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F5 BIG-IP vs. HAProxy Community Edition vs. IBM DataPower Gateway

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    F5 BIG-IP

    Score9.2 out of 10
    N/AF5 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

    HAProxy Community Edition

    Score9.3 out of 10
    N/AHAProxy Community Edition is a free, open source reverse-proxy offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications. It is presented as suited for very high traffic web sites.

    $0

    IBM DataPower Gateway

    Score9.5 out of 10
    N/AThe IBM DataPower Gateway is a security and integration platform.N/A
    Pricing
    F5 BIG-IPHAProxy Community EditionIBM DataPower Gateway
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
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    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    F5 BIG-IPHAProxy Community EditionIBM DataPower Gateway
    Free Trial
    NoNoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    F5 BIG-IPHAProxy Community EditionIBM DataPower Gateway
    Considered Multiple Products
    F5
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    Easy to configure , hardware based , no need to maintain or secure operating system and better performance.
    Better performance and stability against Citrix.
    With the virtualization feature you can have many virtual appliances for other environments like PoCs or Developments …
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    F5 BIG-IP is More stable, and has more features by far.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    The company was already utilizing F5 BIG-IP when I started.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    We have multiple vendors in our environment. As we have a number of F5 devices already deployed keeping them fed and happy is a task. We continue with F5 as the data plane is solid and management tools are consistent with automation objectives.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    It is well-known and well-supported.
    Incentivized
    Open Source
    Chose HAProxy Community Edition
    1st, HAProxy is free and a full software-based.
    2nd, it has outperformed the BIG-IP in every test case.
    3rd, we LOVE HAProxy.
    Incentivized
    Chose HAProxy Community Edition
    We chose HA Proxy because it is cheaper than a hardware balancer, it is an open-source solution with a large community behind it and with constant updates. It also allows custom scripts according to needs.HA Proxy is a solution used in many internet sites like GitHub, Reddit, …
    Incentivized
    Chose HAProxy Community Edition
    The cost is significantly lower and personally I don't find one to be harder to learn than the other. Overall they features stack up pretty closely and I'd pick HAProxy wherever it was feasible and we can save a tremendous amount of money for the business. The NetScalers & …
    Incentivized
    Chose HAProxy Community Edition
    This is the only load balancer I've used.
    Incentivized
    IBM
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    99%
    Would buy again
    258 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    215 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    255 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    179 Answers
    No answers on this topic
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    Implementation went as expected
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    196 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    F5 BIG-IPHAProxy Community EditionIBM DataPower Gateway
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
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    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    F5 BIG-IP
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Mule ESB
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    F5 BIG-IP
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Mule ESB
    Score8.3 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    F5 BIG-IPHAProxy Community EditionIBM DataPower Gateway
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.2
    (265 ratings)
    9.0
    (7 ratings)
    8.2
    (3 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.0
    (12 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    8.7
    (140 ratings)
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    8.7
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.2
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.7
    (12 ratings)
    9.7
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    9.2
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.3
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    8.3
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.2
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Professional Services
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.2
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.2
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    F5 BIG-IPHAProxy Community EditionIBM DataPower Gateway
    Likelihood to Recommend
    F5
    LTM's scope of action goes beyond load balancing. Tools for control, governance, and application enhancement, as well as APIs like iRULE, are very important for day-to-day operations. Furthermore, the F5 BIG-IP WAF offers exceptional security. Advanced firewall and routing functionalities are helpful in more complex environments. O LTM possui um escopo de atuacao que vai alem do balanceamento. Ferramentas para controle, governanca e aprimoramento de aplicacoes e API como iRULE sao muito iportantes para o dia a dia a operacao. Alem disso o WAF do F5 BIG-IP tem uma qualidade de seguranca exceptional. As funcionalidades avancadas de firewall e roteamento ajudam em ambientes mais complexos. This review was originally written in Portuguese and has been translated into English using a third-party translation tool. While we strive for accuracy, some nuances or meanings may not be perfectly captured.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    It prevents a single server failure from being a downtime event by adding redundancy to every layer of your architecture. A load balancer facilitates redundancy for the backend layer (web/app servers), but for a true high availability setup, you need to have redundant load balancers as well. So it is well suited for all production related servers and less suited for individual servers that do not require redundancy.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    WebSphere DataPower Gateway is really beneficial if you are trying to integrate two or more systems. It provides you with comfort and peace of mind by creating a DMZ zone for the services which are going out of the intranet to hit external clients APIs. It is greatly recommended if you have a very high volume service or API which is being used by a majority of clients because it has a dedicated physical box present which takes care of memory, CPU and all such stuff. So, all your transactions happen at wire-speed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    F5
    • My company is kind of like it's a safe thing if you log in and you provide another second login to get the code to log in, confirm that it's a correct that you are logged into the account and it just provides more for the company
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    • Low-Cost Load Balancer
    • Intelligent Request Routing based on URL and/or URI
    • Extremely flexible load balancing and healthchecks, can do almost anything including HTTP, HTTPS, PostgreSQL, etc.
    • SSL Termination
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • The most obvious thing that DataPower does exceptionally well is security. All the built-in supported security capabilities allow us to isolate most security tasks to DataPower and as a result "protect" down steam services/systems to have to deal with security.
    • DataPower is very good at protocol conversion and as it is usually used on the edge allows you to narrow down the protocols used between the companies public and private networks.
    • The appliance concept makes maintenance, recovery and, management so much simpler.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    F5
    • I think a couple of challenges. One, I mean the cost, it's not an inexpensive product, but I think it's probably parity with value, maybe a little on the pricey side of things.
    • As far as features and what we'd like to see more cloud native type experiences like where NGINX and F5 kind of come together, we're moving more of the cloud just like everybody else, and it's a little clunky right now.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    • A few, rare times each year, HAProxy CPU utilization spikes to 100% and server has to be rebooted - this may be related to HAProxy OR it could be an external factor causing this.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • API security
    • WAF improvements
    • Security improvements
    • REST support
    • Kafka support and event streaming
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    IBM
    Cost of the appliance
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    It is very easy to use. I was able to find a lot of documents for it on the internet. Very good community support. There are lots of examples available to try. We mostly use a command-line user interface to interact with it. The CLI is also super easy to use and very easy to interact with
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    In terms of usability, it has many advantages over other competitors in terms of integration, as it allows for the optimized creation of integration flows in a very quick and intuitive way from browsers, allowing for granular export and import of work, guaranteeing compatibility between different versions of the product.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    We haven't used customer support. We mostly used the community version. We build a multi-node HAProxy cluster with HA to the proxy itself using opensource plugins available. With the support available on the internet and the documents available we don't need to use much customer support.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    In-Person Training
    F5
    Practical cases and hands on , many hours of training with tipical cases
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    F5
    implementation is fine
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    No answers on this topic
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    F5
    We are recently not evaluating, but we have started the deployment for WAF and we're using GTM, LTM, you name it. F5, we are using all of them.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    We chose HA Proxy because it is cheaper than a hardware balancer, it is an open-source solution with a large community behind it and with constant updates. It also allows custom scripts according to needs.HA Proxy is a solution used in many internet sites like GitHub, Reddit, Twitter, and Tuenti.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    In his brand DataPower has not competitors, in security, transform and data validations DataPower is better than other products.
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Open Source
    • Significantly lower investment vs competitors. In the case of F5s we have Virtual Editions so we're paying for the hardware to run it on top of the several thousand dollar licenses that are required for each pair and we currently have a pair of F5s per client so there's a huge potential for cost savings there.
    • Requires our network engineers to learn a new skill or our Systems engineers to take on the responsibility of managing the load balancers. It's not a huge difference either way, but it does impact the way we have done business in the past.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • It has really taken our business to the next level. We have expanded and integrated with so many new vendors and for all those integrations DataPower is serving as our security gateway.
    • We don't have to depend on any other tool for doing the load balancing of the incoming requests as that is also taken care inside the WebSphere DataPower Gateway box itself, thereby distributing the load equally.
    • It has made our platform much more secure, uniform and robust to deal with any kind of incoming message format or threat as well due to its latest security mechanisms and huge processing power.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots