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NGINX Controller vs NGINX Plus comparison

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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

NGINX Controller
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
20th
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NGINX Plus
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of NGINX Controller is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 7.9%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NGINX Plus7.9%
NGINX Controller1.2%
Other90.9%
Application Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

SP
Digital Services & Engagement Senior Manager at AXA
Load balancing and security strengthen operations while error handling needs improvement
We use NGINX Controller for load balancing purposes. Our use case involves integrating it with a three-tier architecture, where it serves as a critical component for application routing, handling index pages, and enhancing security The most valuable features of NGINX Controller include its…
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

"NGINX Controller is cheap compared to other solutions, and it offers significant cost and time savings."
"​The flexibility of its modules allow it to be scalable.​"
"I utilize NGINX for its capability to provide visibility and discovery options, helping discover and identify networks, which is crucial for ensuring application performance, managing latency, and checking server reachability."
"NGINX Plus' most valuable feature is the ingress controller."
"The web proxy and the database proxy are excellent."
"-"
"NGINX is the best available tool today for the tasks it covers."
"This solution has everything."
"When I worked in a security research center, we tested NGINX to support DoS and DDoS attacks, and its results were great."
 

Cons

"The technical support from NGINX Controller is not good. They do not offer quick responses or 24/7 support, which is lacking when immediate assistance is needed."
"NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5."
"I would suggest adding GUI-based configuration panels to NGINX Plus to simplify setup and management tasks."
"The solution must improve its performance."
"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. ​"
"They should do in the open source version of what they did to Advanced HTTP, TCP, and UDP load balancing."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."
"Instance service health check on the NGINX load balancer feature could be improved."
"Our most challenging part was to run an older PHP website reverse-proxied through NGINX. That was not fun."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"​NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it.​"
"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."
"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."
"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."
"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."
"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."
"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."
"You pay for each feature that you want."
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920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

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

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Controller?
NGINX Controller is cheap compared to other solutions, and it offers significant cost and time savings.
What needs improvement with NGINX Controller?
The error handling in NGINX Controller requires improvement. The handling of misconfigurations is not good enough and needs enhancements.
What is your primary use case for NGINX Controller?
We use NGINX Controller ( /products/nginx-controller-reviews ) for load balancing purposes. Our use case involves integrating it with a three-tier architecture, where it serves as a critical compon...
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 needs improvement with NGINX Plus?
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....
 

Also Known As

No data available
NGINX, F5 NGINX Plus
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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 Microsoft, F5, Red Hat and others in Application Infrastructure. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.