Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Azure Traffic Manager VS Azure Application Gateway

Compare Azure Traffic Manager VS Azure Application Gateway and see what are their differences

Azure Traffic Manager logo Azure Traffic Manager

Microsoft Azure Traffic Manager allows you to control the distribution of user traffic for service endpoints in different datacenters.

Azure Application Gateway logo Azure Application Gateway

Manage traffic to your web applications using Azure Application Gateway, a load balancer that features a web application firewall and intelligent layer 7 routing.
  • Azure Traffic Manager Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-26
  • Azure Application Gateway Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-05

Azure Traffic Manager features and specs

  • Geographic Distribution
    Azure Traffic Manager allows for distributing traffic based on geographic location, which can improve load balancing and reduce latency for users by directing them to the closest endpoint.
  • Automatic Failover
    Provides automatic failover capabilities to ensure high availability by redirecting traffic to another endpoint if one goes down, improving service reliability.
  • Traffic Routing Methods
    Supports various routing methods such as priority, weighted, performance, and geographic, offering flexibility in controlling how traffic is distributed.
  • Integration with Azure Services
    Seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft Azure services, making it easier to implement and manage for organizations already using Azure.
  • Scalability
    Scales automatically to handle the demands of high-volume applications without requiring manual intervention, providing better performance management.
  • Customizable Health Probes
    Allows users to set up customizable health probes to continuously monitor the health of endpoints, ensuring traffic is directed based on endpoint availability.

Possible disadvantages of Azure Traffic Manager

  • Complex Configuration
    Setting up and configuring Azure Traffic Manager can be complex, especially for users who are not familiar with Azure or network configurations.
  • Dependency on External Services
    As a cloud-based service, it is dependent on Azure infrastructure. Any issues within Azure could potentially impact Traffic Manager performance.
  • Cost
    While Traffic Manager can optimize performance, it can also increase costs, particularly for smaller businesses or those with fluctuating traffic patterns.
  • Limited Control Over Underlying Infrastructure
    Users have limited control over the underlying Azure infrastructure, which can be a disadvantage for those who require more granular control.
  • Potential Latency
    While Traffic Manager can reduce latency by routing to nearby endpoints, the initial DNS query routing might introduce some latency.

Azure Application Gateway features and specs

  • Scalability
    Azure Application Gateway can automatically scale up or down based on traffic demands, ensuring application availability and performance without manual intervention.
  • Security Features
    It offers a Web Application Firewall (WAF) that helps protect your applications from common vulnerabilities and attacks, improving the overall security posture.
  • SSL Termination
    By offloading SSL termination to the application gateway, it reduces the web server's computation load, allowing better resource allocation.
  • URL-based Routing
    Supports URL-based routing which allows for more advanced traffic distribution strategies and optimization of backend resources.
  • Multi-Region Redundancy
    Supports configurations for multi-region redundancy, allowing for improved resilience and availability across geographical locations.

Possible disadvantages of Azure Application Gateway

  • Complexity
    Initial setup and configuration can be complex, especially for users who are not familiar with Azure services, potentially leading to increased deployment times.
  • Cost
    Costs can increase significantly with higher traffic volumes and additional features like the Web Application Firewall, impacting the overall IT budget.
  • Latency
    There might be additional latency introduced due to the routing and processing of requests through the gateway, which can affect application performance.
  • Limited Customization
    Compared to some other solutions, Azure Application Gateway offers limited customization options for specific routing and traffic management scenarios.
  • Dependency on Azure Region
    Performance and availability can be impacted by the Azure region where the application gateway is deployed, leading to potential issues if that region experiences problems.

Azure Traffic Manager videos

Azure Traffic Manager Vlog 1

Azure Application Gateway videos

Azure Application Gateways

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Azure Traffic Manager and Azure Application Gateway)
Web And Application Servers
Web Servers
67 67%
33% 33
Load Balancer / Reverse Proxy
Network & Admin
67 67%
33% 33

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Azure Application Gateway seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 1 time since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Azure Traffic Manager mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Azure Traffic Manager yet. Tracking of Azure Traffic Manager recommendations started around Mar 2021.

Azure Application Gateway mentions (1)

  • Free and Built-In TLS/SSL certificates in Azure
    It should be easy and free to enable SSL/TSL certificates in Azure. This was the number one question on UserVoice feedback. Microsoft implemented this Built-In free certificate option for some services, like Azure CDN, Front Door, Application Gateway, etc. When you put one of those services in front of your web site (like what I did with this blog), you can enable an auto-renewable Built-In certificate for free. - Source: dev.to / about 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Azure Traffic Manager and Azure Application Gateway, you can also consider the following products

nginx - A high performance free open source web server powering busiest sites on the Internet.

AWS Elastic Load Balancing - Amazon ELB automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple Amazon EC2 instances in the cloud.

Google Cloud Load Balancing - Google Cloud Load Balancer enables users to scale their applications on Google Compute Engine.

Traefik - Load Balancer / Reverse Proxy

Citrix NetScaler - Citrix ADC is an industry-leading application delivery controller, L4-7 load balancer, and GSLB that ensures 100% uptime and unmatched security across devices and locations.

Azure Load Balancer - Azure Load Balancer delivers high availability and network performance to the applications.