Amazon Elastic Load Balancing vs. F5 BIG-IP

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Elastic Load Balancing
Score 6.6 out of 10
N/A
Amazon's Elastic Load Balancing automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances, containers, IP addresses, and Lambda functions. It can handle the varying load of your application traffic in a single Availability Zone or across multiple Availability Zones. Elastic Load Balancing offers three types of load balancers with the vendor states all feature the high availability, automatic scaling, and robust security necessary to make…
$0.01
Partial Hour
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
Pricing
Amazon Elastic Load BalancingF5 BIG-IP
Editions & Modules
Gateway
$0.0125
Partial Hour
Application
$0.0225
Partial Hour
Network
$0.025
Partial Hour
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Elastic Load BalancingF5 BIG-IP
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Elastic Load BalancingF5 BIG-IP
Considered Both Products
Elastic Load Balancing
Chose Elastic Load Balancing
Again as noted we're still in the trial process seeing if we want to migrate over but the biggest benefit of elb is its interconnectivity with other Amazon web services hosted applications that our company is using and the in-house support from AWS. This is very attractive when …
Chose Elastic Load Balancing
We have not used any other solution out there in the market but our dev-ops team did deep research and AWS provided us the solution we needed to be cost-effective. Also, the decision to keep working with Amazon was strategic. We were already using other AWS features and [Amazon …
Chose Elastic Load Balancing
In the past we use physical Load Balancers. That solution works, but it had several negative points. The first, it was not elastic. It requires a physical server setup in order to work. Also a technician works for one or more days to set up the solution. And then, we had the …
F5 BIG-IP
Chose F5 BIG-IP
The logic is intelligently used in the F5 dns to build a high availability architecture for services and infinite possibilities for global balancing.
Chose F5 BIG-IP
Si bien ambos productos son buenos, la flexibilidad de F5 nos convenció de adoptarlo.

While both products are good, the flexibility of F5 convinced us to adopt it.
Chose F5 BIG-IP
Competencia directa.

Direct Competition
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 …
Chose F5 BIG-IP
versatility in terms of customizing the application specific parameters, as well as security features
Chose F5 BIG-IP
It stacks up great. I mean it does in most cases a better job. I mean there's no competition in that regard.
Chose F5 BIG-IP
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.
Chose F5 BIG-IP
We've had it for so long, we just not really ever looked elsewhere, honestly. Yeah, it's been a great tool.
Chose F5 BIG-IP
Hardware via the cloud solution from F5. I'm drawing a blank on the name right now. Distributed cloud, I think is what they call it.
Chose F5 BIG-IP
The ACE with Child Ace as well as a low balancer, but big IP tends to work better.
Chose F5 BIG-IP
There's other, Kemp is one for that would be where we see the gap, where they do better in the mid-market space and then a 10 in the larger accounts. Those are probably the two that come to mind the most.
Chose F5 BIG-IP
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.
Chose F5 BIG-IP
None, Actually since a lot of our customers are using BIG-IP, so we provide control for BIG-IP.
Chose F5 BIG-IP
Works really well. Like I was saying with the ease of use and I mean it's great hardware really fast, we've had zero issues with that, so it's been good
Chose F5 BIG-IP
Very well. They're the leader in their space and we always like to pick best of breed, which we consider F5 BIG-IP.
Chose F5 BIG-IP
We always used f5 products and we like it
Chose F5 BIG-IP
NGINX, Amazon Elastic Load Balancing and Caddy 2
Chose F5 BIG-IP
As I said previously, the F5 BIG-IP products are far and away the easiest, most robust and powerful application delivery platform I've ever worked on. The user experience was really the most noteworthy difference when using other products. The Kemp Load master platform was …
Chose F5 BIG-IP
CrowdStrike Falcon Identity Protection, CyberArk Privileged Access Management, Zscaler Internet Access and Zscaler Private Access
Chose F5 BIG-IP
F5 BIG-IP is More stable, and has more features by far.
Chose F5 BIG-IP
DDos protection is better from distributed model
Best Alternatives
Amazon Elastic Load BalancingF5 BIG-IP
Small Businesses
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 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
Amazon Elastic Load BalancingF5 BIG-IP
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(0 ratings)
5.2
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Elastic Load BalancingF5 BIG-IP
Likelihood to Recommend
It really is a straight-up situation. From my current experience if you have two or more services hosted on Amazon web services that need transactions between each other with a variable flow of traffic then elb is a fantastic method for routing that traffic and making sure that no one back and component gets overloaded with requests while other existing components are just standing there idle waiting for some traffic. As noted earlier in my review we are still doing a trial run with the service as not all of our components are hosted on AWS yet and we aren't having as great luck with transactions between hosted and non-hosted but that could also simply be a learning curve on our part.
Read full review
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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Pros
  • Good price for a complete load balancing solution
  • Very useful rules editor on listener
  • Working in conjuction with AWS WAF, is a good option to protect your applications
Read full review
  • 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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Cons
  • There are not a lot of cons but we can mention the need to always check the quotas for the ELB
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  • 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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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
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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Usability
AWS Elastic Load Balancing has this trick. First, you need to know how it works. ELB is not the only piece here. ELB has a very close relation with AWS Target Groups. You create or select a target group every time you create a Load balancer. Target groups allow you to connect the load balancer to EC2 autoscaling groups, Lambda functions, or even a single EC2 instance. While this sounds complex, it becomes easy, once you know his tricks. Thanks to the user interface, managing a ELB is an easy task. The rules editor is really useful, although it will need a bit of improvement to some interface items
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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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Support Rating
AWS gives you several support plans. On the free plan, you basicaly need to google for help, but the good news is that AWS Elastic Load Balancing works. We has more than 15 load balancers and we never run into a problem that require support. But you mght consider a support plan if you are going to do something more complex or critical
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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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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
Practical cases and hands on , many hours of training with tipical cases
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
implementation is fine
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Alternatives Considered
We have not used any other solution out there in the market but our dev-ops team did deep research and AWS provided us the solution we needed to be cost-effective. Also, the decision to keep working with Amazon was strategic. We were already using other AWS features and [Amazon Elastic Load Balancing] integrates great with those.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • Allows us to troubleshoot and address network issues, which improves our end user experience
  • Provides an integrated way to balance our network load without having to deal with other suites besides AWS, saving time and effort
  • Allows us to see the effects that different code changes have on our network performance, which means more efficient development on the back end
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  • 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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ScreenShots