Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Citrix NetScaler VS Azure Application Gateway

Compare Citrix NetScaler VS Azure Application Gateway and see what are their differences

Citrix NetScaler logo 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 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.
  • Citrix NetScaler Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-06
  • Azure Application Gateway Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-05

Citrix NetScaler features and specs

  • Performance Optimization
    Citrix NetScaler improves the performance of applications by optimizing data delivery through caching, compression, and load balancing, leading to faster response times and better user experiences.
  • Scalability
    NetScaler supports high scalability, allowing businesses to efficiently manage increased loads and traffic demands without compromising performance.
  • Security Features
    Includes a robust set of security features such as a web application firewall, DDoS protection, and SSL offloading, which help protect applications from various types of cyber threats.
  • Versatile Deployment Options
    Offers flexible deployment options, including physical, virtual, and containerized appliances, allowing organizations to choose the best fit for their infrastructure needs.
  • Comprehensive Analytics
    Provides deep analytics and insights into application performance, enabling administrators to monitor and optimize their network effectively.

Possible disadvantages of Citrix NetScaler

  • Complexity
    The configuration and management of Citrix NetScaler can be complex, requiring specialized knowledge and training to effectively deploy and maintain.
  • Cost
    NetScaler can be expensive, particularly for small to mid-sized businesses, as it involves both initial setup costs and ongoing maintenance expenses.
  • Resource Intensive
    Citrix NetScaler can be resource-intensive, potentially leading to high network and hardware requirements, which may not be feasible for all organizations.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Adopting Citrix NetScaler may lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to integrate with other solutions or switch to a different provider without significant effort and cost.
  • Learning Curve
    The platform has a steep learning curve, which may be difficult for new users or IT teams that are not familiar with Citrix products, delaying deployment and optimization.

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.

Citrix NetScaler videos

Citrix Netscaler (ADC) Training Demo Part 1

More videos:

  • Review - Citrix NetScaler Visualizer

Azure Application Gateway videos

Azure Application Gateways

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Citrix NetScaler and Azure Application Gateway)
Web And Application Servers
Web Servers
57 57%
43% 43
Load Balancer / Reverse Proxy
Network & Admin
50 50%
50% 50

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.

Citrix NetScaler mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Citrix NetScaler yet. Tracking of Citrix NetScaler 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 Citrix NetScaler 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.

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

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

Traefik - Load Balancer / Reverse Proxy

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

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