NGINX Ingress Controller vs. Portainer

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
NGINX Ingress Controller
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
NGINX Ingress Controller is a traffic management solution for cloud‑native apps in Kubernetes and containerized environments.N/A
Portainer
Score 9.6 out of 10
N/A
Portainer is a centralized container management platform for containerized apps and IoT device management. It helps accelerate container adoption and reduce time-to-value on Kubernetes, Docker, and Swarm with a management portal, allowing users to deliver and manage containerized applications from the data center to the edge. Portainer helps - Reduce the operational complexity associated with multi-cluster management Bridge the skills gap and facilitate feature…
$0
Pricing
NGINX Ingress ControllerPortainer
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Portainer Business - 3 Nodes Free
$0
Home & Student
$149
per year
Starter
$995
per year
Professional
$2995
per year
Enterprise
Contact Sales for Pricing
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
NGINX Ingress ControllerPortainer
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
NGINX Ingress ControllerPortainer
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
NGINX Ingress Controller
7.8
Ratings
1% above category average
Portainer
8.5
Ratings
9% above category average
Security and Isolation7.50 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization7.50 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Discovery Tools8.20 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks7.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery7.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging7.90 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Cluster Management00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Storage Management00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Best Alternatives
NGINX Ingress ControllerPortainer
Small Businesses
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.6 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
NGINX Ingress ControllerPortainer
Likelihood to Recommend
7.9
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
NGINX Ingress ControllerPortainer
Likelihood to Recommend
Best suited if we have to manage external traffic inside your Kubernetes cluster and want to use granular control to your applications.
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Many developers, especially lesser experienced developers, don't have a really good background in setting up containers from the command line. Portainer is invaluable to them. Giving a UI to them gives them much more confidence and allows them to learn properties and capabilities of containers under far less stress. On the flip side of this, giving then a UI on a production system can lead to chaos...never give junior developers access to production servers.
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Pros
  • Provide access to containers
  • Manage traffic
  • Route traffic
  • Lightweight
  • Near to zero downtime
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  • Separating server maintenance with application development, providing a clear user interface for developers who don't want to worry about the underlying server.
  • RBAC for container deployment linked to a SAML IDP, not something particularly easy in a native Docker instance but point and shoot in Portainer, allowing the use of Azure / Okta etc to provide user access.
  • Image management with multiple repositories is super clear and reduces incidents
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Cons
  • Its not related to Ingress functionality but certificate management with cloud vendor would be a feature i would like to see.
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  • Lack of granular RBAC control: While Portainer does have role-based access control (RBAC) features, they are not as granular as some users would like. Some users have reported that they would like to have more control over permissions for individual users or groups. This would enable more fine-grained control over who has access to which containers or clusters.
  • Limited support for non-Docker container technologies: While Portainer is primarily designed to manage Docker containers, it does have some limited support for other container technologies like Kubernetes and Docker Swarm. However, this support is not as robust as it is for Docker, and some users have reported that they would like to see better support for other container technologies.
  • Limited control over container networking: Portainer's networking features are somewhat limited compared to other container management tools. Some users have reported that they would like more control over container networking, including the ability to create custom networks and control IP addresses.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
It is an excellent tool.
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Usability
No answers on this topic
Accessibility for Non-Experts: even with some people having a bit longer on-boarding it is still very simple Quick setup is insanely useful, we can get it running in 10 seconds after installing docker Portainer has once again super clean UI and is very user friendly. Deployment/monitoring and management are super easy. I can tell just from a glance if something is out of date (watching at you Watchtower not doing your job for some reason)
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
One of their staff members jumped on a video call immediately with me and led me through the problem and solution during a quick session of screen sharing. In this day and age that is above and beyond, especially when it comes to software. It took approximately 5-10 minutes to diagnose and fix, including pleasantries!
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
It is really easy. Just follow the documentation.
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Alternatives Considered
We are already using NGINX which is so reliable, it definitely lends weight to our decision to select NGINX Ingress Controller. Also, even though it is a little more complex to manage, NGINX Ingress Controller definitely have a richer feature set, better performance, caching, traffic management among other features which was why it was chosen.
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Portainer takes the cup in terms of usability and features. It is also more useful for smaller deployments, whereas Kubernetes in our opinion and experience, could probably be more suited to certain other use cases. Portainer is also a fresh feel among all the preexisting container management solutions and brings positivity and a new breeze in the industry.
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Return on Investment
  • Security is one of the best objective which we achieve with NGINX Ingress
  • Cost optimization is one of the business objective
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  • Instead of having 1 senior who does all the setup, debugging and caretaking of "all things docker" we now split the load on basically everyone in the team. Hard to put into direct numbers but with everyone helping themselves, noone alone is forced into that position "because you know how to do it" and overall we're more productive
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ScreenShots

Portainer Screenshots

Screenshot of Portainer is a universal container management platform to help adopt and manage Docker, Kubernetes, Nomad and Edge environments.