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NGINX Controller vs NGINX Plus 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

NGINX Controller
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
21st
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) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of NGINX Controller is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 7.9%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NGINX Plus7.9%
NGINX Controller1.1%
Other91.0%
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."
"NGINX Plus also has NGINX App Protect. It's a separate module, which is inspired by the F5 apps."
"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."
"​The flexibility of its modules allow it to be scalable.​"
"With NGINX, I appreciate its ability to route traffic geographically."
"Recently, we’ve needed to deploy sites over a number of servers to balance the load, which was not only painless but also super valuable."
"I receive very good support."
"This is a great product, it has everything."
"I would recommend this solution."
 

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."
"Instance service health check on the NGINX load balancer feature could be improved."
"If NGINX brings some features for health check in the open source version, it would be better. ​"
"I would like it to have a more user-friendly graphical interface."
"The user interface could be improved."
"Make modules easier to enable or disable. The beauty and ugly side of the NGINX modules is you have to know how to compile the module. For beginners or non-very technical aspirant(s) going for NGINX, they have to learn how to compile the modules.​"
"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."
"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."
"I would suggest adding GUI-based configuration panels to NGINX Plus to simplify setup and management tasks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"​NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it.​"
"Nginx is free. I don't have experience with the Plus version."
"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."
"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."
"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."
"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."
"​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. ​"
"You pay for each feature that you want."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

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....
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
NGINX
 

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, IBM and others in Application Infrastructure. Updated: May 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.