HAProxy Reviews

For production purposes, we use HAProxy, which is a web application.

Our primary use case is load balancing.

We are not fully utilizing it. We are only responsible for load balancing. The most used and valuable is load balancing.

I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good.

Although HAProxy is essentially open-source, many features are not available.

While troubleshooting, we are having some difficulties. There are no issues when it is running; it is stable and very good; however, if there is a troubleshooting issue or an incident occurs, we will have issues because this is open-source.

We are only experiencing problems at that time. Otherwise, everything is fine.

Because we need to search for a document or some troubleshooting information. That could be beneficial to us.

To resolve the troubleshooting issues, additional documentation and troubleshooting are required.

The product is satisfactory. However, additional documentation, additional technical documents, and troubleshooting steps are the types of things that can only make this solution better. Also, more clarity on where the package is hitting and where it is stopping is needed.

I have been using HAProxy for four or five years.

HAProxy is generally stable. We had only two days of problems in the last five years, this was an extremely rare occurrence. We are back to being stable.

We have publicly permitted our web application for this, and approximately 5,000 users are using it.

It is used every day because it is our production-related order-lease domain or something along those lines. We are also using this as a dealer, with approximately 5,000 users per day.

Normal users. We will publish it on one of the websites that provide the production information. We provide the order and invoice the order to the product. These are the types of details. This is our dealership's publisher for an automotive dealership.

It is essentially the dealership's publisher.

HAProxy is scalable. There are plans to expand to the Japan team. They may suggest a paid tool.

I would rate their technical support a three out of five. Additional documents and troubleshooting should be made available on the internet.

There is no direct support. We use open-source software and do not rely on their support. We rely on our knowledge, and we are studying the implementation.

Previously, we were using F5. F5 is a very good product.

It's a great product that is also very stable and scalable, but it is very expensive in terms of price.

We switched to HAProxy because it is open-source.

We are also working with Zscaler and FortiGate.

The initial setup is easy.

I would rate the initial setup a three out of five.

We completed the installation in-house and did not use a third party.

HAProxy is free open-source software.

It will primarily be determined by the budget, the size of their company's budget, or if you have the budget. I would always recommend the F5. Because it has more clarity and more features are available in the F5, if budget is an issue, go with HAProxy. It's a good product.

If you are not utilizing very basic things that you should be using for the HAProxy.

Depending on the balance If the balance is very minimal, they should use HAProxy, an open-source solution, but if the balance is larger, such as an enterprise, they should use F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic.

I would rate HAProxy an eight out of ten.

The main use cases are for load balancing and limiting traffic. It is utilized as a front-end server for balancing HTTP traffic, as well as for balancing traffic between application servers and database servers like Redis and Elasticsearch. HAProxy is employed for both HTTP and TCP load balancing purposes, ensuring optimal resource utilization and preventing overloading of any single server. 

When dealing with scenarios that require splitting or monitoring Redis clusters with external masters and two slaves, HAProxy becomes essential. This is because HAProxy can significantly reduce delays in Redis communication when switching roles between servers. This reduction in delay improves application load time and prevents unnecessary downtime during server switchovers. It is a crucial tool in ensuring smooth service provision without any interruptions.

There is room for improvement in HAProxy's dynamic configuration. Currently, dynamic changes are lost when reloading the service, and it would be beneficial if dynamic configuration changes could be applied without losing the configuration or reloading the service, ensuring backups and preserving the static configuration.

I have been using it for six years.

I would rate its stability capabilities nine out of ten.

It provides impressive scalability. I would rate it ten out of ten.

In a specific situation where a question was posted on a forum, the issue was successfully resolved within a day or the following day. I would rate their customer support services nine out of ten.

Positive

We worked with NGINX, but these two solutions are not entirely comparable as they serve different primary purposes. NGINX functions both as a web server and a reverse proxy server, while HAProxy is primarily a load-balancing proxy. They both have load-balancing capabilities, but their main focus and functionalities are distinct.

The initial setup can be challenging. I would rate it six out of ten.

For simpler cases, the deployment process can take around one hour. For more complex scenarios, it can extend up to one week. 

We are using HAProxy as an open-source.

NGINX is easier to configure and is well-suited for load balancing against an application server. However, HAProxy is more versatile and can be fine-tuned for various scenarios, particularly in load-balancing multiple application servers. In terms of deployment, HAProxy is easy to integrate into a green-blue deployment approach. It allows for simpler configuration and sending commands to its sockets.

Based on customer stability and varying use cases, I recommend choosing this solution. I would rate it nine out of ten.

The product is an open-source load balancer. We deploy it for our application as a front-end server where all the users come on that particular HAProxy server, and it is redirected to our back-end servers.

It helps include the reverse proxy or more security modules for enhancing security. It helps with enhancing web application security.

The solution is open-source. 

HAProxy can provide protocol-level load balancing. We can use the HTTP or HTTPS load balancing, including the PCP and UDP protocol level load balancing.

The setup is straightforward.

It is scalable.

The solution is stable. 

It's saved project costs and time. Since the deployment is very easy and the open-source functionality saves a huge amount of cost in terms of project deployment.

The product should have more security and dashboard functionality for monitoring so that any administrator can see the usability and track all the incoming and outgoing requests. It should have a better dashboard GUI, and more security models should be there. The GUI should be more responsive and show the detailed output of logs. We need it to be more visible.

Documentation could be better.

I've used the solution for around four years. We started using it in 2018.

It's reliable and very stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

It's a scalable product.

There are more than 2,000 users on the product right now. 

We already scaled up with the different sets, so we previously scaled this solution.

I did not solicit the help of any technical support. 

The documentation that's available on the HAProxy is okay. There is some room for improvement in that regard. 

Neutral

We previously used a traditional load balancer.

We used a TCP load balancer. The NGNIX, we use for the reverse proxy for HTTP and HTTPS protocol. However, for particular applications, we required TCP load balancer, so we used HAProxy there.

HAProxy provides the TCP and UDP port protocol-based load balancing, and NGINX is the reverse proxy, providing a great solution for web traffic, HTTP, and HTTPS.

The initial setup is very simple and straightforward. It's not too complex. 

One single administrator can manage and deploy this product.

I handled the deployment of the product myself. 

We just replaced some of our OEM solutions with an open-source solution. We did not invest anything in that, we just save the money on some OEM products. We have to purchase some load balancers, however, we replaced this with the open-source option and they are performing well. Therefore, there is a return on investment in the sense that we replaced that traditional load balancer that we paid for.

We do not need to pay for the product as it is open-source. 

There's no additional cost. We can deploy and manage on our own, and community support is available in HAProxy.

We evaluated NGINX prior to using this product.

If you require a TCP and UDP protocol for load balancing, this is a very great solution.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is to control the IP addresses accessing our devices and and blocking invalid requests to our back end servers.

It is much more flexible than a firewall since it gives you great logging and then control of what is let through to the WAF.

The ability to block constant requests for files that are not applicable to our VoIP deployment. We used to have a lot of 404s from our backend. Now they are blocked right up front.

The solution can be improved by controlling TCP behavior better rather than just reporting them in the logs. Automatic blocking of clients that don't properly close their TCP session (CH/CD) would be good.

I have been using the solution for three years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is easily scalable. If I were to run out of CPU space, or memory space, it would be very easy to just take my rules and virtualize them into VMware, and get a much more powerful solution. The other choice is to get another pair of servers and use the load-balancing functionality that comes with them to go between the two server environments.

The tech support is good however, there are sometimes delays in resolving issues because when there is a shift change there doesn't seem to be any communication between the support staff and we are constantly having to repeat our issues to the next person. The vendor follows the support around the globe approach that can lead to a lot of repetition and sometimes miscommunication.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward and took about two weeks to implement.

The implementation was completed in-house with the help of vendor technical support.

The solution helps with customer retention each year.

The licensing fee for the entire WAF solution is very affordable with Loadbalancer.org. There are no separate charges for HAProxy and WAF.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

We're a very small company of 400 employees, so there are only two of us in VoIP engineering who maintain all the equipment, which includes phones, Metaswitch, and LoadBalancer.org. The solution is maintained by one person taking only one hour a day to monitor the logs and apply new rules.

The solution is a layer seven device that allows your traffic to flow through. So if you are running any type of web interface for your customers, put a WAF in front of it that will allow you to limit the traffic that goes to the backend.

We are using HAProxy for load balancing.

The most valuable feature of HAProxy is that its open source.

HAProxy could improve by making the dashboards easier to use, and better reports and administration tickets.

I have been using HAProxy for approximately eight years.

HAProxy is stable.

The scalability of HAProxy is good.

We have approximately 10 servers utilizing this solution.

Our organization is an enterprise, but we are using HAProxy for the basic requirements and functions. We are using the basic requirements for load balancing. I would recommend this solution for small businesses. For large businesses, I would recommend Citrix and F5.

If we have any issues generally we open a ticket through the internet, and we receive a solution. They have been responsive.

The support could improve by providing better documentation. If they had an online knowledge base it would be helpful.

I rate the support from HAProxy a three out of five.

We used F5 in 2018 and it was a better solution than HAProxy, but it was expensive. In order to have the best features, you need to pay for a better solution, HAProxy is free.

The deployment and configuration of HAProxy are not easy if we compare it with other solutions, such as F5. The full implementation took us one to two months to complete.

I rate the initial setup of HAProxy a three out of five.

We did the implementation of HAProxy in-house.

We have one or two people who maintain HAProxy. They do the administration, testing, and all other maintenance. We did not require any third parties. The solution requires maintenance approximately three times annually. However, we are not using the solution extensively.

HAProxy is a free open-source solution.

The main difference between HAProxy and other solutions on the market is that it is open source. Otherwise, functional-wise, it's the same.

I rate HAProxy a seven out of ten.

HAProxy has been our primary SSL termination technology in production. We use it for our own product, which is Qivos Cloud. It is a software service and we used HAProxy for high-traffic API gateways. These products load balance our servers.

We are using HAProxy, for secondary loads and use cases. There are times that our customers require specific static IP addresses versus AWS CloudFront, which uses IP pools. So when we have such environments, we use HAProxy for SSL termination and load balancing.

Stability is number one. We have never had problems with it. When configured correctly, it could run for years. We never had a task that we could not achieve with HAProxy.

The reconfigurability in terms of the tooling could be improved and maybe an editor plugin can be added. Something that might help with syntax or common use cases.

We have been using HAProxy for more than five years.

HAProxy is very stable.

We had no problem with scalability both in terms of scaling HAProxy itself, or the backend behind it.

We only used it for public resources, like the manual, documentation, or stack overflow. We could find the solutions easily.

We replaced HAProxy with CloudFront because we switched to a serverless option. We did not have a problem with HAProxy. We re-architected our solutions. SSL termination and load balancing now happen in AWS CloudFront and application load balancer.

We deployed in-house. We learned how to use it. I would say less than a month. In the beginning, we only did specific things and over time we gained expertise and we expanded our users, but it was, more or less, a month to go with production.

HAProxy was very easy to script, but it had a learning curve back then. I am talking about four or five years ago. Once we gained our expertise on what we wanted to do with HAProxy, it was easier. We only used the open-source version of HAProxy for pricing.

HAProxy is something that we manage ourselves, so we cannot directly compare it with Amazon CloudFront. If we only focus on technology, it is the same features. The only reason we switched is because of management costs.

HAProxy is definitely a dependable choice. The only thing that needs some attention is the initial learning curve. When you get past that, it is a great tool to use. We are very happy with it. I would rate HA Proxy a nine out of ten.

We primarily use HAProxy for the load balancer. 

Having the right load balancing solution – which is what HAProxy is – and protection in place gives organizations peace of mind. 

HAProxy has a lot of features, so what's most valuable depends on what we are loading. The forwarding proxy is a valuable feature. HAProxy is a valuable product. 

HAProxy could do with some good combination integrations. 

I have been using HAProxy for about 15 years. 

HAProxy is stable. 

HAProxy is scalable. We have some 2,500 end users using HAProxy. They are mostly developers. 

We did not use any other solution before we deployed HAProxy. 

The initial HAProxy setup was straightforward. The setup is automated, which makes it instantaneous. 

We deployed HAProxy in house. 

We did see a return on investment from HAProxy. On a scale of one to five, I would rate our ROI with a four. 

HAProxy is mostly open-source, so I cannot provide any pricing or licensing numbers. 

We did not evaluate any other options before landing on HAProxy. 

The advice I would give to others looking to implement HAProxy is to go with the on-prem version if you can. The cloud version is a bit different because a lot depends on HAProxy's compatibility with the cloud vendor itself. I would say to stick with the solution your cloud provider has put out.

On a scale of one to ten, with one being the worst and 10 being the best, I would give HAProxy a nine overall.

I use it for managing Redis clusters where I have a front-end for a read-write and a front-end for a read-only. I have no idea who else in my company uses it. I had opted to use this because we have silos in our company. We have a network silo that does the load balancing, and I wanted to control how these tests worked with the load balancing. I wanted them to do load balancing where they hand off like a TCP Fast Open. They perform a check on these services with TCP Fast Open.

For example, there is one free HAProxy service for each node, and they use TCP Fast Open for things like that. It's flipped to the HAProxy, and then they establish a persistent connection. It's more of a hand-off, and then I can do all the magic. You can do most of the things I'm doing with HAProxy in F5 too. However, it's siloed off and takes a long time to get things done. I don't have any agility. I took that upon myself with HAProxy because it's a lot quicker to do it myself instead of waiting weeks for somebody else to do it.

The most valuable thing for me is TCP/IP Layer 4 stuff you can do with HAProxy. You can go down to the protocol level and make decisions on something. 

The logging is pretty hard to understand, but the documentation for the logging is decent. That would be my only criticism. Sometimes it's challenging to get through the log, and you need a log to understand what is going on. It isn't easy to map the logging with the documentation, and every time I read the log, I have to pull out the documentation to understand what I'm reading.

And there is some more functionality that I would like to see. For example, you'll do a TLS to the front leg— whatever connects to your load balancer. You do the HTBS or whatever TLS connection there. And then, on the back end, you usually have to clear it a lot of times. I want to be able to do TLS all the way through on both legs. I don't know if it can do that. HAProxy might be able to do this already, but I haven't done enough research to see if this is possible

Probably about two years now.

HAProxy is rock solid. I'm pleased with it.

HAProxy is scalable. It easily handles the current loads, but my connections are pretty low. It can take a lot more than what I'm doing. I'm making around 200 connections per second, which doesn't put much stress on the solution. HAProxy can handle it pretty easy.

I've never used any tech support. I just use the freeware.

The setup was pretty straightforward. When I started using HAProxy, I played around with it in a container and built from source, so I got a good feel for what it could do. And then I picked up a book called Load Balancing With HAProxy. After I read that, I felt confident I could use this service in a production setting. I was able to tune the knobs I needed to adjust and understand things pretty well. The book is pretty decent, but I wouldn't mind seeing a newer version of it. It was helpful. 

The HAProxy documentation on the web isn't bad, but the book is much nicer for me. I like to see how the authors apply HAProxy to specific use cases and leverage things. Also, they explain how to do something, whereas the documentation only tells you about the features and parameters. Sometimes it's hard for the documentation to show the importance of a feature and express how to do what you want. 

I'm using the freeware version. I have no idea if there is a paid solution because I've never looked into it. I might in the future if I have a use case for it. But right now, I'm leveraging the free version, and it seems to fit well in this stack because I'm using the free Redis.   

I would rate HAProxy nine out of 10. My biggest recommendation for any new HAProxy user is to read Load Balancing With HAProxy by Nick Ramirez. If you're thinking about using HAProxy and you want to get your feet wet, read this book and follow along with it. Determine whether you're trying to do an HAProxy for a web service or something else and concentrate specifically on those pieces. I read the whole book and enjoyed it, but you can focus on one thing if you need to. This book is short, and you can just read the whole thing to understand it.

The primary use case of HAProxy is for load balancing. 

This product is scalable and inexpensive. 

The visibility could be improved. Stability can falter when there is a lot of traffic. End-to-end connections are limited. 

Stability could be improved. 

The solution is scalable. 

The technical support is good, it's provided to us by the distributor. 

Licensing costs are inexpensive. 

I rate this solution six out of 10. 

Our company used the solution as a proxy for Tanzu during an initial installation for conducting performance tests. 

It is easy to learn proxy operations. 

The solution has bad performance issues. 

I used the solution for six months. 

The stability is good and passed all tests. 

I did not need technical support. 

The solution is easy to install and configure in terms of the load balancer. Other tools might take eight days to install, but the solution only takes three or four days.

We installed the solution in-house using available documentation. 

Maintenance can be completed by one network administrator. Sometimes it is not easy to diagnose issues. 

The solution is open source so is free. 

We did not evaluate other options before the solution. We were not happy with the solution's performance so we switched to Load Balancing Analytics.