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A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs NGINX Plus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

A10 Networks Lightning ADC
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
18th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NGINX Plus
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Lightning ADC is 1.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 6.8%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NGINX Plus6.8%
A10 Networks Lightning ADC1.4%
Other91.8%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

RONALDO DE MELO - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Account Executive at l8
Efficient application security while optimizing connections
The initial setup is simple; it is not complex. The configuration itself is simple and can be done in a couple of hours. However, the migration of the system to A10 Networks takes longer due to critical applications. Clients prefer to move them one by one, which is why it takes a significant amount of time. The configuration itself is simple, especially for this application.
Nadeem-Inamdar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Information Security Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Advanced policies and web firewall have strengthened application protection and reduced attack traffic
There were some vulnerabilities in F5. They tried to fix it, but the fixes were not available at the time because they were zero days, so they attempted to fix it, but their support was not proper. Their support should be improved because sometimes features which we need for customization take time, and they are sometimes feasible and sometimes not feasible by the team, so their support and the engineering team should improve their product. I would like to see more features regarding customization which should be built into the application, and the tool optimization should be good, and the dashboard should be more crisp and clear.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"What I like about Lightning ADC, is that instead of having a big appliance sitting in front of the Kubernetes cluster, Lightning can pretty much go inside of Kubernetes."
"It allows you to secure the application while balancing the connections for many other customers, reducing CPU usage and server load."
"Our clients appreciate that this is a security enabled solution."
"Nginx is simple to configure, very stable in a highly utilized environment and very modular, allowing DevOps to create it's own modules for interactive use with Nginx."
"By far the best solution for web traffic control for things in production and just around the house."
"The product is resilient."
"When you use NGINX, you have more options and power."
"NGINX works much better than HAProxy in our current hardware and architecture for HTTP/HTTPS load balancing. ​​"
"NGINX provides a cost advantage, value addition, and effective support."
"Its most valuable features are load balancing and application delivery. This is the most efficient application for these features because of stability and its efficiency."
"Supports IMAP, POP and SMTP protocols for the reverse proxy."
 

Cons

"A10 documentation is not as open and accessible as AWS and Azure documentation is."
"The support from A10 should be improved."
"We would like to see some improvement in the rapidity with which we can customize security facts within the solution."
"I would suggest adding GUI-based configuration panels to NGINX Plus to simplify setup and management tasks."
"Our most challenging part was to run an older PHP website reverse-proxied through NGINX. That was not fun."
"Lack of a feature to print data on the terminal for verification of network traffic during debugging and testing."
"The scalability could be improved."
"The scaling should be built into the software rather than configured from an outside source."
"Only improvement needed that I would point to is scalability. With it, I mean clusterized organisation on a low level."
"They should do in the open source version of what they did to Advanced HTTP, TCP, and UDP load balancing."
"It would be great if there was even more automation to make it even easier to maintain."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."
"HAProxy is cheaper than NGINX."
"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."
"​NGINX Plus is worth it, if you need it. If you do not need the features or support, the free and open source package is more than capable. ​"
"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."
"NGINX Plus is an open-source solution with limited additional features. When you try to get additional features in the solution, then you need to pay an extra amount to NGINX Plus."
"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours.​"
"​NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

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Which is better - IIS or NGINX Plus?
IIS is a flexible, secure, and manageable web server to host anything on the web. IIS’s scalable and open architecture can handle the most demanding tasks. From media streaming to web applications,...
What do you like most about NGINX Plus?
It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.
 

Also Known As

Lightning ADS
NGINX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Handle Financial
Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA
Find out what your peers are saying about A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.