Apache Tomcat vs. F5 BIG-IP

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Tomcat is an open-source web server supported by Apache.N/A
F5 BIG-IP
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
F5 BIG-IP software from Seattle-based F5 Networks is a load balancing and application protection solution suite available on cloud or via virtual editions, on a subscription or perpetual licensing basis.N/A
Pricing
Apache TomcatF5 BIG-IP
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache TomcatF5 BIG-IP
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache TomcatF5 BIG-IP
Features
Apache TomcatF5 BIG-IP
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
Apache Tomcat
9.2
24 Ratings
14% above category average
F5 BIG-IP
-
Ratings
IDE support10.022 Ratings00 Ratings
Security management9.024 Ratings00 Ratings
Administration and management8.224 Ratings00 Ratings
Application server performance8.124 Ratings00 Ratings
Installation10.024 Ratings00 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance10.024 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache TomcatF5 BIG-IP
Small Businesses
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.1 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.1 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.1 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache TomcatF5 BIG-IP
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(24 ratings)
9.2
(187 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.6
(9 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(3 ratings)
8.8
(59 ratings)
Availability
6.0
(1 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(2 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(3 ratings)
9.4
(10 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(2 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache TomcatF5 BIG-IP
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
Excellent value for companies wishing to host Java applications in the cloud. Utilizing hosting tools such as load balancers and network and application firewalls, Tomcat can be part of a powerful system to host web applications to thousands of users. There has been consistency in the development and support of Tomcat since its initial release in the late '90s and the best commonalities have been carried forward. If you host Java web applications, Tomcat is as good as any for an application server.
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F5
I think it's mostly suited for my company because it has prevented others from phishing into our company account and our user accounts, for example. Then it actually creates another safe because when I have to log in, I just have to connect on my phone to approve or not. So if I don't see that, it's kind of like someone else is trying to log in to my computer.
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Pros
Apache
  • Fast to start up, which is useful when we need to just check that our changes are working correctly.
  • Free, which allows us to not be involved with the finance/legal team about using it.
  • Bundled with Spring Boot, which makes it even more convenient for our testing.
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F5
  • It's reliable. We've had very little problems with the technology. Performance is always right on. Metrics are great. They come out of it. We'd like to do more probably with it in the future as we start to grow a lot more.
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Cons
Apache
  • Using tomcat manager to troubleshoot is not very informative. Error messages are vague, you have to dig into log files for more information about the problems.
  • Is great for simple web applications, but may not work for heavy development which may require a full J2EE stack, might like JBoss better.
  • Security in tomcat is not straightforward, as I discovered that you have to understand how to set up realms in tomcat in order to hash passwords, which I was not overly familiar with, which is a big deal when setting up users in the tomcat-users.xml file.
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F5
  • Recently we have been deploying F5 web application firewall and we have started the deployment. We have already moved applications out there, but we are not yet to the point wherein I could comment any positive feedback or any negative feedback because we are still going through it, right. But as far as I'm concerned, I don't see any drawbacks or any shortcomings on the F5 product lineup.
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Likelihood to Renew
Apache
We have a huge knowledge of the product within our company and we're satisfied with the performance.
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F5
Stability of product and easy way to have account manager contact. F5 support team is also always available to help with major issues. Last year during the major OS upgrade F5 team and F5 leadership always shared clear information and F5 team was dedicated to help us to have it closed in record time
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Usability
Apache
Tomcat has a very rich API set which allows us to implement our automation script to trigger the deployment, configure, stop and start Tomcat from the command line. In our projects, we embedded Tomcat in our Eclipse in all of the developer's machines so they could quickly verify their code with little effort, Azure Webapp has strong support for Tomcat so we could move our application to Azure cloud very easy. One drawback is Tomcat UI quite poorly features but we almost do not use it.
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F5
It is a good product to use but right now it is lacking the automation of certificates, management of iRules and automation of certain configuration. Also creating an APM policy from scratch with many APM agents take a long time due to slow load times of the GUI and the need to create everything from scratch every time. It's tough to reuse the configuration.
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Reliability and Availability
Apache
Tomcat doesn't have a built-in watchdog that ensures restart upon failure, so you have to provide it externally. A very good solution is java service wrapper. The community edition is able to restart Tomcat upon out of memories exceptions.
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F5
No answers on this topic
Performance
Apache
Tomcat support to customize memory used and allow us to define the Connection pool and thread pool to increase system performance and availability, Tomcat server itself consume very little memory and almost no footprint. We use Tomcat in our production environment which has up to thousands of concurrent users and it is stable and provides a quick response.
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F5
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Apache
Well, in actuality, I have never needed support for Apache Tomcat since it is configured and ready-to-go with no configuration needed on my end.
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F5
I've supported F5 for three different companies. Our F5 support has been very consistent, regardless who the customer is. F5 technicians are very experienced and provide good support, even when issues are more related to knowledge than they are with the ability of the product to do what you need it to do.
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In-Person Training
Apache
No answers on this topic
F5
Practical cases and hands on , many hours of training with tipical cases
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Implementation Rating
Apache
No answers on this topic
F5
implementation is fine
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Alternatives Considered
Apache
Eclipse Jetty is the best alternative for Apache Tomcat because which is also an open-source and lightweight servlet container like Tomcat. A major advantage of this over Tomcat is that Jetty server can easily be embedded with the source code of web applications. Since it requires less memory to operate, you may realize that it is very efficient.
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F5
That's the one thing that really stood out. It was a lot easier to use from an administrator standpoint, so I think that's the one thing that really made our team decide to go with this product versus another competitor. Just ease of use.
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Scalability
Apache
It's very easy to add instances to an existing deployment and, using apache with mod proxy balancer, to scale up the serving farm
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F5
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Apache
  • Tomcat is cheap and very quick to deploy, so it has benefited much when situation needs applications to be deployed quickly without wasting time on licensing and installations.
  • Plenty of documentation available so no vendor training is required. Support contract is not needed as well.
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F5
  • The F5 BIG-IP has improved all our load balancing needs, we have over 400 LTM VIPs in our environment this all use to be done with DNS round Robin configurations.
  • we have created unique APM solutions to support our external customer base
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