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Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs NetScaler comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
Microsoft Azure Application...
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (3rd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd)
NetScaler
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st), Network Management Applications (5th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (14th)
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Bonieber  Orofeo - PeerSpot reviewer
Application gateway optimizes performance and simplifies cloud transitions
There are a lot of things I appreciate about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is beneficial for us as it helps in publishing our website, providing us comfort when it comes to the availability of our applications. The autoscaling feature in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is very obvious, and I have no issues with it; it is well planned and organized. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway impacts our cost savings while maintaining higher performance. The Web Application Firewall (WAF) in Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has been very effective in protecting applications from security threats. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway helps us manage our AI-driven applications by enabling faster transactions, improving our work.
DEMİRHAN ÇAVUŞOĞLU - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a fast and secure DNS."
"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."
"The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."
"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."
"The tool is easy to use and quite flexible. It has policy management features as well. The solution screens all traffic to our web applications before passing it to the application. We recently tested it on one of our poorly developed applications, and the upgrade gave us a 100% result based on our tests. It's very effective as a security measure, and people can detect threats even through the web application."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is an easy-to-use solution."
"Some of the key features of this solution are the low-level maintenance required, floating proxy service, and load balancing."
"The security feature in all the layers of the application is the most valuable."
"The solution has built-in rules that reduce alerts and are easy to configure."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway gives us a lot of benefits, including domain mapping."
"I find Application Gateway’s WAF module valuable because it helps prevent layer 7 attacks."
"I like the tool's stability and performance."
"The solution can be configured very granularly and has good control over security."
"When our primary link goes down I can still get to my Cisco devices and the NetScaler devices on-prem because of the SDN solution. If the internet connection at one of the branches goes down, we can still route them, they still get internet based on the SDN solution through one of the other sites. They can carry on working."
"Provides resiliency for applications that reside on servers, as well as connectivity to remote applications."
"Citrix is good for application protection."
"The best feature of Citrix is its track record of stability in its features."
"If you need PCI-compliance and have high security requirements, WAF is the most valuable feature. If you need to monitor your load-balancing services with complex types of monitoring, make sure everything is alright, and load balancing is important, Content Switching and Monitoring features are the keys to your needs. If you want to provide a lot of static images or data, the Caching feature works best for you."
"The load balancing feature of this solution is very good."
"I prefer this solution because of its user-friendly interface. I find it simple and close to what I am currently using, which is Citrix Fortiva Access for Multi-Factor Authentication. I appreciate the familiar user interface and troubleshooting tools it offers."
 

Cons

"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."
"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."
"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."
"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."
"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"Implementing and standardizing the solution across the IT landscape in a heterogeneous environment is painful."
"Needs easier integration with the existing SIAM."
"The product could be easier to use and implement."
"The pricing of the solution is a bit high. The solution should offer different pricing systems."
"The solution needs improvements in integrating different services and creating a better application balance."
"The monitoring on the solution could be better."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is not scalable."
"The solution has many limitations. You cannot upgrade the VPN to the application gateway. So I started with version one, which has limited capabilities, and they provided version two. And unfortunately, I cannot upgrade from v one to v two like other services. So I have to decommission the version one and create a new one with version two. Also the version one was complex with the certificates uploading the SQL certificates."
"The product could be improved by making it easier to use and easier to implement."
"The interface needs to be improved because the competition is coming up with ones that are more eye-catching, straightforward, and sophisticated."
"There are certain features that are very useful and Citrix makes you pay a bit more for them."
"Security could be improved because then I can get rid of my Cisco firewalls. If they improve the security then I could run my security, my proxy, my firewalling and my SDN solution on one device instead of having to have multiple devices."
"I am not an expert in this solution, but simplicity and user-friendly interfaces are crucial for me. I would appreciate advice from Citrix, particularly in the form of an interactive guide for API protection. It would be helpful if they could provide specific points and recommendations for cybersecurity, indicating areas that need attention or improvement. I find such interactive guidance valuable."
"Citrix NetScaler has been recently acquired by another company and the support has been negatively impacted, the solution is at its end of life. The support for the solution could improve. The sales team needs to be improved."
"I feel that Citrix NetScaler's customer support needs to improve."
"Their upgrades are not very backward compatible, and sometimes they mess up."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
"We are using the free version."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"The solution's pricing is not complex. It is not expensive from our point of view."
"The tool's pricing model is pay-as-you-go."
"There is some additional cost, such as extended support."
"The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution is fairly priced."
"The price of the solution can be reduced a bit."
"It is an expensive solution. We have an enterprise agreement, it is monthly."
"The solution is reasonably priced."
"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."
"You can do CapEx and then a yearly monthly fee, or you can do a subscription model, whether that's one month, month-to-month, or three-year subscription model."
"The solution is undoubtedly very good, but it is expensive."
"Regarding pricing, while it's expensive, I can't comment on the exact ROI without a budget analysis. However, in terms of service quality, it's worth the price."
"We are quite happy with price. It's not too high."
"The client pays for the Citrix NetScaler license annually."
"It's an expensive product but it works well."
"I give the price of the solution a seven out of ten."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.
863,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the...
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...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway
Citrix ADC, Citrix NetScaler VPX, NetScaler Console, NetScaler Web Application Firewall
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell
ABB Schweiz, Aer Lingus, AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Amnet Technology Solutions, Aramex International, Ascenty, Atos, Autodesk
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway vs. NetScaler and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
863,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.