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Loadbalancer.org 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

Loadbalancer.org
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
23
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 Loadbalancer.org is 3.5%, up from 3.2% 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

Roger Seelaender - PeerSpot reviewer
Great WAF - low-maintenance solution that performs as advertised
The solution can be improved with the development of a SIP engine because it is difficult to manage SBCs. All SBCs are really tough to write rules for. If we could put this in front of an SBC to have the right rules to possibly block the traffic, that would be very helpful. The solution can also improve the relationship between Loadbalancer.org and Metaswitch, or now, Microsoft because Metaswitch was purchased by Microsoft. They both position themselves as certified but don't always talk to each other. I wish there would be closer integration between the solution and the vendors when either release new upgrades to their product line. Often we find issues on either end post upgrades.
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

"The support we have received from Loadbalancer.org has been good."
"It helps us to route the traffic to the available servers. If we didn't have Loadbalancer we would fail to set the end-user and it would cause a failure in the cluster."
"Load balancing helps us distribute both incoming and outgoing data loads evenly among the servers, preventing overload on a single server."
"We now get notifications when pool members go down, and we eliminate our downtime by not sending traffic to downed pool members.​"
"The most valuable features of Loadbalancer.org are related to its load balancing capabilities."
"The user interface precludes need to be well versed with Linux IPVS command line. This make it easy for junior team members to participate in managing load balancing needs."
"I found scalability in Loadbalancer.org valuable."
"Loadbalancer.org is less complex than Citrix."
"The product is resilient."
"The primary valuable feature of NGINX for me is its ability to provide a reverse proxy."
"The most valuable features are the gateway and the ability to publish to sites."
"Using NGINX Plus for web traffic distribution is fantastic. It offers performance similar to physical load balancers but with added flexibility."
"Application Gateway with application-level firewall tool and load distributor and balancer (also serves for A/B testing)."
"When I worked in a security research center, we tested NGINX to support DoS and DDoS attacks, and its results were great."
"Supports IMAP, POP and SMTP protocols for the reverse proxy."
"The web proxy and the database proxy are excellent."
 

Cons

"If I have to say something, I suppose they could add an automated configuration backup to an FTP location (or something similar) so you don’t have to manually do it. I don’t see this as a problem, of course, as the configuration rarely changes and we only need one backup, but maybe for other users that feature would be handy."
"Possibly a more graphical overview page (with colors) to give a two second overview to see if everything is working fine."
"There are many features you can set in the backend of Loadbalancer. They should simplify the configuration. The administrator should be able to configure it more simply. How it is now, you can only configure it if you have a lot of experience."
"Compared to the physical products, the solution's throughput is a little less."
"Loadbalancer.org's complexity could be reduced."
"I'd like to see scalability improved; it can be costly."
"I would like it if Loadbalancer had the ability to make rules for specific shared bots."
"The configuration is somewhat complicated. Someone who does not know the solution may find this challenging."
"The user interface could be improved."
"It would be good if NGINX provided a graphical user interface."
"Our most challenging part was to run an older PHP website reverse-proxied through NGINX. That was not fun."
"The solution's GUI is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"Only improvement needed that I would point to is scalability. With it, I mean clusterized organisation on a low level. At the moment, the best alternative is RHEL HA."
"One area of improvement could be that NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates."
"The scaling should be built into the software rather than configured from an outside source."
"Initially, I experienced hiccups whenever I installed the application."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"These guys make their pricing scheme really easy.​"
"For now, it's stable."
"I’m not entirely sure about the rating since I'm not very technical. I haven't thoroughly compared the ratings. So, if you're asking for my impression so far, I would rate it around five out of 10."
"Loadbalancer.org is based on open-source products, but it requires money for support and other activities."
"It's worth the cost. It's not cheap, but it's a good solution. If you're looking for a good solution, this is a good solution. Is it cheap? No. Is it worth the money? Yes, I think it is."
"I think it’s very affordable."
"Licensing fees are paid annually."
"It was easy to upgrade the license for unlimited clusters and servers. Pricing is fair."
"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."
"The cost is reasonable."
"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."
"​NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it.​"
"​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. ​"
"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."
"The price is the cost to contract support with a specialized company, usually during consulting hours.​"
"It's an open source solution, so it's free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
9%
University
7%
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

Do you recommend Loadbalancer.org?
Since Loadbalancer.org is an open-source solution, I would recommend this solution for smaller businesses that don’t have major scaling requirements and don’t have the budget for a commercial solut...
What do you like most about Loadbalancer.org?
Existing customers are trying to migrate from the physical F5 load balancer to the AVI load balancer because it is scalable and easily managed.
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
NGINX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Vodafone, NASA, Mercedes, NBC, Siemens, AT&T, Barclays, Zurich, Penn State University, Fiserv, Canon, Toyota, University of Cambridge, US Army, US Navy, Ocean Spray, ASOS, Pfizer, BBC, Bacardi, Monsoon, River Island, U.S Air Force, King's College London, NHS, Ricoh, Philips, Santander, TATA Communications, Ericcson, Ross Video, Evertz, TalkTalk TV, Giacom, Rapid Host.
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 Loadbalancer.org vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.