Kemp LoadMaster vs. NGINX

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
NGINX, a business unit of F5 Networks, powers over 65% of the world's busiest websites and web applications. NGINX started out as an open source web server and reverse proxy, built to be faster and more efficient than Apache. Over the years, NGINX has built a suite of infrastructure software products o tackle some of the biggest challenges in managing high-transaction applications. NGINX offers a suite of products to form the core of what organizations need to create…N/A
Pricing
Kemp LoadMasterNGINX
Editions & Modules
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Kemp LoadMasterNGINX
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Kemp LoadMasterNGINX
Considered Both Products
Kemp LoadMaster
Chose Kemp LoadMaster
When we looked at other load balancers, we ran into some issues. For some of the free ones, these don't necessarily perform as well - which is probably why they are free. When looking at some of the other brands, some are too complicated to use - they may have a ton of advanced …
NGINX

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Kemp LoadMasterNGINX
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
Kemp LoadMaster
-
Ratings
NGINX
8.2
21 Ratings
3% above category average
IDE support00 Ratings7.310 Ratings
Security management00 Ratings8.018 Ratings
Administration and management00 Ratings8.118 Ratings
Application server performance00 Ratings8.718 Ratings
Installation00 Ratings9.418 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance00 Ratings8.016 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Kemp LoadMasterNGINX
Small Businesses
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Score 8.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Kemp LoadMasterNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(63 ratings)
8.8
(48 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(4 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(25 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.8
(28 ratings)
8.1
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Kemp LoadMasterNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
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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F5
[NGINX] is very well suited for high performance. I have seen it used on servers with 1k current connections with no issues. Despite seeing it used in many environments I've never seen software developers use it over apache, express, IIS in local dev environments so it may be more difficult to setup. I've also seen it used to load balance again without issues.
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Pros
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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F5
  • Very low memory usage. Can handle many more connections than alternatives (like Apache HTTPD) due to low overhead. (event-based architecture).
  • Great at serving static content.
  • Scales very well. Easy to host multiple Nginx servers to promote high availability.
  • Open-Source (no cost)!
Read full review
Cons
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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F5
  • Customer support can be strangely condescending, perhaps it's a language issue?
  • I find it a little weird how the release versions used for Nginx+ aren't the same as for open source version. It can be very confusing to determine the cross-compatibility of modules, etc., because of this.
  • It seems like some (most?) modules on their own site are ancient and no longer supported, so their documentation in this area needs work.
  • It's difficult to navigate between nginx.com commercial site and customer support. They need to be integrated together.
  • I'd love to see more work done on nginx+ monitoring without requiring logging every request. I understand that many statistics can only be derived from logs, but plenty should work without that. Logging is not an option in many environments.
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Likelihood to Renew
Kemp Technologies
I'm very pleased with the support I've received as well as the quality of the product.
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F5
Great value for the product
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Usability
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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F5
Front end proxy and reverse proxy of Nginx is always useful. I always prefer to Nginx in overall usability when you have application server and database or multiple application servers and single database i.e. clustered application. Nginx provides really good features and flexibility which helps the system administrator in case of troubleshooting and also from the administration perspective. Also, Nginx doesn't delay any request because of internal performance issues.
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Support Rating
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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F5
Community support is great, and they've also had a presence at conferences. Overall, there is no shortage of documentation and community support. We're currently using it to serve up some WordPress sites, and configuring NGINX for this purpose is well documented.
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Implementation Rating
Kemp Technologies
The installation was straight forward. Once i installed it, their technical support team helped me with configuration
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F5
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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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F5
We have used Traffic, Apache, Google Cloud Load Balancing and other managed cloud-based load balancers. When it comes to scale and customization nothing beats Nginx. We selected Nginx over the others because
  • we have a large number of services and we can manage a single Nginx instance for all of them
  • we have high impact services and Nginx never breaks a sweat under load
  • individual services have special considerations and Nginx lets us configure each one uniquely
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Return on Investment
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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F5
  • Nginx has decreased the burden of web server administration and maintenance, and we are spending less time on server issues than when we were using Apache.
  • Nginx has allowed more people in our company to get involved with configuring things on the web server, so there's no longer a single point of failure ("the Apache guy").
  • Nginx has given us the ability to handle a larger number of requests without scaling up in hardware quite so quickly.
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ScreenShots

NGINX Screenshots

Screenshot of Overview of the NGINX Application PlatformScreenshot of NGINX Controller - MonitoringScreenshot of NGINX Controller - Configuration