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.
"Tech support is super-quick to respond, and always on target with answers specific to the current issue."
"I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good."
"The solution is effective in managing our traffic."
"Load balancing is valuable, and we are also using the WAF feature."
"What I like best about the product is its simplicity and speed. When you need to set up a load balancer quickly, HAProxy offers options like sticky sessions and round-robin. It's also fast to configure, including adding SSL for security. While it may have fewer options than other solutions like F5, HAProxy gets the job done for basic load-balancing tasks."
"We were able to use HAProxy for round robin with our databases, or for a centralized TCP connection in one host."
"Advanced traffic rules, including stick tables and ACLs, which allow me to shape traffic while it's load balanced."
"HAProxy potentially has a good return on investment"
"The production is a valuable feature."
"The solution has built-in rules that reduce alerts and are easy to configure."
"I find Application Gateway’s WAF module valuable because it helps prevent layer 7 attacks."
"The solution was very easy to configure. It wasn't hard at all to adjust it to our needs."
"In my experience, Microsoft products have a smooth integration and facilitate easy management and monitoring. Using Azure Application Gateway allows us to efficiently handle the system loads."
"The solution's most valuable feature is an HTTP solution and SSL certificate. It is also easy to use."
"Load balancing and web application firewall features are the most valuable."
"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."
"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."
"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 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)."
"If nbproc = 2, you will have two processes of HAProxy running. However, the stats of HAProxy will not be aggregated, meaning you don't really know the collective status in a single point of view."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in HAProxy's dynamic configuration."
"The visibility could be improved."
"I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit"
"It is a bit tricky to configure. You've got to have a very specific format to configure it. They should make it a little bit easier to configure. Mapping the certificates into it isn't easy, and it could be better. Currently, you've to write a bit of automation to pull certificates directly to HTTPS."
"Implementing and standardizing the solution across the IT landscape in a heterogeneous environment is painful."
"The working speed of the solution needs improvement."
"The pricing of the solution could be improved. Right now, it's a bit expensive."
"I believe that there is room for improvement in terms of additional functionality. It is an advantage to have features readily available for configuration without needing customer-defined rules."
"The solution should provide more security for certificate-based services so that we can implement more security on that."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway could improve by allowing features to use more third-party tools."
"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."
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.
