We performed a comparison between Citrix NetScaler, Kemp LoadMaster, and Loadbalancer.org based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about F5, Citrix, HAProxy and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)."I like the monitoring ability as it enables me to identify when an internal (load-balanced) resource is having issues before it becomes a problem in production."
"Scalability is great. One of the best features of NetScaler is that it can scale out."
"The web application firewalling component is a powerful feature."
"It is a stable solution. It crashed only once, four years ago...There is a return on investment using the solution."
"It is the best product out there."
"The best feature of Citrix is its track record of stability in its features."
"One of its most valuable features is fundamental load balancing, supporting both basic load balancing and database teams."
"We use the solution's IP Reputation and bot protection features."
"The Global WAF has saved us more than one time from unwanted traffic."
"The security features, load balancing, built-in templates, and the easy to implement virtual IPs are great."
"From my personal experience, many firewalls provide Load Balancing functionalities, but Kemp Loadmaster has a lot of features and functionalities like what you can configure. So there are a lot of features but we use only five percent of it."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten...I rate the technical support a ten out of ten...The initial setup of Kemp LoadMaster is very simple."
"Simple to install with good documentation."
"Using Kemp as a front-facing service appliance, it allows me to have the flexibility of swapping out real servers behind the scenes without any intervention from my network team."
"The feature I find most valuable is load balancing with different algorithms."
"One of the most valuable features I like is the ability to block specific cipher suites like RC4, and older protocols like SSL 3.0."
"We now get notifications when pool members go down, and we eliminate our downtime by not sending traffic to downed pool members."
"I found scalability in Loadbalancer.org valuable."
"Existing customers are trying to migrate from the physical F5 load balancer to the AVI load balancer because it is scalable and easily managed."
"The support we have received from Loadbalancer.org has been good."
"We have about 30,000 connections going through at any one time and it's fine, it doesn't seem to sweat. It doesn't get overloaded."
"It does what it’s supposed to do which is balancing an important intranet site we are using, so if one server dies, the second becomes active straight away."
"Loadbalancer is easy to use. It performs well, with low latency."
"For now, it's stable."
"There is room for improvement regarding the pricing policy for Citrix offices."
"Citrix should offer a demo or free-trial version of NetScaler. Several other vendors do, but Citrix does not. Pricing should also be more readily available."
"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."
"Technical support sometimes takes a little longer because of the multilevel ticket priority."
"The interface needs to be improved because the competition is coming up with ones that are more eye-catching, straightforward, and sophisticated."
"The SLB could be better, and they should improve it."
"There are some drawbacks, such as using EUG for specific configurations. It could be improved."
"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."
"If you want logging for SMTP traffic, you have to enable ESP, which requires you to define allowed IP addresses. That’s irritating, to say the least."
"I really don't like the way the logs are presented in the software."
"It has all types of logs and they are very detailed, but it's a little bit hard to search for a single event."
"I think there should be more visual instructions on how to configure advanced features."
"The GUI is rather technical and complex, so it could be improved by making it simpler and more user-friendly."
"It lacks an officially supported, well-written SCOM Management Pack."
"Some documentation is out of date versus the new version, and things have been moved."
"Third, the password history restriction needs improvement. For example, the password policy will restrict the user to always use a unique password combination. The password should not be reused for a minimum of three generations of passwords."
"They're mostly designed to balance a particular type of traffic. I wanted to load balance DNS, and they just don't do it the way that we wanted to. So they're not used as DNS load balancers."
"Originally we had some stability issues with it, so they replaced it with a new box and it's fine."
"It doesn't have the bonding capability feature."
"I would like it if Loadbalancer had the ability to make rules for specific shared bots."
"The automatic refresh of the System Overview webpage: It sometimes has an extra webpage reload (after a change) before you see it is executed. This can be confusing."
"Loadbalancer.org's complexity could be reduced."
"The solution can be a bit pricey."
"We could enhance the security aspects of the load balancer."
