F5 BIG-IP Overview

F5 BIG-IP is the #1 ranked solution in our list of top Application Delivery Controllers. It is most often compared to Citrix ADC: F5 BIG-IP vs Citrix ADC

What is F5 BIG-IP?

The BIG-IP family of products offers the application intelligence that network managers need to ensure applications are fast, secure, and available. All BIG-IP products share a common underlying architecture, F5's Traffic Management Operating System (TMOS), which provides unified intelligence, flexibility, and programmability. Together, BIG-IP's powerful platforms, advanced modules, and centralized management system make up the most comprehensive set of application delivery tools in the industry.

F5 BIG-IP is also known as BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP.

F5 BIG-IP Buyer's Guide

Download the F5 BIG-IP Buyer's Guide including reviews and more. Updated: January 2021

F5 BIG-IP Customers

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.

F5 BIG-IP Video

Pricing Advice

What users are saying about F5 BIG-IP pricing:

"They are expensive."
"The price should be reduced because it is expensive when compared to the competition."
"When we purchased additional licenses for our other locations, we received a discount of between 20% and 25%."
"There are additional costs depending on what modules or what functionality is required."
"F5 pricing is too high, compared to Citrix."

F5 BIG-IP Reviews

Jonathan Urrea

Security Professional Services at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

Nov 20, 2020

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Stable and easy to set up with good anti-bot protection

Pros and Cons

"We always use technical support and the team helps us very well. They're able to effectively find and fix issues and they respond very quickly."

"The web interface could be better."

What other advice do I have?

We're a reseller for Enterprise companies such as Banking and Retail. I'd advise that if a customer wants to implement this product, that they find a partner they can have a strong relationship with. The partner needs to be able to effectively implement the product and train your staff on the proper usage. That is, of course, if the client wants to manage it themselves in the long run. Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten. If they could improve their web interface, generate reports, and have all the configuration on a single page on the platform, I'd rank it a bit higher.

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Flight9875

User at a logistics company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 2, 2019

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Has helped us to intelligently reach all of the client connections across all of the servers fairly quickly but the setup should be easier

What is our primary use case?

F5 has performed marvelously. It certainly holds in value and holds its name.

Pros and Cons

"We're able to do load balancing and global load balancing. When you marry those two products together, you can do a lot more. We're able to deliver our applications more securely and faster. It has improved our deliverability where we have more service across the shared data centers. We can intelligently reach all of those client connections across all of the servers and do it fairly quickly. It has helped improve our application delivery and performance."

"I would like to see improvement in the manageability and easier setup."

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. Not a ten because of the usability and a manageability. I've had to send somebody to F5 University to get trained, whereas with the Citrix NetScaler I don't necessarily have to send them out to training. I was able to pick up NetScaler right away. Whereas, F5, if you have it, you should probably get trained on it because it's a little more esoteric. Everybody wants the best of a name brand. If F5 was like a Tesla, would you want to buy a Tesla or a Toyota? They're both big name brands, but when you hear Tesla, you know exactly what that is; it's…

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Network8776

Network Presales Manager at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees

Apr 9, 2019

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Alert notification window notifies of any issues and will then resolve them

What is our primary use case?

We use F5 BIG-IP with LTM burst, SM burst, and ETM burst. We use it in our cloud service and all our service centers. We even offer F5 BIG-IP to our partners.

Pros and Cons

"F5 BIG-IP is used with good applications and functions as an application firewall with additional features. We will not use any feature or any service unless there is a business case and there is a need for implementation."

"There are issues with F5 BIG-IP but they are minor issues not affecting production and services. Sometimes the operations and the facility systems fail. However, there is an alert action from the windows. An ordeal for the manager."

What other advice do I have?

We use F5 BIG-IP a lot in production right now. The product is indispensable to us. I would rate the product an overall nine out of ten. Most of the benefits of F5 BIG-IP are cyclical because of the licensing costs.

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reviewer1480176

CTO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Jan 15, 2021

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User-friendly, can be operated from a single console, and the performance is good

What is our primary use case?

We are a solution provider and we work with a lot of products from F5. In our internal network, we use F5 BIG-IP. We also have a few implementations with this product, including some that are integrated with other solutions such as IBM Guardium. One of the great use cases is capturing an application user through F5 and then pushing it to Guardium. This is very useful for our customers because they can then connect to the database with a real application user, which is something that is very hard to achieve through other vendors.

Pros and Cons

"The main reason that we suggest this product to our clients is the great integration with other security tools, such as IBM Guardium."

What other advice do I have?

In summary, this is a very good product and we are actively suggesting it to our customers. It is something that should be more present in our market, especially because of the functionality that it provides. In the end, we get very good results from BIG-IP. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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reviewer1433067

Director of Network Strategies and Technologies at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

Dec 5, 2020

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Flexible with good technical support and horizontal scalability

What is our primary use case?

The F5 is something we purchased for another project that has not been turned on just yet.

Pros and Cons

"The product is quite flexible."

"The cost of the solution is pretty high. It would be ideal if it was more reasonable."

What other advice do I have?

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with F5. The F5 is something we purchased for another project that has not yet been turned up. That said, the experience I've had with F5 has been very positive, specifically working directly with their corporate sales engineering team. Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If it wasn't for the high cost of the product, I might rate it a bit higher. I would advise those considering the solution to explore all options. Specifically, the total cost of ownership. It can be lower with some other vendors. A10 is oftentimes a…

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reviewer1441791

Head Of Technology at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Dec 6, 2020

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Good support, stable, and facilitates the management of our network

What is our primary use case?

Our company is based in different geographical locations and we need to create SD-WANs with tight security while allowing remote access to our resources. To manage that and to manage the whole network, we use BIG-IP.

Pros and Cons

"This is a solution that does what it's supposed to do at the price point."

"If we decide to migrate to the cloud, I don't think that BIG-IP is a good solution and we probably won't use it."

What other advice do I have?

We have not felt the need to upgrade to the most recent version or do any updates on this product because we're pretty happy with what we have. Overall, this is a good product and if one can afford it, then I would recommend it. I would rate this solution eight out of ten.

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reviewer1378125

Network Security Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jul 8, 2020

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Good load balancing capability and the proxy features give you full control over your traffic

What is our primary use case?

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients. Some of our clients use it as a load balancer. It can also be used as a web application firewall to protect your web-based applications from attacks.

Pros and Cons

"The most valuable feature is the proxy."

"If they made it easier for engineers to get F5 training then it would be better."

What other advice do I have?

I consider F5 to be my network within my network because the traffic has to go through it. This includes things like the load balancer. My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to learn and understand the architecture of the device. It will do very well for you if you understand it. I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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reviewer1448481

Network Security Specialist at a energy/utilities company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Nov 12, 2020

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Feature rich, reliable, with good load balancing capabilities and good technical support

What is our primary use case?

We are using this solution for the web application firewall and load balancing.

Pros and Cons

"F5 has many capabilities for load balancing and web application firewall features."

"The logging features are too limited and do not give us a solid understanding of what's happening."

What other advice do I have?

For those who are interested in this solution and you want more control over the applications then F5 is fine. In the future, F5 will be our first choice, but everything can change. What happens with the next features, we don't know. Maybe Citrix will overcome the problems and will become a more powerful tool than F5. Without consideration of the price, I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

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