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."NetScaler Gateway: Why? Availability/Security: We delivered more than 200 applications thru Xenapp. This feature give us the possibility to deliver the applications anywhere. Currently, 30% of access is made through our NetScaler Gateway (Internet connections)."
"The solution is very stable. We don't have any downtime or issues of that nature."
"One of the most beneficial features for application delivery is its integration with Citrix Storefront, facilitating user logins and ensuring continuity during data center outages."
"It's very easy to configure."
"Manageability and visibility are good."
"The most valuable feature for us is the application firewalling in Citrix NetScaler, ensuring only valid traffic enters our environment."
"It is a stable solution. It crashed only once, four years ago...There is a return on investment using the solution."
"The solution is easy to work with and manage."
"We did not need technical support because the documentation is good."
"We use it as a load balancer for our application servers."
"HAProxy's TCP load balancer is excellent and super stable."
"The solution is user-friendly and efficient."
"The anti-DDOS PacketShield filtering solution (embedded in the physical appliances) as well as the BGP route injection are great features and heavily used."
"Tech support is super-quick to respond, and always on target with answers specific to the current issue."
"The solution is effective in managing our traffic."
"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."
"Technical support sometimes takes a little longer because of the multilevel ticket priority."
"Maybe creating policies with simple regular expressions."
"Integration with other third party providers and third party applications could be better because it can be a bit complex at present."
"I would like to see them make it easier to do some of the more complex things. For example, a web re-direct requires two pieces to it. You have two ports and when people want to go to a web page, they just type in the webpage that on the backend it will redirect them to a secure link. The initial setup of that is cumbersome because you have to do it twice. There are things that can be replicated. The IP address, for example, is the same. This change would go a long way. Don't make me do it twice and don't make me have to read tons of documentation to figure out how to do it. Ease of configuration for some of the more complex processes would be a good improvement."
"It was challenging explaining to customers that it's no longer NetScaler but ADC, and now it's not just ADC but also the rebranding from NetScaler."
"Citrix ADC can improve if it provides a more user-friendly interface and clear working protocols. Citrix is not working with classic RFC, it is working with Citrix RFC, which is not common in the world. If engineers of Citrix can provide us with more information on working with the classic IP networks it would be a benefit."
"Citrix ADC can be really complex. It isn't very simple like some other appliances that I've worked with. You need a lot of skill and experience to manage it. I'm not talking about a year or two. You need at least four years to understand it very well. It is not that easy to learn. They should make it a lot simpler for users to understand the management of it. They can also provide some additional training. The material they have on the site is not sufficient enough for you to understand how to manage it. Their training is expensive, and not everyone has the funds and experience for it. Citrix isn't very popular around these parts of the world. So, it can use some more marketing, sales, enlightenment, and advertisement. These could bring more market for them. Basically, there are just a few companies that really go for Citrix. Most of the companies go for VMware because they marketed themselves more than Citrix. There isn't much difference between Citrix and VMware. VMware is a little more robust than Citrix. Citrix has focused more on desktops rather than server virtualization, and that's the advantage VMware has over Citrix. Citrix also needs to educate and inform users about the infrastructure that is supported with a version. Currently, if the customers don't look at the datasheet, they might miss this important information."
"Citrix should improve the documentation. It is not really clear how to set up many features to our advantage. When we setup Citrix NetScaler ADC, we have to figure it out by ourselves without a lot of documentation."
"We would like to see dynamic ACL and port update support. Our infrastructure relies on randomly allocated ports and this feature would allow us to update without restarting the process."
"The web stats UI, which provides the status of the health and numbers, could greatly benefit from having a RESTful interface to control the load-balanced nodes. Although there is a hack around the UI (by issuing a POST request to HAProxy with parameters), a RESTful interface would greatly improve the automation process (through Chef and Ansible)."
"HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations."
"Pricing, monitoring, and reports can be improved."
"I would like to evaluate load-balancing algorithms other than round robin and SSL offloading. Also, it would be helpful if I could logically divide the HAProxy load-balancing into multiple entities so that I would install one HA Proxy LB application which could be used for different Web servers for different applications. I am not sure if these features are available."
"The reconfigurability in terms of the tooling could be improved and maybe an editor plugin can be added."
"The solution can be improved by controlling TCP behavior better and mandating to clients what the expected outcome must be in order to avoid receiving contestant timeout logs."
"Dynamic update API. More things should be possible to be configured during runtime."
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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