We performed a comparison between HAProxy and Microsoft Azure Application Gateway based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: HAProxy is the winner in this comparison. It is powerful, stable, and has good load balancing capabilities. In addition, HAProxy is free of charge and has a proven ROI.
"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."
"We don't have a problem with the user interface. it's good."
"The technical support has been, in one word, perfect. Every time I call, I’m on the phone with a representative within five minutes who is highly skilled and willing to help, whether in the case of critical issues or simple advice."
"The solution is user-friendly and efficient."
"The most valuable thing for me is TCP/IP Layer 4 stuff you can do with HAProxy. You can go down to the protocol level and make decisions on something."
"Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind."
"We did not need technical support because the documentation is good."
"HAProxy's TCP load balancer is excellent and super stable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the web application firewall (WAF)."
"I rate Microsoft Azure Application Gateway's scalability a ten out of ten. My company has more than 1000 users who use it daily."
"We chose this solution in the first place because it has access to Layer 7. I can control the requests and the content, which I can access on my network if I want to even if it's forbidden access to other external resources. If I want to monitor, for example, traffic, and apply this rule on Layer 7, I can do so. This was our main goal when implementing this application. We wanted to take advantage of the Gateway capabilities."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway gives us a lot of benefits, including domain mapping."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is traffic management."
"I find Application Gateway’s WAF module valuable because it helps prevent layer 7 attacks."
"The tool helps manage microservices by providing developers with a platform to conduct tests and assessments on the web application. The custom domain option is one of the most valuable features I've found. This feature is incredibly helpful for the end-users of the web application. With the custom domain feature, you can change the lengthy link to a shorter, more memorable one. For example, instead of using a lengthy default link, you can customize it to something like imail.com, which is much easier to remember and share."
"Azure Application Gateway's most valuable feature is ease of use. The configuration is straightforward. It isn't difficult to adjust the size of your instances in the settings. You can do that with a few clicks, and the configuration file is the same way. You can also set rules and policies with minimal time and effort."
"HAProxy is very weak in the logging and monitoring part and requires improvement."
"The product does not have any new technologies."
"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."
"While troubleshooting, we are having some difficulties. There are no issues when it is running; it is stable and very good; however, if there is a troubleshooting issue or an incident occurs, we will have issues because this is open-source."
"There is no standardized document available. So, any individual has to work from scratch to work it out. If some standard deployment details are available, it would be helpful for people while deploying it. There should be more documentation on the standard deployment."
"The logging functionality could use improvement, as it is a little cryptic."
"They should introduce one feature that I know many people, including me, are waiting for: HAProxy should have provide hot-swipe for back-end servers. Also, they need a more detailed GUI for monitoring and configuration."
"Sometimes it's challenging to get through the log, and you need a log to understand what is going on. It isn't easy to map the logging with the documentation, and every time I read the log, I have to pull out the documentation to understand what I'm reading."
"The solution doesn’t support wildcard-based and regular expression-based rules."
"One of the challenges we faced was the solution does not support any other PCP protocols apart from HTTP and HTTPS."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."
"The product could be easier to use and implement."
"The support can be improved when you are configuring the system rules. The Disaster Recovery feature can be added in the next release. The price of the solution can be reduced a bit."
"The solution is easy to use overall, but the dashboard could be updated with a better layout and graphical design so that we can see the data a bit easier. Microsoft could also add more documentation. The documentation Microsoft provides doesn't tell us about resource requirements. We found that the instances we had weren't sufficient to support the firewall, so we had to increase them."
"The tool's pricing could be improved."
"The security of the product could be adjusted."
More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Pricing and Cost Advice →
HAProxy is ranked 3rd in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 41 reviews while Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is ranked 4th in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 40 reviews. HAProxy is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is rated 7.2. The top reviewer of HAProxy writes "Useful for for small and quick load-balancing tasks". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway writes "High stability with built-in rules that reduce alerts and are easy to configure". HAProxy is most compared with NGINX Plus, Kemp LoadMaster, Citrix NetScaler, Envoy and F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), whereas Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is most compared with AWS WAF, Citrix NetScaler, F5 Advanced WAF, Azure Front Door and Cloudflare. See our HAProxy vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway report.
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We monitor all Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.