HAProxy Community Edition vs. Kemp LoadMaster

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
HAProxy Community Edition
Score 9.4 out of 10
N/A
HAProxy 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
Kemp LoadMaster
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
LoadMaster from Kemp Technologies in New York is an application delivery controller.
$1,720
per year
Pricing
HAProxy Community EditionKemp LoadMaster
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
VLM-500
1,720
per year
VLM-500
2,000
perpetual license
VLM-3000
3,050
per year
VLM-3000
4,000
perpetual license
VLM-MAX
7,610
per year
VLM-MAX
10,000
perpetual license
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
HAProxy Community EditionKemp LoadMaster
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
HAProxy Community EditionKemp LoadMaster
Considered Both Products
HAProxy Community Edition
Kemp LoadMaster
Chose Kemp LoadMaster
Setup is easier and more straight forward on the Kemp. While I am a technical person and can setup HAProxy for the client's needs, it would be difficult for the client to manage the configuration themselves.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
HAProxy Community EditionKemp LoadMaster
Small Businesses
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
HAProxy Community EditionKemp LoadMaster
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(7 ratings)
9.1
(63 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(4 ratings)
Usability
9.1
(2 ratings)
9.0
(25 ratings)
Support Rating
9.7
(2 ratings)
9.8
(28 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
HAProxy Community EditionKemp LoadMaster
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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Kemp Technologies
Loadmaster is very powerful and flexible load balancer. Variety of options allows to create a complex network of rules and routes. During our website rollout Loadmaster allowed us to run multiple generations of the website simultaneously and seamlessly by doing the content switching on the fly. Powerful API allows easy integration into any development lifecycle.
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Pros
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
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Kemp Technologies
  • Where the LoadBalancer excels is the multiple levels at which you can load balance servers. We currently use layer 7 LB, but others are available as well.
  • I particularly like the ability for the LB to know when servers are down, and if all are offline then you can create a redirect to a static HTML page or some other destination that is more informative.
  • The ease in which a service can be created and deployed using already pre-canned templates makes it a very convenient setup process.
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Cons
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.
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Kemp Technologies
  • Ability to 'clone' existing Virtual Services for rapid deployment of similar ones.
  • A better API for ease of automation.
  • Simplification of Certificate management.
  • Better explanations of Kemp implementations of industry standard protocols like VRRP (or CARP)
  • More control over device factory reset configuration and forcibly breaking HA pairs at boot time
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Likelihood to Renew
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Kemp Technologies
I'm very pleased with the support I've received as well as the quality of the product.
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Usability
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
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Kemp Technologies
Kemp makes it very easy to setup, configure and manage the LoadMaster without needing a lot of help from their engineers. The interface is very easy to understand and intuitive to use. We like how it is not complicated - I can easily have one of my techs login and they can figure out how to setup/configure virtual services for load balancing without needing a manual or tech support.
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Support Rating
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.
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Kemp Technologies
Support has been easy to deal with; I have only need[ed] to contact them a few times during setup. Once its been in place and operational, we have not need[ed] to mess with the system [which] is a huge advantage. I like system[s] that do not break and require constant attention in a production environment.
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Implementation Rating
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Kemp Technologies
The installation was straight forward. Once i installed it, their technical support team helped me with configuration
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Alternatives Considered
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.
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Kemp Technologies
We chose Kemp LoadMaster because it is 1/10 the price of the competition and MUCH easier to deploy and configure and WORKS. We have had ZERO issues with the product since installation. Their engineers and their sales team have both reached out post-install to check in and see if everything is working as expected.
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Return on Investment
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.
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Kemp Technologies
  • We used Kemp LoadMaster for many projects. For a lot of customers, load balancers were too expensive or too complicated before we introduced Kemp products.
  • It's not a overly complicated product, so we were able to train many engineers on it and have them get a certification.
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