Cisco Application Control Engine [EOL] vs HAProxy comparison

Cisco Application Control E...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Application Control Engine [EOL] and HAProxy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about F5, HAProxy, NetScaler and others in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC).

To learn more, read our detailed Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Report (Updated: October 2026).

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Application Control E...

Average Rating

4.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

HAProxy

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (2nd), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (13th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (6th), Bot Management (5th), Service Mesh (2nd)

Featured Reviews

it_user3834

Network Engineer at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Uncertain future. No clear direction yet.

The greatest problem with Cisco’s ADC offering is that they have ceased development of ACE hardware systems. This will surely impact future and existing customers as it puts them in limbo regarding the future of their ADC investment. Furthermore, more and more customers are giving negative feedback regarding Cisco’s perceived inadequate knowledge in this area. I've also heard that independent researchers have also received numerous complaints about Cisco’s ACE offering. Overall, Cisco’s ACE is a decent product that works for basic load-balancing requirements. It seems to me unclear how Cisco will decide to move forward with their ADC offerings. The perceived weakness of Cisco in this product space has also contributed to the somewhat poor reputation of their ADC offerings.

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Shrinivas Devarkonda

Head of DevOps at TripFactory

Handles high traffic efficiently and simplifies complex routing with rule-based logic

I think HAProxy is good as it stands now, but I believe there could be improvements. gRPC has recently been implemented, which is great, along with TLS 1.2 and 1.3 support, and HTTP 2.0 is also available. However, I'm unsure about the benchmark of those HTTP 2.0 requests on HAProxy. If there were any other protocol with better performance than HTTP 2.0, or perhaps mTLS and other similar features, including that in HAProxy would be really great. For improvements, I think that during setup and configuration, the steps provided are neat and clear. Anyone can easily install and configure it. There are many kernel tuning parameters also available, which is great. For specific improvement, in terms of logging, I think printing the full object of the request may help, or if there's a way to reference two requests, it would be beneficial to find a complete session history from a logged-in customer, as it would help analyze customer and user analytics.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"It can be tightly integrated system together with your Cisco ecosystem, and makes it a lot easier to manage as you have only one system integrator and one vendor to talk to."

"HAProxy's TCP load balancer is excellent and super stable."

"It has allowed us to evenly distribute the load across a number of servers, and check their health and automatically react to errors."

"The support for all major Linux distros makes running and testing a breeze."

"I can simplify configurations of many internal services (e.g. Web server configs) by moving some elements (like SSL) to HAProxy. I can also disable additional applications, like Varnish, by moving traffic shaping configurations to HAProxy."

"Compared to the others in the market, such as Citrix and F5, the cost per performance for Aloha appliances is extremely low, and in our experience, the performance and reliability is better."

"Four days ago, I had an inundation in my informatic room, and there was no interruption of service, because HAProxy is an excellent cluster solution."

"What I like best about the product is its simplicity and speed. When you need to set up a load balancer quickly, HAProxy offers options like sticky sessions and round-robin. It's also fast to configure, including adding SSL for security. While it may have fewer options than other solutions like F5, HAProxy gets the job done for basic load-balancing tasks."

"HAProxy has positively impacted my organization because all of my applications are now centralized in one point, so I can manage it from my load balancer machine."

More HAProxy pros

Cons

"The greatest problem with Cisco’s ADC offering is that they have ceased development of ACE hardware systems."

"We would like to see dynamic ACL and port update support. Our infrastructure relies on randomly allocated ports and this feature would allow us to update without restarting the process."

"Improving the documentation with multiple examples and scenarios would be beneficial. Most users encounter similar situations, so having a variety of scenarios readily available on the tool's website would be helpful. For instance, if I were part of the HAProxy team, I'd create a webpage with different scenarios and provide files for each scenario. This way, users wouldn't have to start from scratch every time."

"I would like to see better search handling, and a user interface, with a complete functional graphical unit."

"A significant area for improvement in HAProxy is its tenancy model; managing multiple environments can be challenging, especially with mergers, acquisitions, or domain changes."

"In my previous job we had some stability issues related to configuration and compatibility with other products."

"The basic clustering is not usable in our very specific setup."

"While troubleshooting, we are having some difficulties."

"The documentation is extremely detailed, but I think it could be restructured so it isn't so daunting for beginners."

More HAProxy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."

"We use NGINX as well. However, because the health checks are a paid feature, I like to avoid it whenever possible."

"Very good value for the money. One of the simplest licensing schemes in this category of products."

"The tool is open-source."

"The product is open source."

"Test/lab virtual machines can be installed without a licence. They can't be used for performance testing but otherwise behave like production nodes."

"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."

"It is free of cost."

More HAProxy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Comms Service Provider

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	18
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	16

Questions from the Community

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Do you recommend HAProxy?

I do recommend HAProxy for more simple applications or for companies with a low budget, since HAProxy is a free, open-source product. HAProxy is also a good choice for someone looking for a stable ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HAProxy?

Since we used the open-source version, we were not concerned about pricing, setup cost, or licensing.

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What needs improvement with HAProxy?

For the limited use that I have of HAProxy, I don't have any points to improve. I think I need more time with this tool, or perhaps I simply don't have areas that need to get better. I don't have a...

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Comparisons

No data available

F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) vs HAProxy

Compared 9% of the time

NGINX Plus vs HAProxy

Compared 9% of the time

NetScaler vs HAProxy

Compared 9% of the time

LoadBalancer Enterprise vs HAProxy

Compared 7% of the time

Kemp LoadMaster vs HAProxy

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)

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Cisco Application Control Engine [EOL] report

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Also Known As

Application Control Engine

HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE

Overview

Application Control Engine Module is a next-generation load-balancing and application-delivery solution. A member of the Cisco family of Data Center 3.0 solutions, the module helps ensure business continuity by increasing application availability, improves business productivity by accelerating application and server performance, reduces data center power, space, and cooling needs through a virtualized architecture and helps lower operational costs associated with application provisioning and scaling.

Cisco

HAProxy delivers reliability, high performance, and efficient load balancing solutions. Its open-source model ensures cost-effectiveness and scalability, ideal for managing extensive infrastructure demands with minimal latency while offering seamless integration with modern platforms.

HAProxy is renowned for its robust performance in load balancing across TCP and HTTP protocols, featuring multiple algorithms such as round-robin. Users appreciate its customizable configuration and seamless SSL termination, which make it an excellent choice for managing complex infrastructures. The platform's open-source nature supports scalability, reducing costs while providing flexible proxy operations. HAProxy efficiently handles high concurrency, enabling smooth traffic management and ensuring stability within diverse systems.

What key features does HAProxy offer?

Load Balancing: Balances TCP and HTTP traffic using algorithms like round-robin
SSL Termination: Provides secure, seamless SSL termination for user connections
Customizable Configuration: Offers detailed configuration options for tailored setups
Traffic Management: Comprehensive management of large traffic loads
Open-Source: Cost-effective, scalable solution for tech infrastructures

What benefits and ROI aspects should you consider?

Reliability: High performance with minimal latency, enhancing user satisfaction
Scalability: Open-source model ensures growth without considerable cost
Integration: Compatible with Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud services
Stability: Robust architecture supports complex infrastructures smoothly

HAProxy is extensively used in load balancing implementations across various sectors. Companies deploy it for managing high traffic, Layer 4 and Layer 7 applications, and SQL databases. It supports microservices architecture, performs SSL offloading, and manages email services like SMTP. As a reverse proxy, HAProxy delivers high availability for systems like Redis, RabbitMQ, and Apache while integrating with Docker and Kubernetes. Its features enhance web application firewall capabilities and traffic routing, making it suitable for industries demanding reliable and efficient network management.

Sample Customers

LightEdge

Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp

Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)