has saved us more than one time from unwanted traffic."
"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."
"The most valuable feature so far has been the high-availability options that allowed us to add an additional Kemp LoadMaster VLM virtual appliance into our VMware vSphere environment, to provide failover for our existing LoadMaster."
"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."
"Great web balancing and remote access balancing."
"The robust software architecture allows for it to be scalable and very stable."
"The best solution, by far, for web traffic control for things in production and just around the house."
"It's lightweight software that can handle heavy loads efficiently."
"The primary valuable feature of NGINX for me is its ability to provide a reverse proxy."
"I find the solution’s community support and documentation most valuable. Compared to HAProxy, have found a lot of documentation and community support on Quora. If you would be asking me as a developer whether to choose this product, I would recommend this since it has good community support, documentation, and signature updates. The configuration of HAProxy is also very tedious. However, NGINX’s configuration is very simple."
"Nginx is extremely efficient in terms of the connection rate to the CPU cycles ratio, and in terms of the bandwidth to CPU cycles."
"I receive very good support."
"This solution has everything."
 

Cons

"Over the last several major versions, the GUI has remained virtually unchanged and still seems lacking."
"The auth website of ESP is really lacking. It’s not responsive (mobile friendly) and the procedure of changing the website is difficult. We tend to avoid using pre-auth for that reason."
"I definitely think that the WAF can be improved."
"The product is really good as-is out of the box. If there is one thing I would change is to have the license file not be coupled with the MAC address of the device. This is actually not really useful in a virtual environment where if you have a single VM with KEMP LoadMaster and you have not set up static MAC Address, if you, for example, recreate the VM and just load the disk file on a new VM it will get new MAC address and the NLB will not work as it will not see a proper license."
"To make it a perfect ten out of ten it would need better connection logging. If there is an active connection, that there is better logging. It should also have better management monitoring tools."
"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."
"Overall, the Kemp LoadMaster has been an all-rounder great product and stable. The free trial and virtual edition make it a breeze for any potential customer to give it a spin before actually deciding to put it on the infrastructure or even talk to the CFO."
"In the next release, Kemp should include the ability for LoadMaster to create different DNS record types."
"It would be great if there was even more automation to make it even easier to maintain."
"If NGINX brings some features for health check in the open source version, it would be better. ​"
"The KPI should be more focused on load balancing and the latency in application calling from the end system."
"The solution needs to be easier to setup and deploy."
"NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5."
"The solution's GUI is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"The center management system could be improved."
"The drawback is that you must obtain a license for everything."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The setup cost and pricing plan is reasonable and will ultimately give you a worthy return."
"The product definitely provides what the organization needs and its cost is reasonable considering the value it brings."
"​I have control on the licensing and all the prices since I work for a partner.​"
"From a cost perspective, Kemp is very competitive and is not hard to justify by any means."
"The price is lower than other options."
"Nowadays, going with the virtual appliance is the easiest way and the cost is reasonable."
"This product has good value and features for the money."
"At $2,500 USD, this is absolutely a fantastic buy for the money!"
"The cost is reasonable."
"You pay for each feature that you want."
"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."
"​NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it.​"
"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours.​"
"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."
"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
43%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Government
4%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

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 setup of Kemp LoadMaster is very simple.
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 a lot of time to provide resolutions for issues. Also, I could see more capabil...
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 architecture can handle the most demanding tasks. From media streaming to web applications,...
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 any costs.
 

Also Known As

LoadMaster Load Balancer
NGINX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Kemp LoadMaster vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,874 professionals have used our research since 2012.