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A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer comparison

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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)
19th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMWare Avi Load Balancer
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Lightning ADC is 2.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMWare Avi Load Balancer is 4.2%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMWare Avi Load Balancer4.2%
A10 Networks Lightning ADC2.0%
Other93.8%
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.
Sasikiran Sakalabattina - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Infrastructure engineer at TechMahindra
Centralized load management has improved availability and reduces manual effort for critical apps
The features we use most frequently in VMware Avi Load Balancer are virtual services, backend pools, health monitoring, and Layer 7 load balancing. Virtual services are a component of VMware Avi Load Balancer that serves as the primary entry point for the client traffic. In our application, I regularly create and manage the virtual services for the web applications, APIs, and internal business applications. We configure SSL certificates for load balancing the policies and health monitoring at the virtual service. The best feature of VMware Avi Load Balancer is health monitoring. The most valuable feature for me is the health monitoring capability. In our production environment with more than one thousand virtual machines, it continuously checks the health of the backend application servers. During monthly Windows patching or unexpected application failures, unhealthy pool members are automatically removed from the service. This feature is significantly reducing the traffic directed to unhealthy services without any manual intervention. Once the application server is restored, VMware Avi Load Balancer automatically adds the server back to the pool. This feature has significantly improved the application availability and is reducing the business downtime. Due to this, manual interventions required are minimal, so it is saving time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It allows you to secure the application while balancing the connections for many other customers, reducing CPU usage and server load."
"Our clients have reported an increase in revenue by around 5% on a year to year basis, since this solution was implemented."
"Our clients appreciate that this is a security enabled solution."
"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."
"The solution has simplified our network infrastructure management."
"The solution is entirely virtual, SDDC technologies drive it, and the integration with other projects is compelling."
"Avi Networks Software Load Balancer can improve the way some organizations function because the platform is agile."
"The WAF - the web application firewall itself - is great."
"The most valuable feature of the solution for my organization is its UI since it allows us to see the clusters while providing a very specific and good overall understanding."
"Overall, VMWare Avi Load Balancer has positively impacted our operation, as it gives us true redundancy for our UAGs for remote access."
"From my experience, VMware Avi Load Balancer has become a critical component for our application delivery infrastructure, and features such as health monitoring and centralized management and SSL offloading and detailed analytics have reduced the troubleshooting time and improved the application availability."
"VMWare Avi Load Balancer has created a smoother failover process without issues, keeping the state normal, where typically there would be manual intervention, and time lost went from potentially five minutes down to under thirty seconds with Avi, resulting in no recorded incidents."
 

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."
"The documentation is pretty much closed and I think A10 crashes sometimes because initially, I was not able to set up Lightning ADC."
"One struggle with Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is its integration with other VMware products."
"It is very expensive. The pricing is expensive in that it is only an add-on."
"VMWare Avi Load Balancer can be improved in various ways, as it follows a pay-as-you-go model, which still makes it quite pricey and a little expensive for startups or small-scale industries."
"The product could be improved in terms of security features. For example, IDS and IPS sites need to be more progressive."
"When it comes to improvements for VMWare Avi Load Balancer, I think the documentation part needs a bit of work."
"It doesn't match the development structure or user community of our existing product. It pales in comparison to that."
"In terms of improvement, the pricing and documentation need improvement. We have had problems getting the documents."
"I did not go with it because their APM module is a different product altogether. It's a common thing that companies do. They sell something and then they add on top of it as a different product. It is a type of marketing strategy. But when it comes to the overall management, it takes a lot of time to really look into it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The tool is expensive."
"With Avi Networks, you can buy a 10-Gig license and, if your primary data center goes down, in the flick of a switch you can move that license to your backup data center and it will generate the traffic... there are a lot of cost-effective measures."
"The licensing costs for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer are really variable. The product can be sold from a bandwidth utilization perspective. It can be sold from a per CPU perspective, depending on if you're looking at on-premises or hyperscale environments. Licensing costs vary quite a bit if you're familiar with the AWS Calculator, where you can see that it can widely vary per licensing model. On a scale of one to five, with one being not very good value for the money and five being great, I would rate the pricing for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer a five because its pricing is extremely competitive. Not all features are included with the license, for example, there's single licensing."
"I rate the solution price a four to five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high, since it is an affordable tool."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
16%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, senior administrators manage this aspect, and I am not fully aware of it. However, I can say that compared to other products, the pricing for VMWare Av...
What needs improvement with Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?
VMware Avi Load Balancer is actually a mature and reliable product, but there are areas where it could improve, such as improving the cloud environments. I would like to see more automated root-cau...
What advice do you have for others considering Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?
I would like to give the rating of nine out of ten for VMware Avi Load Balancer because it is an excellent product with centralized management where we can manage every virtual machine in one conso...
 

Also Known As

Lightning ADS
Avi Software Load Balancer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Handle Financial
Palo Alto Networks, DGDean, Swisslos
Find out what your peers are saying about A10 Networks Lightning ADC vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.