Loadbalancer.org vs NGINX Plus comparison

Loadbalancer.org and F5 are both solutions in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category. Loadbalancer.org is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.5, while F5 is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3. Loadbalancer.org holds a 3.7% mindshare in ADC, compared to F5’s 7.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Loadbalancer.org users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of F5 users who would recommend it.

Loadbalancer.org

Read 23 Loadbalancer.org reviews

1,201 Views
1,192 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NGINX Plus

Read 31 NGINX Plus reviews

3,451 Views
2,936 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Loadbalancer.org

NGINX Plus

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

NGINX Plus and Loadbalancer.org are competitive solutions in the load balancing industry. NGINX Plus appears to have an edge in scalability and feature set, whereas Loadbalancer.org is preferred for ease of use and cost-effectiveness.

Features: NGINX Plus offers high connection rates, reverse proxy routing, and the ability to manipulate requests and responses, making it suitable for diverse configurations. Its efficiency in connection rate to CPU cycles and bandwidth management is highly regarded. On the other hand, Loadbalancer.org provides strong application delivery, ease of management, and a user-friendly interface that supports varied workforce capabilities.

Room for Improvement: NGINX Plus could benefit from improved graphical management interfaces, better pricing models, and enhanced module management. Loadbalancer.org should focus on maximizing scalability, simplifying setup processes for larger environments, and increasing integration capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NGINX Plus is adaptable across public cloud, hybrid, and on-premises setups, providing flexibility for various environments. It enjoys robust community support. Loadbalancer.org primarily serves on-premises but offers straightforward setup and strong customer service feedback, ensuring effective support when required.

Pricing and ROI: NGINX Plus provides options between its free and paid versions, aligning with diverse organizational needs, although the pricing for the paid version can be considered high. Loadbalancer.org is noted for good value through flexible pricing models and high customer satisfaction regarding cost-effectiveness. Both solutions contribute to improved ROI by increasing reliability and reducing operational workload.

To learn more, read our detailed Loadbalancer.org vs. NGINX Plus Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Loadbalancer.org vs. NGINX Plus

April 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

Loadbalancer.org

Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

12th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

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

Ranking in other categories

Application Infrastructure (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Loadbalancer.org is 3.7%, up from 3.3% 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

Roger Seelaender

UCaaS Engineering Manager at EarthLink

Great WAF - low-maintenance solution that performs as advertised

The solution can be improved with the development of a SIP engine because it is difficult to manage SBCs. All SBCs are really tough to write rules for. If we could put this in front of an SBC to have the right rules to possibly block the traffic, that would be very helpful. The solution can also improve the relationship between Loadbalancer.org and Metaswitch, or now, Microsoft because Metaswitch was purchased by Microsoft. They both position themselves as certified but don't always talk to each other. I wish there would be closer integration between the solution and the vendors when either release new upgrades to their product line. Often we find issues on either end post upgrades.

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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

"The most valuable features of Loadbalancer.org are related to its load balancing capabilities."

"Loadbalancer is easy to use. It performs well, with low latency."

"The SSL Layer 7 load balancing is valuable."

"Load balancing helps us distribute both incoming and outgoing data loads evenly among the servers, preventing overload on a single server."

"We now get notifications when pool members go down, and we eliminate our downtime by not sending traffic to downed pool members."

"Loadbalancer.org is less complex than Citrix."

"Most important for us that it makes sure that the load is distributed and that we always have access to the end servers."

"It does what it’s supposed to do which is balancing an important intranet site we are using, so if one server dies, the second becomes active straight away."

More Loadbalancer.org pros

"Valuable features include authentication, caching, reverse proxy routing, and load balancing."

"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."

"The load balancing module, which is equivalent to LTM, is the focus of the PSE. So far, the features of both are identical. I believe NGINX has more features for securing these services, but in terms of load balancing, both are massive solutions."

"Nginx is simple to configure, very stable in a highly utilized environment and very modular, allowing DevOps to create it's own modules for interactive use with Nginx."

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

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

More NGINX Plus pros

Cons

"If I have to say something, I suppose they could add an automated configuration backup to an FTP location (or something similar) so you don’t have to manually do it. I don’t see this as a problem, of course, as the configuration rarely changes and we only need one backup, but maybe for other users that feature would be handy."

"The automatic refresh of the System Overview webpage: It sometimes has an extra webpage reload (after a change) before you see it is executed. This can be confusing."

"You can run into an issue when one engineer passes the case over to another engineer after their shift and they don't know what the first engineer worked on up to that point."

"I would like it if Loadbalancer had the ability to make rules for specific shared bots."

"Compared to the physical products, the solution's throughput is a little less."

"The configuration is somewhat complicated. Someone who does not know the solution may find this challenging."

"Possibly a more graphical overview page (with colors) to give a two second overview to see if everything is working fine."

"I would like a notification when a new version of the software is available. They told me to sign up for their newsletter, but I have not received any notification for a newer software version."

More Loadbalancer.org cons

"The drawback is that you must obtain a license for everything."

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

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

"Our most challenging part was to run an older PHP website reverse-proxied through NGINX. That was not fun."

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

"The center management system could be improved."

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

"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."

More NGINX Plus cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They're not the cheapest, not the most expensive, but I think value-wise, they're 100%."

"These guys make their pricing scheme really easy."

"The solution requires an annual support license of $2,780 for four systems or $695 a year per unit for support not including the units."

"It was easy to upgrade the license for unlimited clusters and servers. Pricing is fair."

"It's worth the cost. It's not cheap, but it's a good solution. If you're looking for a good solution, this is a good solution. Is it cheap? No. Is it worth the money? Yes, I think it is."

"The costs associated with Loadbalancer.org depends on the technology. For some, we need to pay, but others are open, so they're free."

"I think it’s very affordable."

"It is inexpensive, and even their “unlimited” version, the VA MAX is still far cheaper than competitors."

More Loadbalancer.org pricing and cost advice

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

"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."

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

"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."

"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."

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

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

More NGINX Plus pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

Media Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Do you recommend Loadbalancer.org?

Since Loadbalancer.org is an open-source solution, I would recommend this solution for smaller businesses that don’t have major scaling requirements and don’t have the budget for a commercial solut...

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What do you like most about Loadbalancer.org?

Existing customers are trying to migrate from the physical F5 load balancer to the AVI load balancer because it is scalable and easily managed.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Loadbalancer.org?

Pricing of Loadbalancer.org is something to consider.

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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,...

See all answers

What do you like most about NGINX Plus?

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

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

NetScaler vs Loadbalancer.org

Compared 24% of the time

HAProxy vs Loadbalancer.org

Compared 20% of the time

Fortinet FortiADC vs Loadbalancer.org

Compared 17% of the time

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Loadbalancer.org

Compared 14% of the time

A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs Loadbalancer.org

Compared 3% of the time

More Loadbalancer.org Competitors

IIS vs NGINX Plus

Compared 17% of the time

HAProxy vs NGINX Plus

Compared 15% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs NGINX Plus

Compared 11% of the time

NetScaler vs NGINX Plus

Compared 11% of the time

More NGINX Plus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Loadbalancer.org

April 2025

Download Loadbalancer.org product report

Buyer's Guide

NGINX Plus

April 2025

Download NGINX Plus product report

Also Known As

No data available

NGINX

Overview

Loadbalancer.org is a versatile solution that offers load balancing for small businesses, multiple instances of applications, web application firewall, publishing Windows and SQL applications, and security for telephone service systems. It is easy to use, cost-effective, and performs well with low latency.

The connection maintenance and security features are valuable, including managing logs on WAFs, identifying break-in attempts writing rules to block them and using HAProxy to control what is allowed. Loadbalancer.org has helped organizations reduce the impact of connection issues, provide security, and ensure no downtime or impact on productivity.

Top Industries that use Loadbalancer.org:

Healthcare: Loadbalancer.org is widely considered the top load balancer provider in the healthcare IT industry. Loadbalancer.org sees that healthcare IT personnel can ensure their organizations are moving seamlessly toward interoperability and are able to easily scale to meet today’s continually growing data demands with no compromise in performance.

Storage solutions: Loadbalancer.org has significant offerings and partnerships with object-based storage providers to ensure they are always ready for today's ever-changing dynamic storage needs. The comprehensive integration offers high-performance scalable solutions which can provide always available next-gen storage solutions.

Security: Loadbalancer.org solutions provide an extra layer of security to protect against the latest risk and threats. Loadbalancer.org will provide a close integration to ensure the organization is always secure.

Print: Loadbalancer.org can work with organizations to ensure their print environments keep working smoothly and is the only organization that fully supports Microsoft Print load balancing. Loadbalancer.org minimizes the complexities of print environments to ensure that all systems are consistently available.

Loadbalancer.org is certified as an OEM provider for all of Microsoft's most popular key applications and solutions. Loadbalancer.org has created and developed streamlined deployments to facilitate improved scalability, performance, and uptime. They offer a tailored GUI to make every process super easy. Loadbalancer.org offers several flexible licensing plans to ensure cost-effectiveness, improved margins, revenue opportunities, and optimized TCO. The numerous robust solutions Loadbalancer.org offers can ensure that any enterprise organization is able to satisfy the growing demands of today’s dynamic marketplace while maintaining an excellent user experience.

Reviews from Real Users

“Loadbalancer.org is less complex than Citrix. In some cases, our customers do not have an engineer on staff who can support this device. These customers have a large number of Linux engineers but don't have the money. We suggested using Loadbalancer.org and other open-source tools. Many customers are of different sizes and have different budgets. Loadbalancer.org has everything that is needed.” - Artem M., System Engineer at CROC

“We use Loadbalancer for balancing loads in our main application. Loadbalancer is easy to use. It performs well, with low latency.” - Walid M., Network and Security Engineer at a logistics company

Loadbalancer.org

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

Vodafone, NASA, Mercedes, NBC, Siemens, AT&T, Barclays, Zurich, Penn State University, Fiserv, Canon, Toyota, University of Cambridge, US Army, US Navy, Ocean Spray, ASOS, Pfizer, BBC, Bacardi, Monsoon, River Island, U.S Air Force, King's College London, NHS, Ricoh, Philips, Santander, TATA Communications, Ericcson, Ross Video, Evertz, TalkTalk TV, Giacom, Rapid Host.

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

Buyer's Guide

Loadbalancer.org vs. NGINX Plus

April 2025

Free Report: Loadbalancer.org vs. NGINX Plus

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