We performed a comparison between F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager 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: F5 BIG-IP comes out on top in this comparison. It is powerful and flexible with a proven ROI. Azure Application Gateway does come out on top in the pricing and ease of deployment categories, however.
"Bandwidth optimization and capacity awareness of the bandwidth are valuable features. Its video streaming capabilities are also very useful."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The load balancing function, the monitors that you can create, and iRules programmability are most valuable."
"Traffic Learning is the most valuable feature."
"I have Big-IP change and control manager, which give me the roll back option. Therefore, I can view the last things which happened on the device."
"It has helped a lot to protect our organization from external attacks, especially XSS or XSRF types of attacks."
"It is a fast and available solution."
"It has so many features. First of all, it has a full proxy architecture, it has multiple modules. The best feature is the WAF, the web application firewall module. It also has cashing type capabilities. It has all kinds of load-balancing algorithms based on your IT requirements."
"I rate Microsoft Azure Application Gateway's scalability a ten out of ten. My company has more than 1000 users who use it daily."
"Load balancing and web application firewall features are the most valuable."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is its ease of use."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is WAF."
"The solution is easy to set up."
"The production is a valuable feature."
"We use the product in front-end and back-end applications to do the load balancing smartly."
"The cost of the solution is pretty high. It would be ideal if it was more reasonable."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would expect more integration with different platforms and more integration with the backend systems. Additionally, in the next release, I would like a more secure version."
"There are some aspects of F5 BIG-IP that could be improved, the main one being virtual machine support. We have seen that even with the virtual editions, there are some things that we would like to do that are currently not possible with virtual machines."
"While the licensing is good through the AWS Marketplace, it is more expensive than what you could buy yourself."
"I would like them to have more flexible models."
"Logging is a bit of a problem. Logging and monitoring are only in plain text. You have to search and you have to know what you are searching for to find anything. So of course, monitoring and getting alerts for abnormal situations is hard. There are no tools for monitoring and alerts"
"Implementing whitepapers with a lot more applications could easily be added."
"There is a challenge in Pakistan. This is when there is a hardware failure. Sometimes, it takes more time to get a replacement because it is sent out from the U.S. or some other regional outpost. Thus, it takes two to three days to receive a replacement."
"It does not have the flexibility for using public IPs in version 2."
"Needs easier integration with the existing SIAM."
"Application Gateway’s limitation is that the private and the public endpoint cannot use the same port."
"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 solution should provide more security for certificate-based services so that we can implement more security on that."
"The graphical interface needs improvement because it is not user friendly."
"It could be more stable, and support could be better. It would also be better if they offered more features. For example, it lacks security features. Before we used another English solution, and we realized that some of the rules were not set up correctly and passed through the Application Gateway's English controllers. But the problem, in this case, is if you send ten rules, for example, six rules hit some issues. IP address blocking could be better. The rules, for example, don't work properly. If you have one issue, one rule or another rule will not work. This sounds like total madness to me."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is harder to manage than Imperva. It is not intuitive and stable compared to other products."
More F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Pricing and Cost Advice →
More Microsoft Azure Application Gateway Pricing and Cost Advice →
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is ranked 1st in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 116 reviews while Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is ranked 4th in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) with 38 reviews. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is rated 7.2. The top reviewer of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) writes "Helps deliver applications to users in a reliable, secure, and optimized way". 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". F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is most compared with Citrix NetScaler, Fortinet FortiADC, NGINX Plus, HAProxy and A10 Networks Thunder ADC, whereas Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is most compared with Azure Front Door, Citrix NetScaler, F5 Advanced WAF, AWS WAF and Imperva Web Application Firewall. See our F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) 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.
