Azure Application Gateway vs. F5 BIG-IP

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Application Gateway
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Azure Application Gateway is a platform-managed, scalable, and highly available application delivery controller as a service with integrated web application firewall.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
Azure Application GatewayF5 BIG-IP
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Application GatewayF5 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
Azure Application GatewayF5 BIG-IP
Considered Both Products
Azure Application Gateway
Chose Azure Application Gateway
Azure Application Gateway provides seamless integration with azure services and platforms like azure load balancer, azure monitor, also it offer advanced load balancing capabilities and build in WAF Functionality.
F5 BIG-IP
Chose F5 BIG-IP
When comparing F5 BIG-IP to these products they do not offer half of the things F5 BIG-IP offers and in some situations I could not even get the app to work. With Azure App Gateway we needed to make specifics redirects to work but we never got it to work. With F5 BIG-IP we got …
Chose F5 BIG-IP
Unlike many competitors, F5 delivers a unified platform that handles Layer 4–7 load balancing, SSL offloading, WAF, DDoS protection, and application acceleration—all within a single solution.
Chose F5 BIG-IP
F5 has wide range of the environment coverage, including on-prem and clouded, it also has lots of options and flexibility in term of the processing the traffic (I.e. irule to customized based on the application need), unlike the application gateway which limited ONLY to what …
Chose F5 BIG-IP
In my experience, F5 BIG-IP has better health capabilities and F5 BIG-IP is easier to manage.
Best Alternatives
Azure Application GatewayF5 BIG-IP
Small Businesses
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Score 8.9 out of 10
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Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
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Score 8.9 out of 10
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Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
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All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure Application GatewayF5 BIG-IP
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(8 ratings)
9.2
(187 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(9 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.8
(59 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.4
(10 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
6.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 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
Azure Application GatewayF5 BIG-IP
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
For building scalable and highly available applications, Azure Application Gateway does most of the job on behalf of you; automatically load-balancing traffic from a number of users to a number of back-end servers. This ensure scalability and availability. The in-built security is great as can be expected from Microsoft, and user has a variety of tools for monitoring the health of the load-balancing function as well as the health of back end servers behind it.
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F5
Application delivery of both simple and advanced applications. It's easy to handle certificate management that do require individual certificates to be installed on each backend server, you can just install the certificate on the F5 BIG-IP and use for multiple backends. Also adding WAF is as simple as adding a generic policy and you will cover 80% of the scenarios.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Easy integration with Load Balancer and Azure Scale Set to provide a full solution for traffic management.
  • With rich routing rule, we could use one Application Gateway as the central point for all internal applications to expose to the external network.
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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
Microsoft
  • More cost-effective pricing plans are welcome for the future, especially for WAF
  • Ability to automate the TLS certificate renewal procedure
  • Ability to manage non-HTTP traffic
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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
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
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
Microsoft
Most of the Application Gateway's features and services can be managed and re-configured via either the Azure Portal GUI or via the Azure Cloud Shell, thus allowing both CLI modes, i.e. Azure CLI (Bash) and Azure Powershell. The v2 version of Application Gateway has significantly improved performance during initial configuration or during re-configuration changes, thus making it much more usable for IT admins, as compared to v1.
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F5
It actually satisfies the use cases, but I would like to know what it can do more than just the use cases, which is what I'm looking for, to talk at some point with somebody and figure out what to do next. We probably maybe could be able to do more that we don't know yet.
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Support Rating
Microsoft
I don’t like that it's part of the Microsoft brand. In general, I am not a fan of Microsoft products but Azure gets it right.
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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
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
F5
Practical cases and hands on , many hours of training with tipical cases
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Implementation Rating
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
F5
implementation is fine
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Other load balancing tools in Azure (Azure LB and Azure Traffic Manager) are limited in their functionality in comparison with the Azure Application Gateway, and also, they don't provide security features. Azure Firewall, although it has security features, is more expensive, and most importantly, it's not a load balancer at all.
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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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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Positive : Improved performance and scalability
  • Positive : Better and enhanced Security
  • Positive : Efficiency
  • Negative: Cost
  • Negative: More resources to manage.
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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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ScreenShots