F5 BIG-IP vs. NGINX Plus

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
F5 BIG-IP
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
F5 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 Plus
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
NGINX Plus is presented as a cloud‑native, easy-to-use reverse proxy, load balancer, and API gateway, from F5.
$849
per month billed annually
Pricing
F5 BIG-IPNGINX Plus
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Team
$849
per month billed annually
Advanced
$2,099
per month billed annually
Enterprise
Tiered Pricing
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
F5 BIG-IPNGINX Plus
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
F5 BIG-IPNGINX Plus
Features
F5 BIG-IPNGINX Plus
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
F5 BIG-IP
-
Ratings
NGINX Plus
7.1
Ratings
11% below category average
IDE support00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Security management00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Administration and management00 Ratings6.40 Ratings
Application server performance00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Installation00 Ratings6.70 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Best Alternatives
F5 BIG-IPNGINX Plus
Small Businesses
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
F5 BIG-IPNGINX Plus
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
5.2
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
F5 BIG-IPNGINX Plus
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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I think that NGINX Plus could be used in place of a hardware load balancer and it would be light weight and easier to configure than a hardware based load balancer but in terms of usability a GUI for said load balancer would definitely help in setting up
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Pros
  • The great thing is the IP address management that's happening. When you set up the network it's very easy and you don't have to keep on configuring everything together. Again, it's very streamlined and it's one of the biggest players there in the market for this work.
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  • Load balancing
  • Caching
  • App security
  • Boost App performance
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Cons
  • Well, not necessarily the features. I find that we have to change our processes in order to kind of match what F5 BIG-IP does. And it's not a bad thing, it's just that a lot of my engineers want to do it their way, not they F5 BIG-IP way.
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  • An AI bot would be cool to help build config files
  • More webinars for advanced NGINX Plus would be great
  • GUI tool... might already be one available
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Likelihood to Renew
We have been using F5 for the last 25 years and there is no way we will leave F5 for any other load balancers.
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No reason not to renew it, we are happy with it.
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Usability
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.
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The UI is not there.
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Support Rating
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.
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We had an issue after upgrading from RHEL 7 to 8, and there were some issues that the security team imposed upon the platform with a scanning tool. We also had a VXLAN environment that was not properly sending a gratuitous arp to the network. NGINX support was instrumental to speedily resolving our issue.
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In-Person Training
Practical cases and hands on , many hours of training with tipical cases
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
implementation is fine
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
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.
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Return on Investment
  • I would say from a security perspective, because I manage security, availability is sort of the key area for us and making sure that is properly handled through BIG-IP, that is the biggest business success, I would say from the product perspective.
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  • We are planning by using NGINX it can greatly reduce our OPEX by 50% "just our own running APIGW" the cascading effects in the long run will be much more.
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ScreenShots