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."The web application firewalling component is a powerful feature."
"Content Switching provides flexibility for routing traffic as desired to designated real servers. It also provides good geo capabilities through its GSLB feature."
"It is a stable solution. It crashed only once, four years ago...There is a return on investment using the solution."
"The load balancing feature and the fact that you can do context switching in the WAF are the most valuable. We majorly use it for load balancing, but we also use it for context switching in the WAF. It is also robust and very easy to work with and manage."
"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."
"I can turn on features without actually owning a license. I can test them out, I can use them for a while, and then I can be licensed up. That's awesome. I don't have to have a license immediately before I can start to deploy things rapidly, rapid deployment is a plus."
"The load balancing feature of this solution is very good."
"Load balancing, cache redirection, content switching, all connected with traffic management."
"The ease of use of the configuration, and great documentation, are the most valuable features for us."
"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."
"Performance configuration options with threads, processes, and core stickiness are very valuable."
"It is scalable."
"We were able to use HAProxy for round robin with our databases, or for a centralized TCP connection in one host."
"We use it as a load balancer for our application servers."
"It is a crucial tool in ensuring smooth service provision without any interruptions."
"Software defined load balancing allows us to dynamically adjust and codify routing decisions. This speeds up development."
"The vendor provides frequent patches, however, the security of the website has room for improvement."
"ADC from Citrix has added functionalities from other products and the usability is very difficult for someone who is used to a simpler user interface, it's a little bit of a mess to use."
"Does not include security. A web application firewall would be a nice addition."
"I would like to see more integration for single sign-on."
"I would like to see multifactor authentication added to this solution to improve the security."
"Maybe creating policies with simple regular expressions."
"The interface needs to be improved because the competition is coming up with ones that are more eye-catching, straightforward, and sophisticated."
"I will try to migrate all the tools to the cloud because there is more lab and more VPN scalability available in the cloud. It is not available on-premises."
"The logging functionality could use improvement, as it is a little cryptic."
"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)."
"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."
"HAProxy could improve by making the dashboards easier to use, and better reports and administration tickets."
"The only area that I can see needing improvement is the management interface, since it is pretty much all through the CLI or configuration. A GUI/web interface could be helpful for users who are not as experienced in the Linux shell. However, HAProxy does have another product that we evaluated called ALOHA, which has a web front-end, but we found it did not meet our needs."
"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."
"The visibility could be improved."
"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."
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.
See our list of best Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) vendors.
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