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Kemp LoadMaster 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

Kemp LoadMaster
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
8th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NGINX Plus
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Kemp LoadMaster is 7.6%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 7.9%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

PeterForster - PeerSpot reviewer
A highly stable and scalable load-balancing software that offers great technical support
My company is really happy with Kemp LoadMaster as a product. My company is also happy with the support we receive from Kemp LoadMaster. I want Kemp LoadMaster to provide users with better reporting capabilities in relation to TCP packets. In general, the connections that are present in the system require improvement. Feature-wise, Kemp LoadMaster has everything that our company's customers require. Kemp LoadMaster also has features that have supported our company's past projects.
Ritesh-Bakhru - PeerSpot reviewer
Quick installation and very easy to manage while doing orchestration or automation
NGINX cannot be a replacement for your traditional load balancer with what we use in the network today. However, with applications going toward microservices, NGINX is definitely a way forward. F5 has many traditional load balancing features, so they still need to bring some of those features to NGINX. NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5. I think F5 is trying to implement those features in NGINX so they can improve the balancing on NGINX, but I think that will take some time. With the traditional F5 set up, the same OS can do load balancing, firewalls, and even policy enforcement. If we are able to bring some of those capabilities to NGINX, I think it would become a versatile solution and usage would definitely increase.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"LoadMaster is easy to deploy and understand."
"The feature that allows us to easily disconnect a server when we need and bring back online is the most valuable. It's a click of a button. This allows us to keep all systems up. We can then run updates, perform reboots whatever we need to one of the servers without taking production down."
"The solution is easy to configure when changing the load balancing method to Round Robin or least connection."
"There is a simplicity to the setup and configuration."
"When the templates are used, there is not much left to configure and they just work!"
"We needed a Microsoft Threat Management Gateway server replacement solution for a customer and were impressed with the simplified deployment of the Kemp LoadMasters."
"Edge Security Pack is valuable because of the way it separates between critical infrastructure and the public internet."
"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."
"With NGINX, I appreciate its ability to route traffic geographically."
"The load balancing module, which is equivalent to LTM, is the focus of the PSE. So far, the features of both are identical. I believe NGINX has more features for securing these services, but in terms of load balancing, both are massive solutions."
"​The flexibility of its modules allow it to be scalable.​"
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is simple to configure."
"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."
"NGINX Plus' most valuable feature is the ingress controller."
"NGINX Plus also has NGINX App Protect. It's a separate module, which is inspired by the F5 apps."
"The product is resilient."
 

Cons

"Perhaps Kemp could offer some training videos."
"I would like to see more automation and control of overactive and inactive resources. If I could schedule these around our updates then it would be all automated. I would like to set up an automated script to coincide with the scripts I use to update resources and servers."
"It would be helpful if there were a way to incorporate tooltips on the fields so that we don't have to dig through documentation."
"I want Kemp LoadMaster to provide users with better reporting capabilities in relation to TCP packets. In general, the connections that are present in the system require improvement."
"When we go serverless, we may again have to revisit this because the configuration needs to be changed. With this change, we can run into a lot of other configurations that we haven't got into, which involve additional expenses. It would be challenging to convince management to buy at that price point. It would be a balancing act of justifying that expense and the value, that is, how it is going to save a bit of time and make our platform secure. It can have better configuration ability. A lot of iterations happen when we have multiple servers pointing to the same domain. If we do not orchestrate carefully, it gets into a loop, which takes away the precious time of the user who is trying to subscribe to a service. It takes a little longer time to realize services as well as web pages."
"I think there should be more visual instructions on how to configure advanced features."
"Certificate installations could be simplified and modernized, and allowed to be monitored for expirations/issues."
"The auth website of ESP is really lacking. It’s not responsive (mobile friendly) and the procedure of changing the website is difficult. We tend to avoid using pre-auth for that reason."
"One area of improvement could be that NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates."
"NGINX Plus is moderately priced, but it could give better value for money."
"The solution must improve its performance."
"The KPI should be more focused on load balancing and the latency in application calling from the end system."
"The drawback is that you must obtain a license for everything."
"The scalability could be improved."
"The user interface could be improved."
"The biggest room for improvement would be to allow NGINX Core machines to cluster for memory zones in some way with a plug and play module. ​"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nowadays, going with the virtual appliance is the easiest way and the cost is reasonable."
"The license varies according to the number of megabits."
"At $2,500 USD, this is absolutely a fantastic buy for the money!"
"The costs for the Kemp Load Balancer solution are okay because, for a good product, you have to spend money."
"Pricing for the perpetual licensing was fair to us for the features and ease of use we received."
"The Kemp LoadMaster is a tremendous value."
"Licensing is yearly and I am going to guess that it is CAN $2000.00."
"It is well-priced and licensing is very flexible."
"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."
"The cost is reasonable."
"You pay for each feature that you want."
"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours.​"
"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."
"​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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
63%
Computer Software Company
7%
University
3%
Government
3%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Kemp LoadMaster?
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kemp LoadMaster?
LoadMaster is cheaper than some other solutions. It has a perpetual license, so it's a one-time cost.
What needs improvement with Kemp LoadMaster?
There are some challenges with updates on certain models that don't have a few features. The support team often takes a lot of time to provide resolutions for issues. Also, I could see more capabil...
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Plus?
My use case involves using the free and open-source version of NGINX, making it cost-effective as I haven't incurred any costs.
 

Also Known As

LoadMaster Load Balancer
NGINX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Kent County Council, KEMP, SMA Solar Technology AG, RT€ Player , Victrix (Quebec, Canada), Texas A&M, Macmillan Cancer Support, Cisco, Austin Bank
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 Kemp LoadMaster vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.