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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

    NGINX

    Score9.2 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
    F5 BIG-IPNGINX
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    F5 BIG-IPNGINX
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    F5 BIG-IPNGINX
    Considered Both Products
    F5
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    NGINX is known for its high performance and scalability, particularly in serving static content and handling large volumes of concurrent connections.
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    I used NGINX and Cloudflare CDN and now that F5 owns NGINX it’s been an easy switch. Cloudflare has a very intuitive platform that makes it easy to get up and running. Most of my experience is with F5 and I’m happy to say it’s made my experience streamlined enough that I …
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    Porque nos es agnóstico a la tecnología implementada, de esta manera podemos evaluar en un futuro adquirir nuevas tecnologías y no depender de un solo vendor para implementar distintas necesidades que puedan surgir a futuro. Por lo tanto, se puede decir que los productos de F5 …
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    Number of issues or errors are very small, F5 BIG-IP change OS/Firmware architecture to microservice run on the container to easy to maintain and upgrade. Good support from engineer teams. Security functions upgrade and F5 BIG-IP is one important component in F5 Platform …
    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
    They agility of the product and the simplicity is great compare to other solutionsv
    Incentivized
    Chose F5 BIG-IP
    F5 BIG-IP meet the requirements and was on the company approved product list to purchase
    Incentivized
    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 has wide range of the environment coverage, including on-prem and clouded, it also has lots of options and flexibility in term of the processing the traffic (I.e. irule to customized based on the application need), unlike the application gateway which limited ONLY to what …
    Incentivized
    F5
    Chose NGINX
    Have not used anything further. Did table with the web service for ab it.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    99%
    Would buy again
    195 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    30 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    158 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    26 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    194 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    30 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    132 Answers
    90%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    18 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    95%
    Implementation went as expected
    148 Answers
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    26 Answers
    Features
    F5 BIG-IPNGINX
    Application Servers
    Comparison of Application Servers features of F5 BIG-IP and NGINX
    Feature
    F5 BIG-IP
    -
    Ratings
    NGINX
    7.8
    21 Ratings
    2% below category average
    IDE support00 Ratings7.210 Ratings
    Security management00 Ratings8.018 Ratings
    Administration and management00 Ratings7.018 Ratings
    Application server performance00 Ratings8.018 Ratings
    Installation00 Ratings9.718 Ratings
    Open-source standards compliance00 Ratings7.016 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    F5 BIG-IPNGINX
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    Oracle WebLogic Server
    Score7.5 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Red Hat JBoss EAP
    Score7.3 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    F5 BIG-IPNGINX
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.2
    (129 ratings)
    8.8
    (48 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    5.2
    (6 ratings)
    8.1
    (4 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    F5 BIG-IPNGINX
    Likelihood to Recommend
    F5
    Definitely in larger environments, more mature organizations that obviously have the budget to spend and want best in class. Where it struggles is those organizations that don't have the funding and money to spend on it and need more basic functionality. So I'd say that's smaller customers we've worked with and kind of mid-market. They tend to get scared when they get the quotes. Also we've had some struggles with account team consistency. So for the sales team, just a lot of turnover and a lot of missteps on customer calls.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    F5
    • I mean from a basic level, it actually satisfies all the use cases we have, which is basically to have multiple web servers for the front end and then you want that to be equally split across. The traffic comes in from all over the world. We use DRA protection and everything, but then we also internally want to make sure all the servers are being utilized and we provide much more availability across all servers. We just make sure BIG-IP sits in between and handles the traffic accordingly. And it's pretty basic and it comes to drawing traffic. It's pretty easy to configure and set it up and then forget.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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)!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    F5
    • Recently we have been deploying F5 web application firewall and we have started the deployment. We have already moved applications out there, but we are not yet to the point wherein I could comment any positive feedback or any negative feedback because we are still going through it, right. But as far as I'm concerned, I don't see any drawbacks or any shortcomings on the F5 product lineup.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    F5
    So far experience with F5 BIG-IP has been good, but we are only 6 months into the deployment and will depend on how things run over time.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    Great value for the product
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    F5
    It's not difficult to understand the parts of application configurations and features. Setting up new virtual servers with multiple profiles, certificates, and nodes is easy for new users through the web interface, which also translates to programability in scripts, DevOps, or other configuration management use-cases. Users from different backgrounds such as networking and infrastructure can use F5 BIG-IP, while users who are familiar with API calls can easily configure objects without needing to understand the platform at all.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    F5
    On the occasions when we've had to engage f5 support, they have been great. They have always resolved our issues quickly and been easy to work with and professional. The reason I give them a 10 out of 10, however, is because when we've had issues that have crossed over between the f5 BIG-IP, our Cisco switches, and our Microsoft IIS server the f5 support representatives have been extremely knowledgeable about every product and device involved and have been able to troubleshoot end-to-end without having to engage other vendors.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    F5
    Practical cases and hands on , many hours of training with tipical cases
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    F5
    implementation is fine
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    F5
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    F5
    That's the one thing that really stood out. It was a lot easier to use from an administrator standpoint, so I think that's the one thing that really made our team decide to go with this product versus another competitor. Just ease of use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    F5
    • F5 BIG-IP has a highly positive impact on the customers. The main impact is on the security of the web applications.
    • F5 BIG-IP provides an easy and safe way to connect employees to assets and applications that reside in an on-premises environment.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    NGINX Screenshots

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