We performed a comparison between Citrix NetScaler and HAProxy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Its customer support service is good."
"The most valuable feature of Citrix NetScaler was the seamless integration. Additionally, the UI is good."
"For NetScaler, our major use cases are database load balancing, PowerVPN VPN access gateway, WAF (Web Application Firewall), and content switching."
"The NetScaler appliance has provided a lot of customers with greater high availability for their enterprise applications within a single site and across multiple locations."
"The solution is very stable. We don't have any downtime or issues of that nature."
"SSL Offload"
"The solution was very easy to deploy."
"The web application firewall is one feature I found valuable in the solution."
"It solves a problem for me where I can build files, not based on the health of the check, but rather the speed of the check."
"The solution is effective in managing our traffic."
"I can simplify configurations of many internal services (e.g. Web server configs) by moving some elements (like SSL) to HAProxy. I can also disable additional applications, like Varnish, by moving traffic shaping configurations to HAProxy."
"HAProxy Enterprise Edition has been rock solid. We have essentially had no downtime caused by our load balancers in the last 10 months, because they’ve worked so well. Previously, our load balancers caused us multiple hours per year in downtime."
"The most important features would be the load-balancing of HTTP and TCP requests, according to multiple LB-algorithms (busyness, weighted-busyness, round robin, traffic, etc). Another important feature that we cannot live without is the username/passwd authentication for legacy systems that had none."
"Performance configuration options with threads, processes, and core stickiness are very valuable."
"The ability to handle a sequence of front- and back-ends gives the user the opportunity to send traffic through different services."
"Software defined load balancing allows us to dynamically adjust and codify routing decisions. This speeds up development."
"Citrix should offer a demo or free-trial version of NetScaler. Several other vendors do, but Citrix does not. Pricing should also be more readily available."
"The licensing model and technical support of the solution could be improved."
"The product provides some templates to integrate with applications like MS Exchange, MS SharePoint, SAP Enterprise Portal, and others. However, the last update for these templates was 2013 (lots of applications are running on versions newer then 2013)."
"Overall the price of Citrix ADC could be more competitive."
"The main areas for improvement would be around documentation and support. If a feature can be used in two or three ways, show that feature being used in all of those ways. Documentation seems to only cover the primary use case and leaves you to either run through trial and error or consult the user community. In terms of support, I have never actually had them solve any of my issues. I have always solved them myself and then provided the resolution to support."
"Currently, the support team's responsiveness is lacking, and the technical personnel on calls often seem unfamiliar with the issues or inadequately trained."
"An area for improvement would be the difficulty in finding information about standard licensing costs over the internet. They should provide some reference prices on the net to be quickly referred to."
"Technical support sometimes takes a little longer because of the multilevel ticket priority."
"Dynamic update API. More things should be possible to be configured during runtime."
"It needs proper HTTP/2 support."
"We need to handle new connections by dropping, or queuing them while the HAProxy restarts, and because HAProxy does not handle split config files."
"The reconfigurability in terms of the tooling could be improved and maybe an editor plugin can be added."
"Maybe HAProxy could be more modular."
"I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit"
"There are three main areas to improve: 1) Make remote management more modern by adding API. 2) Propose a general HA solution for HAProxy (no I'm using keepalived for this). 3) Thread option should be a bit more stable."
"There is room for improvement in HAProxy's dynamic configuration."
Citrix NetScaler is ranked 2nd in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 85 reviews while HAProxy is ranked 3rd in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 41 reviews. Citrix NetScaler is rated 8.4, while HAProxy is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Citrix NetScaler writes "Optimizing application delivery and ensuring robust network performance with its excellent stability and comprehensive load-balancing capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of HAProxy writes "Useful for for small and quick load-balancing tasks". Citrix NetScaler is most compared with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, Fortinet FortiADC, Loadbalancer.org and A10 Networks Thunder ADC, whereas HAProxy is most compared with Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, NGINX Plus, Kemp LoadMaster, Envoy and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). See our Citrix NetScaler vs. HAProxy report.
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