No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs Safe-T Secure Application Access comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
124
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (1st)
Safe-T Secure Application A...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN (34th), Access Management (31st), ZTNA (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and Safe-T Secure Application Access aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is designed for Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) and holds a mindshare of 12.6%, down 15.3% compared to last year.
Safe-T Secure Application Access, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Infrastructure VPN, holds 1.2% mindshare, up 0.3% since last year.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)12.6%
NetScaler11.8%
HAProxy8.7%
Other66.9%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Safe-T Secure Application Access1.2%
OpenVPN Access Server11.9%
Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks6.3%
Other80.6%
Enterprise Infrastructure VPN
 

Featured Reviews

edshyaa - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at Stryker
Load balancing has improved traffic distribution and currently supports high availability upgrades
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) offers effective load balancing methods that help distribute traffic across our servers, whether we have two or several. This load balancing feature stands out as it is the fundamental work we do with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). While I recognize there are many features, such as iRules, which I have not explored yet, we primarily work on VIPs, pool members, and traffic distribution. The load balancing algorithms' flexibility makes them very useful for our team, enabling us to choose different servers and manage load effectively. We use various methods based on user or application requirements, making the algorithms set up by F5 in the backend quite helpful. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) positively impacts our organization primarily through its load balancing capabilities. We avoid traffic overload on individual servers by placing backend servers behind F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) VIP. This load balancing helps us manage traffic effectively. Since the configuration of the I-series, we have had smooth performance, and with the recent migration to the R-series, it is working faster than before, providing positive outcomes for our operations. Since moving to the R-series, I notice improved performance; it is user-friendly and handles traffic efficiently. The upgrading process is different as we create tenants and a main host. R-series has better CPU and memory, leading to higher throughput with minimal downtime, making it a significant improvement over the I-series.
it_user787671 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer
Needs to be easier to configure and to display logs more simply
We use only it for scanning files for viruses. That's the only feature we use in this product It needs to be easier to configure, it should be something that's working well with other sources. It should be something that allows me to see the logs simply. One to three years. Sometimes it doesn't…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is really awesome; you can scale from one or two servers to hundreds of servers, they have all the modules that a customer needs, and you can go for on-premise or cloud deployment so you can have whatever you need."
"We are fond of the load balancing feature for DNS and servers."
"Technical support and documentation are excellent."
"BIG-IP LTM is completely stable, and its performance is good."
"F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is a perfect product for load balancing and WAF, and I would recommend it far more than any other product."
"The anti-bot protection is very good, helping our customers filter real traffic from fake and allowing the real traffic to access the application."
"It is a very good, flexible solution, and it helps us to catch up on flaws in our partner solutions on top of its load balancing feature."
"This is a very stable solution; I've been using their products for years and have never had any issues."
"At the end of the day it's really good and really improved."
"If you need a solution for sending big files to customers or for receiving large files from them, this is a very good solution."
"If you want a very flexible system that you can easily integrate, and develop interfaces for it or plug-ins to other application environments, it's probably the most flexible"
"We use only it for scanning files for viruses."
"You can easily integrate it and fit the system to your organization's needs, and that's a very huge advantage."
"the security level is very high. After we tested it and checked all the security aspects of the product, we found that it's highly secure."
"From a technical point of view, products are stable and scalable, and we do appreciate the personal touch the sales engineers (SE) support and development bring, as well as the personal touch of the sales support, the free online, and web-based training."
"Safe-T is very good for users because it has a plug-in for Outlook."
 

Cons

"Older OS releases may have had some bugs (active/active on reboot, I think we saw on one OS version)."
"There is room for improvement in the user interface."
"The initial setup can be complex - it's quite flexible in terms of configuration, but the person configuring it needs to understand the application side, the network side, and the server."
"F5 has another solution to load balance servers on the cloud, which they got after the purchase of NGINX. It is deployed as Kubernetes or something like that, but the problem now is that they have two solutions for two situations. They should make F5 deployable on the cloud."
"For a future release, I would like to see more features in the cloud."
"Based on my experience using F5 and by only taking into consideration the last seven years, I have found that the reporting mechanism is bad."
"Logging is a bit of a problem. Logging and monitoring are only in plain text. You have to search and you have to know what you are searching for to find anything. So of course, monitoring and getting alerts for abnormal situations is hard. There are no tools for monitoring and alerts"
"Logging is a bit of a problem. Logging and monitoring are only in plain text."
"The cloud solution is not that great especially with Swiss customers."
"Setting up Safe-T SDE is very complex. It is not straightforward, and it requires much understanding on the concepts of the product."
"When we have something that we want improved, it takes a little bit of time until it can be fixed."
"I'm not sure what advice I would give others about this product because I don't like Safe-T."
"In terms of improvement, they need to be much more strict regarding the roadmap, about timelines and when new features will be up in production."
"The Outlook agent is not working well for installing it in the entire office."
"One important thing that we haven't found in this product is the ability to provide a read-only view for documents. Also, the ability for the customer to add annotations to these documents."
"Better UI. A better UI for the people that manage all the processes of Safe-T. Some of the UI is not as intuitive as you would like it to be."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We purchased through the AWS Marketplace because it was a popular way to go, and we were intrigued. The price of this product is not an issue. They have good pricing and licensing."
"Try to negotiate all the software features that you require upfront."
"I found F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) an expensive product. The costs would depend on the appliance and infrastructure size. However, my company didn't have to pay extra to use additional features."
"Great product for the money. But they can get really expensive, so get what meets your needs."
"This is a high-priced tool. We pay for its license yearly."
"The pricing is inclusive of many features."
"The price should be reduced because it is expensive when compared to the competition."
"Compared to using open-source products, the prices are not cheap."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
10%
Performing Arts
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise32
Large Enterprise86
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) could improve file upload speeds when opening cases and attaching files; sometimes, downloading files like QKView takes time, depending on size. I expect faste...
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?
My main use case for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is placing our applications on F5 and the backend servers on the pool. We also regularly renew SSL certificates before they expire, usuall...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
Safe-T SDA, Safe-T, Safe-T Software-Defined Access
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Government of Israel, eviCore Healthcore, Glen Imaging, Sarin, LBG, Rollomatic, Boegli-Gravures SA, Banque Heritage, Groupe Minoteries, Temenos, ZEK, RLM Finsbury, Harel Insurance, Meitav Dash
Find out what your peers are saying about F5, HAProxy, NetScaler and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC). Updated: May 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.