Kemp LoadMaster Reviews

Our primary use is to provide application load balancing for inbound SMTP mail and webmail for Microsoft Exchange.

We have also used the product to load balance Citrix applications and delivery controllers. In our Citrix environment, it is much easier to implement, manage, and use versus Citrix's own Netscaler that we have used in the past.

It fixed our issue with internal webmail and SMTP overload. The product works exactly as advertised and we are thrilled with it. We now have webpage acceleration and can even load balance geographically with virtual boxes in our Microsoft Azure space.

Kemp basically has taken the overloading of one of our servers and now spreads it across three servers without any hiccups. We have excellent performance, see real data for our connections, and have no complaints from our end users. That is a very big help for us!

The user interface is very easy to work with. We did not have to hire outside services to implement what we figured out ourselves and saved plenty of money.

Perhaps Kemp could offer some training videos.

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for 10 years.

We have had zero stability problems, ever!

It works well.  You can make them an HA pair or put in larger units if required with an easy upgrade path moving the configuration from one bx to another.

We made one phone call and the problem was resolved, immediately. We had a resolution in 12 minutes!

My understanding is the company is built from engineers who left a competitor and took what people complained about at the original company and made it into a better product. Their support always picks up within minutes. In this day and age, sitting around waiting for techs to pick up the phone is a draining task! I do not like companies that have poorly trained engineers who don't pick up the phone!

Their support team is based in the US and that helps us as well. They seem to understand that we only call if there is a problem we cannot solve. Their engineers are really well trained and understand the root of the problem immediately, almost every time. Again, it's hard to complain about this product as we love it!

We tried a few products and they were expensive and overly complicated.

The initial setup was very easy. The configuration took about 20 minutes through a web browser.

We implemented and deployed in-house.

For about $2,500, we have already made our money back!

At $2,500 USD, this is absolutely a fantastic buy for the money!

We went with Kemp after trying other products like the Netscaler, the F5 solutions, and a few other lesser-known vendors. The Kemp solution gave us everything in the box without having to pay for any additional licenses.

Overall, the product has covered what we needed and even offered some additional features.

It's really hard to say what can be improved when we do not have any complaints, to begin with. I just have to say that even Microsoft named Kemp their preferred load balancer for Microsoft Exchange in the past.

Our primary use case is to synchronize mail to mobile devices and specifically, the Outlook application on laptops.

I have a virtualized environment that contains Exchange Server 2016 and I need a service in the DMZ that knows how to handle emails that have arrived, as a reverse proxy product.

My employees are using mobile phones like Samsung. They need to be able to send and receive emails anywhere with their mobile phones and laptops, so now, for about one year, we are working with Kemp and the users are satisfied. There is no complaining, as they had done before.

Using Kemp LoadMaster has solved the problems that I was having with my previous solution, PineApp.

The most valuable features are synchronizing email with mobile devices and synchronizing with Outlook.

We have experienced at least one problem with stability, although it was fixed with an upgrade.

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for one year.

The product is stable and very easy to implement. Since it was installed, there has been one small problem that has been resolved in a version upgrade.

The product does its job for the users and I do not receive any complaints.

I recently had one small glitch when syncing to an iPhone. I received support that was courteous, polite, professional, and fast.

Prior to this, I had a product from Cybonet called PineApp.

It is supposed to perform as a  reverse proxy and synchronize emails to mobiles phone and Outlook but I had a lot of issues and it did not work smoothly. I asked them to suggest to me what to do and they told me that they can only handle 20 to 30 users. They said that if I wanted me then I need to purchase another dedicated product.

I was not satisfied and this caused me to replace it.

As I mentioned earlier the installation went smoothly without any issues with the help of the company support

I was helped by the KEMP support team and they were very professional and would be happy to work with them

The product definitely provides what the organization needs and its cost is reasonable considering the value it brings.

At this time, the only features that the organization needs are the synchronization of emails to mobile devices and Outlook, so overall, we are satisfied with this product.

I would definitely recommend the product to my friends.

The primary use case of this solution was to replace our Citrix Netscaler and help us load balance traffic for solutions such as Citrix, Exchange, RDP, as well as for web servers using HTTP and SMTP.

We have been able to manage several applications as well as run certain services such as Exchange through the WAF. This is with it all being on one screen instead of jumping to several different windows to see how everything is configured. It helps out.

The pre-configured templates help our technicians correctly modify the services, which is another benefit.

We are most impressed with the ease of use and great support.

The features we have found most valuable would be the Kemp 360, which helps narrow down the logging.

You can filter and review which IPs are causing issues.

I also like how there are templates for various types of technologies, such as RDP, Exchange, etc. It helps tremendously when making sure that everything is configured.

I definitely think that the WAF can be improved. We have had several issues for which, at times some our services that were being run through the kemp would stop working. It was strange because everything showed green. Their first solution was to enable/disable the WAF and it worked. But then at time it stopped again and it required further investigation with Kemp support in which logs were needed to be turned on and collected to analyze the behavior. 

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for two months.

Stability-wise, so far so good. Sometimes we wish we had a little more notice if something wasn’t working, such as a notification email.

AMAZING! Their support team is US-based and quick to answer, help troubleshoot, solve problems.

We used Citrix Netscaler prior to this product.

The initial setup was straightforward and the support team was also very helpful.

In-house with minimal experience.

Setup is easy, the cost is affordable, and the licensing is quick and simple.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this solution. 

We use the Kemp Loadmaster to load-balance enterprise-wide applications that require high-availability. We also wanted to make sure the performance and throughput meet the needs of the usage of our applications.

These applications include Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), Microsoft SharePoint (2010, 2013), file sharing servers, multiple public-facing websites, multiple internal websites, on-premise IT Service Management applications, and others.

The LoadMaster handles both production and development environments for these applications.

The Kemp LoadMaster was very easy to deploy and we initially deployed without needing much tech support help. The management is very intuitive and can easily be used by techs without needing extensive training to use.

The LoadMaster met all of the features and performance we were looking for at a very affordable price. We were also looking to lessen the real estate rack space in our data centers and really wanted a virtual solution that will work with our Hyper-V environment.

Having a Hyper-V image that we easily deployed to multiple Hyper-V clusters allowed us to achieve high availability with the LoadMaster.

The templates provided by Kemp for well-known applications like Exchange and SharePoint make these applications very easy to deploy. When the templates are used, there is not much left to configure and they just work!

I have used and evaluated templates from other load balancing vendors, but still required extra help from a technician just to make the application work correctly. This is a little frustrating sometimes since you would think that the template should just work.

I have not had any issues with any of the LoadMaster templates at all.

Out of the box, the LoadMaster provides real-time statistics regarding connections to the real servers, as well as to the virtual services. We see the number of connections in the last 5/30/60 minutes, and current active connections as well. However, it would be nice if we were able to drill in further to see the actual IP addresses that made up these connections, whether they were coming from the internet or internal, and possibly the option to disconnect certain active connections.

The historical graphs showing CPU metrics and the network is useful, as well. It would be nice if the historical metrics were easily exportable from the interface.

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for the past nine years. This was eight years using the hardware-based LoadMaster, and less than a year on the virtual LoadMaster platform.

We like the stability of the LoadMaster setup on high-availability, running two separate Hyper-V clusters. We have tested HA failover of the virtual devices a few times now and failover worked perfectly each time.

Since we are using virtual LoadMasters, we are certain that we can easily scale when needed without needing extra hardware.

Kemp customer service is excellent. When I had submitted a ticket for questions I had, the response was almost immediate and they made sure to always follow up with me just to check that everything was to our satisfaction.

We switched from a prior solution since the LoadMaster provided the features, performance and throughput that we required for a more affordable price point.

The initial setup is very easy since we were provided an image for our hypervisor. Technical documentation was provided and it was very easy to follow and initially configure without needing extra technical help.

We implemented in-house.

Our ROI on the Kemp LoadMaster is very positive.

It is well-priced and licensing is very flexible.

We looked at Radware and F5.

The LoadMaster is very easy to set up, configure, and manage. We have been using it for almost 10 years and are still very happy with this solution.

We use our devices as virtual load balancers for Exchange 2016, primarily.

We have two sites with two LMs at each site in clusters. We also use the devices as global DNS services and reverse proxy/authentication servers for our external users.

Our services are primarily Microsoft products being served. These include Exchange, SharePoint, CRM Dynamics, Skype, and ADFS. We are also looking at implementing websites in the future as required.

SSL offloading is enabled. Our devices are set up in the network as well as the DMZ.

With Kemp, I have been able to implement a global DNS load balancer between two sites for internal and external users with our existing Exchange DAG setup. This has made DR and BCP much easier to manage.

Our previous setup used Microsoft's TMG solution, and when that went end of life we needed to figure out a replacement. Being able to use load balancing, SSL offloading, and Edge Security Packages, all in one service, made my life much easier to manage from a day to day and single pane of glass perspective.

ESP gives us peace of mind because it has taken over from Microsoft's Threat Management Gateway (reverse proxy) solution. It also alerts us if there are attempted security breaches so that we can be sure we are safe.

The DNS Load Balancer makes it so that I don't have to worry about site failures. As it manages both our external DNS and internal DNS queries, we can failover to the individual sites as required. This is true for site failures as well as planned maintenance. 

We also use the Kemp 360 Vision, which monitors our services from an external perspective and alerts us via SMS and email, so I know if things go down. 

We experienced a brief period of instability.

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for six years.

I have only had an issue with the solution once in terms of stability. The issue was not an end user-visible issue, and upgrading the O/S fixed the issue right away.

I beleive it's scalable because I can always upgrade my licensing to a unit that handles more requests. 

Service is great, easy to work with, and always responsive.

Prior to Kemp LoadMaster, we used end-of-life products from Microsoft.

The initial setup is straightforward, due to Kemp's support services and available templates and documentation.

We completed the setup in-house.

I believe it is high due to the many services that the solution has been able to provide.

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

We looked at Citrix Netscaler as well as a solution by A10 Networks.

My advice is to use Kemp's support to help with the initial setup. It is included in the initial cost and it makes sure that best practices are used. Keep up with the support because it's worth it.

I am currently happy with everything.

Our organization provides resources for public safety. For continuous service and support, we need to run our system with high availability and avoid failures or downtime. 

Kemp LoadMaster helps us achieve this goal by utilizing the Kemp LoadMaster virtual appliance in our VMware environment. Kemp LoadMaster allows us to provide load balancing and high availability to our web and API services for internal and public use, making sure that public safety is not put at risk.

Along with making sure public safety is not put at risk, Kemp LoadMaster allows us to keep our web services secure by adding another security layer with its web application firewall and IPS.

Kemp LoadMaster has greatly improved our uptime while reducing the time spent on maintenance of the virtual appliances, allowing the IT team to concentrate on other projects.

Because of the reduced time from the Kemp maintenance, we able to spend more time making sure that the hardware and server software is up to date. Kemp allows us to now have the flexibility of updating and applying firmware or software upgrades that would normally be service impacting to our infrastructure to be done during work hours without any interruptions.

The most valuable feature is the load balancing and allowing for high availability of our web services. If we need a maintenance window to apply updates to any of our infrastructure that would normally be service-impacting or require extensive steps to prevent it from being service-impacting, is now simplified to "it just works".

Also, what makes it very valuable is the fact that Kemp listens to its customer base. You have the ability to request new features and it does not fall on deaf ears. The development team is very responsive and accommodating to their customers.

The configuration of the basic services is pretty straight forward but for more complex solutions, there needs to be better documentation or knowledge base articles. The knowledge base that is there is well done, but it would be excellent to see it expanded out. For those fringe installations, technical support is more than willing to assist.

The one thing that I would love to see implemented is the ability for Kemp to automate certificate creation through Let's Encrypt. That way I can cut back on my cost of certificates and also pushes towards a more centralized location for certificate management. 

We have been using Kemp LoadMaster for just over one year.

This product is extremely stable. We have the metered license so the Kemp appliance has to phone home monthly to send our statistics for the month and the only issue we have ran into is the phone home feature failed once which could have been caused by an internet hiccup.

It is easy to scale the solution. If needed another load balancer, it's as simple as firing up another LoadMaster VM.

Customer service is fast and responsive. Haven't had to use it very often, if at all. 

We were using Simple Failover, but it was running into issues and we were looking for more of an enterprise solution.

Setup is cake. It is straightforward and easy.

Kemp's team helped with the implementation while I drove the keyboard. Kemp's knowledge and expertise were top notch.

ROI was immediate and gives the peace of mind knowing if something happens to one of my servers, nothing will be seen by the public.

The price is great and the value is definitely there.

We also evaluated F5.

We use it to load balance our ADFS serves. We also have it set up at our DR location when we need to switch over to DR. We have it set up and just flip the server over and since we have it set up at DR, once the IPs are swapped to the new DR IP range it picks up and starts working in our DR location.

We also use it for our main application. We have multiple app servers that people log on to which allows us to keep the logins spread out among the servers. And if we need to take one down we can force the user to one server. 

It was a total mess using the Windows Load balancer, it was not easy to work with. Switching to Kemp has made our lives so much easier. We can now swap machines and users around based on the needs if something goes up and or down. We are allowed to take machines up and down as we please. We can also take machines to DR and use the same thing at our DR location. It has improved our DR and emergency issues and almost eliminated it. It's hard to believe we can cut it down to almost no time. Kemp has made it so much easier. I would recommend it. 

The feature that allows us to easily disconnect a server when we need and bring back online is the most valuable. It's a click of a button. This allows us to keep all systems up. We can then run updates, perform reboots whatever we need to one of the servers without taking production down.

In the old days, we had to kill both servers and reboot only at a certain time. Now, we can do it as we please, and when the server comes back up, we check to see if the green button shows and we move onto the next. This feature allows us to do work and keep things running.

It works well, we really can't think of anything to make it easier They have templates that you can import that do most of the work for you anyways.

If I had to change something it would maybe be to have a little better reporting graphics that show more details in the reporting. It seems to be a little small in the graphic, and I'm not sure if possible but maybe a GUI page that one can use to monitor if any server goes down. And not sure a full login, so we can login to another page if something happens. Besides better GUI things i'm not sure. 

We have had it for about 3+ years.

They run with no issues, the only time we had issues was when the user rebooted by accident. The product runs with little overhead to servers. 

Allows for the growth of other virtual services with no issues at all.

Anytime we have issues they are quick to respond and we are giving a tech that knows the answer. We are not handed off to level 1 and then level 2 two days later. They know their stuff from the get-go. 

Microsoft LB and was recommended by a Vendor we used for a project. 

The setup was straightforward, support was a dream to work with.

Kemp PS helped and they were amazing, 

Not sure about exact numbers but the time and effort we don't spend dealing with it, makes up for it. 

You won't need anything they offer great support and licensing was super easy. 

The only thing we evaluated was what level we needed for our needs. 

I recommend Kemp to all, product works great and makes jobs easier. 

We use Kemp to balance the load of connections to various places. We have IIS, RDP, API, gateway servers, and objects that get over 5000 connections that are balanced with Kemp. 

We have had very good success at getting this working properly and doing exactly what we need. We need to balance resources and utilize the Kemp Loadmaster to organize the servers and resources to keep them operating at an optimal level. RDP and Gateway servers are 99.99% uptime so having Kemp in the middle makes that an easy transition if there is an outage or server error.

We used to manually balance the load and we overallocated resources to account for this situation. Since we started using Kemp, we have become more reliable and have less downtime. We also have the added resources back now that we can allocate the precise need. There is another added bonus, we can have rolling updates because we can balance the load and update inactive servers or resources.

We have had our uptime guarantee enhanced because of the Kemp tools and resources. The load that our servers can handle has been minimized and resources have been restored.  

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. 

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. If I update a server on Wednesday then I would use Kemp to automate the server being taken out of service before and then put back into service after. That could streamline the whole update process and it should do some simple checks and tests to make sure the server or resource is reliable and able to be reached. 

We have been using Kemp for about five years now. 

I have only had one issue in five years, so I would say the stability is impeccable. 

It scales for everything we have grown to need and more so far! 

Kemp has the best customer service of all the vendors we use. 

We used DNS Round-robin and some manual intervention but it was unreliable and very time-consuming. 

I had support walk me through the setup. They happily helped me before I was even a client. They set up the first service with me and I had it in production that same day! 

I implemented this myself. It is turn key ready with various templates that are plug and play. 

We have saved on man-hours from the manual intervention we used to do as well as the resources we saved from right-sizing our resources that we could then use in other areas. 

The return is triple what we invest. 

I would advise them to take advantage of the trials and support. Use the support to set it up exactly the way you want and see how much actually need to pay for. 

I looked at Barracuda but the support was terrible and so I went with Kemp and am so glad I did. The support has been stellar. 

Go with Kemp, you will thank me later.