Azure CDN vs. NetScaler

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure CDN
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft offers a content delivery network, Azure CDN.N/A
NetScaler
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
NetScaler ADC is an application delivery controller.N/A
Pricing
Azure CDNNetScaler
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure CDNNetScaler
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 CDNNetScaler
Best Alternatives
Azure CDNNetScaler
Small Businesses
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.9 out of 10
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.9 out of 10
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront
Score 7.8 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure CDNNetScaler
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(8 ratings)
8.6
(26 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(1 ratings)
7.8
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
7.3
(4 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure CDNNetScaler
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
Azure CDN has at hand an infinity of applications and tools to implement in your system and have better control of your data in a clean and secure platform on the web, we recommend this program since the percentage of solutions provided by this program is very high and find a way to make each user's job easier.
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Citrix
Citrix Netscaler can be a powerful network appliance for environments that are fully committed and open to utilizing a network appliance that isn't made by a traditional network vendor. Administrator user experience has improved over the years and will continue to improve with the flexibility of virtual and physical appliances available for medium and large enterprises.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • I found the CDN very easy to setup and configure within the Azure Portal.
  • Being Azure, there are plenty of free tools that allow you to manage the CDN from a UI that is not the portal. This was especially handy when I trained end users how to manage content within their specific realm.
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Citrix
  • Flexibility. NetScaler assumes its admins know a bit about networking and in-depth details surrounding the applications they are configuring access for/to. This being so, the range of configuration options is very broad allowing various versions' combinations of protocol patterns, expressions, rules etc., all to the benefit of the admin.
  • Granularity. Having such a broad range of configuration options available, while still allowing simple options to be configured simply. The GUI is well-stylized and navigation has a good flow.
  • Ease of control. For load-balancing of simple services right out of the box, NetScaler makes it pretty easy, compared to the range of options available in the surrounding GUI and under the hood.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • Tough learning curve--you have to be comfortable with the Azure Cloud logic and UI to use it easily
  • Special or uncommon use cases' pricing can be hard to forecast/follow
  • Can be expensive for simple use cases
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Citrix
  • The documentation could use an overhaul with specific examples related to the command line as well as GUI. Explanations in the documentation would also be helpful.
  • Being able to have more than just one routing table would allow the ability to leverage security.
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Usability
Microsoft
I give it 9/10 rating because it solved my problem by Caching my website content on global servers to load faster.
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Citrix
I gave the NetScaler a 7 here because the system once configured and deployed is very easy to use. However, if you did not deploy the system and do not have the fundamental background knowledge then you will have trouble using the product in general. Overall it is a great product and service but does typically require professional services to be deployed.
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Support Rating
Microsoft
Great support from the team whenever we're stuck. Very proactive in resolving issues and also making changes as per the requirements of the organization.
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Citrix
Overall, our organization's experience with Citrix support is that support can be hit or miss. Oftentimes it takes multiple attempts and much longer than desirable to obtain a viable solution for issues experienced with their products. It would be great to see Citrix invest time, effort, and almighty dollars into improving their support and bug fix process across the board.
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
More user friendly and it’s so easy to learn, the prices may be close to each other, but the service is excellent.
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Citrix
easy to use and setup and reliable. Once the configuration was setup and running this has been really useful and easy to maintain. The other solutions seemed overly complicated and difficult to configure and get up and running with the security that we required
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Azure CDN reduced origin instance load by removing the need to constantly serve large numbers of static files, meaning applications can be deployed with smaller/fewer instances.
  • Azure CDN reduces apparent load times to customers by serving cached files out of POPs in the local region of those clients, instead of requiring those clients to make multiple, lengthy requests through to the origin servers.
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Citrix
  • We had this set up before COVID and it saved us. We just added user licenses and scaled out our citrix farm and IT sat back and just monitored users from home.
  • Scales up and out with ease
  • Challenging to find NetScaler experts for advanced features you want to enable and use
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ScreenShots