TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs. Google Cloud CDN

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)

    Score9.6 out of 10
    N/AF5 states that the "brain" of the BIG-IP platform, Local Traffic Manager (LTM) intelligently manages network traffic so applications are always fast, available, and secure.N/A

    Google Cloud CDN

    Score6.2 out of 10
    N/AThe Google Cloud CDN is touted as a low cost option with tight integration with Google Cloud apps and services.N/A
    Pricing
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)Google Cloud CDN
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)Google Cloud CDN
    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
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)Google Cloud CDN
    Considered Both Products
    F5
    No answer on this topic
    Google
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    48 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    9 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    43 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    46 Answers
    78%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    37 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    8 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    39 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    9 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)Google Cloud CDN
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Amazon CloudFront
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Azure Application Gateway
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Amazon CloudFront
    Score8.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    NetScaler
    Score8 out of 10
    Azure CDN
    Score7.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)Google Cloud CDN
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.6
    (49 ratings)
    4.0
    (10 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.7
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    9.5
    (27 ratings)
    4.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM)Google Cloud CDN
    Likelihood to Recommend
    F5
    I mean the only reason we changed away from it was price and it just simply had to do with the licensing that Citrix was offering on the NetScalers. They had basically an all you can eat consumption license that we were easily inside of with all of our VDI usage, whereas with F5 we had to buy the hardware and we had to license the software. Any place you need to actually do traffic balancing at scale, it's a fantastic product. I couldn't recommend it highly enough. There's just some things that hardware SSL offload and hardware load balancing just simply can't be equal that I don't know if there's a better product on the market for that.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    Google Cloud CDN is available globally and supports various load balancers available in different regions around the globe, so I find Google Cloud CDN as one of the best choices for CDN as it serves globally and it is really fast, safe, and secure. It might be not suitable for you if you do not have any technical background.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    F5
    • Sure. It does load balancing fantastically. I mean, it's an industry standard product for that. We also use it for TLS offload for applications. Those are the two main use cases for that. We do also use some of the I rules for traffic filtering. We've used that in some of the external facing services. It does a really nice job with that. It's a little bit complicated sometimes and some of the Cipher Suite stuff is interesting.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    • The intelligent categorization and management of site content cache in Google Cloud CDN is unique and offers the best results with simple settings.
    • It has powerful servers in all geographical regions of the world and the speed of the site will increase many times for the customer with smart routing.
    • It has AnyCast IP feature and website receives a single global IP address. In this case, the site loads at the same speed worldwide.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    F5
    • Some of the stuff you have to dive into the CLI to really use, I'm going to reach back to the previous employer for this. So I had a much greater degree of involvement with it at that point in time for, I was the crypto guy at the company and I had to design all the cipher suites that we actually implemented on our front end banking products. So in order to do that, I had to dive into it, download all the Cipher suites, figure out the actual order of operation for them, how they were selected because I wanted to design the Cipher Suites to actually provide a specific customer experience for the types of connections that our customers were likely to initiate. Getting at that information was a giant PITA. It was poorly documented at the time. I'm not sure if it's documented any better now. Every time the software changed or got upgraded, made your version, I'd have to do it all over again because the upgrades to the stack, which looked like it was based on open SSL, but it was heavily modified with a different syntax. Oh yay. That's fun too. So I had to write giant documents describing all of the ciphers that I was designing for this because it just kept changing all the time. So I didn't care for that aspect of it. Traffic management does a great job for that.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    • Unable to use any kind of code to show different content.
    • Absence of cloud workers as provided by Cloudfront, Cloudflare and Akamai.
    • No support for dynamic routing.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    F5
    F5 has always been one of the best products we have in the data center. We had few issues with the BUG and Code upgrades but the main use cases for F5 was always top notch. From High availability to Globally load balancing applications across multiple data centers and muti cloud environments.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    F5
    I am very comfortable with this product not only configuring it but automating it as well. There are not many configurations or situations where I do not know how to implement it on the device. I find it straightforward and easy to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    There is not really an interface for managing rules directly, compared to market leaders, Google's implementation is probably strong on the technical side but for the average user it might be lacking. There are no advanced features which can be compared to what other leaders in the CDN sector are providing or they can be achieved but with high implementation cost and usage of other products in the Google Cloud suite
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    F5
    Good after sales support if one purchased direct support from F5.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    I didn't have the need to use support from Google when I was either testing or setting up my website. Information was easily found by searching online if I needed to, and the options that I needed to install or enable were there on the setup page. Honestly, I was a former systems administrator so most of this stuff is not challenging for me.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    F5
    Easy to implement if one had attended F5 Training for Local Traffic Manager (LTM).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    F5
    F5 is doing its specialized function. There is no other product that can beat them. We are extremely happy with the product. Especially on load balancing, traffic redirecting TLS encryption, and SNI modification. We will continue to explore F5's product, especially on the public cloud side. e.g. NGINX.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    We have limited software developers and don't have the need for a big cloud service provider along with their costs. Google Cloud CDN brings to usr, reliability and brand familiarity. Google Cloud CDN also doesn't bother us with pitches or 1000 emails about the products. We went and signed up for it, without dealing with a pushy salesperson.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    F5
    • It has allowed us to let application developers know that the issues are with their application and not due to the network, because of where it sits. This has been invaluable when troubleshooting issues when they arise. Knowing whether or not traffic is even hitting the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), either ingress or outgoing. If the Dev's information is not even making it to the F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), we can quickly tell them and let them figure the issue out on their own, saving the rest of the Network Team from getting that 2am call.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    • Google Cloud CDN has worked great as a tool to provide more reliable and faster interactive web experiences such as with e-learning sites.
    • The product can require additional training costs, even for experienced IT administrators.
    • Overall, ongoing costs can also be prohibitive for organizations with smaller web presences.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots