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NGINX Ingress Controller vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

NGINX Ingress Controller
Ranking in Container Management
18th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat OpenShift
Ranking in Container Management
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (3rd), Server Virtualization Software (6th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (4th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of NGINX Ingress Controller is 1.7%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 4.6%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Red Hat OpenShift4.6%
NGINX Ingress Controller1.7%
Other93.7%
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

MuthukaruppasamyR - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network At Dxc Technology Professional at DXC Technology
Reverse proxy and security controls have provided flexible access and strong TLS protection
I have utilized NGINX Ingress Controller SSL and TLS termination feature. We have done extensive SSL offloading on NGINX Ingress Controller and made the TLS configurations to match security requirements, allowing certain TLS versions while disabling others such as 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2, and allowing 1.3. The choice depends upon the application requirement. The reverse proxy capabilities of NGINX Ingress Controller in managing distributed applications is central to its main concept. We need to configure it to allow the server to access the outside world and the internet. That is achievable, and we can install and configure NGINX Ingress Controller as a reverse proxy. It can work as a load balancer, but the main part is NGINX Ingress Controller's role as a reverse proxy. If any applications need to be accessed through the proxy to the outside world, then NGINX Ingress Controller is a good product for you. I employ the IP whitelisting feature in NGINX Ingress Controller, which helps secure my application environment. In IP whitelisting, there are several options available. You can determine which IPs to block, for example, if you do not want to give access to specific regions. You can find the list of IP addresses registered in those regions and blacklist them. There is also the web application firewall (WAF) where you can create policies to identify the type of traffic trying to access the application.
Pratul Shukla - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Adopting a flexible and efficient approach with noticeable improvements in operational costs and continued challenges in job management
Currently, one of the biggest challenges we face is with services and jobs. For spawning batches, although it has crons, it is not easy to integrate with enterprise systems such as Autosys. The entire company uses Autosys, but we are not able to integrate it effectively. We need intermediate servers to run OC utility commands and initiate the cron job. We have to do a lot of modifications to ensure our batches work properly. With physical or virtual servers, even in AWS, we are able to write and manage multiple jobs. Managing batches in Red Hat OpenShift has been a significant challenge. Integrating third parties is a challenge with Red Hat OpenShift. For example, with Elasticsearch, onboarding itself was difficult, running file beats and dealing with routing issues. It is not straightforward, especially since we have some components in AWS as. AWS has many capabilities that come out of the box and are easier to work with compared to Red Hat OpenShift. Red Hat OpenShift's biggest disadvantage is they do not provide any private cloud setup where we can host on our site using their services. The main reason we went with Red Hat OpenShift was because it is a private cloud, and we have regulatory requirements that prevent us from using public cloud.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The main benefit is that it is better in performance, provides security with App Protect and WAF and DDoS, and delivers high performance and high stability."
"However, the response, throughput, and solid performance we receive after implementation are often worth it."
"NGINX Ingress Controller has positively impacted my organization by helping us with exposing our applications and managing security and auto-scaling."
"From my experience, I think the main benefit NGINX Ingress Controller provides to the end user is the reliability of NGINX Ingress Controller itself."
"Has a better UI and is good as a CICD solution."
"The most valuable feature of OpenShift is the containers."
"Valuable features include time to market, avoiding vendor lock-in, and the ease of working in a multi-cloud environment."
"We have found the cluster management function to be very good with this product."
"Self-provisioning support saves a lot of time and unnecessary work from the system administrator who can use this time to run and monitor the infrastructure."
"OpenShift's superior dashboard is a notable strength, especially when compared to Kubernetes."
"The initial setup is simple, and OpenShift is open-source, so it's easy to install on any cloud platform."
"OpenShift is great for flexibility, agility, and speed of delivery."
 

Cons

"Nowadays, the quality has been degrading, and I do not expect the same level of service."
"Most customers are satisfied with the reverse proxy capability, but the main issue is that the Ingress NGINX, the one that is most widely used, will be deprecated this month."
"However, there is still a major limitation in GUI capability to manage and observe."
"I'd like to see support for more than one server, a mobile user registry."
"Not a ten because it's not a standard solution and the endpoint protection user has to prepare with documentation or have training from other people. It's not easy to start because it's not like other solutions."
"Installation and setup are a bit tedious, especially in a proxy environment."
"The monitoring part could be better to monitor the performance."
"Some of the storage services and integrations with third-party tools should be made possible."
"Needs work on volume handling (although this is already better with GlusterFS). Security (SSSD) would also be an improvement."
"The whole area around the hybrid cloud could be improved."
"OpenShift requires a very expensive and complex infrastructure. These demands can deter people from learning OpenShift."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Pricing of OpenShift depends on the number of nodes and who is hosting it."
"It's important to start small because the solution is scalable. We can build our cluster and look at the bundle option, not the external subscriptions. Talking to the people at Red Hat can save us money."
"It's expensive. It may be cheaper to invest in building Vanilla Kubernetes, especially if security is not the number one motivation or requirement. Of course, that's difficult, and in some business areas, such as banking, that's not something you can put as a second priority. In other situations, a Vanilla Kubernetes with a sufficiently strong team can be cheaper and almost as effective."
"I don't deal with the cost part, but I know that the cost is very high when compared to other products. They charge for CPU and memory, but we don't worry about it."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"We are currently using the open version, OKD. We plan to get the enterprise version in the future."
"Depending on the extent of the product use, licenses are available for a range of time periods, and are renewable at the end of the period."
"The product has reasonable pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise53
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Ingress Controller?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was good. The pricing was expensive at first, but throughout the journey, it became feasible.
What needs improvement with NGINX Ingress Controller?
In my opinion, NGINX Ingress Controller can make better improvements for ingress control, and I think they are already the leader in the Ingress and Gateway API. The Gateway API has the capability ...
What is your primary use case for NGINX Ingress Controller?
I am currently working with NGINX Ingress Controller but in a different perspective than before. We haven't used App Protect anymore, but as an implementer, we use it as a front end for an AI gatew...
How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or ...
Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database...
What needs improvement with OpenShift?
Areas where Red Hat OpenShift can be improved include the licensing being a bit complex and maybe expensive, as that is something in the hands of the organization's higher management, especially wh...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton
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