Thinking about moving from HAProxy to a proprietary load balancer?

You're in good company, many people like you are using it — because it's the one of the most flexible and powerful load balancers available.

However, sometimes you feel like you need something more...

Maybe you should invest in a commercial load balancer instead?

Bottom line — Don't!

HAProxy is without a doubt the most versatile and capable open source load balancer. A veritable swiss-army knife of functionality, with a huge developer and support community - much larger than a single organisation.

As many of you will know, I’ve already taken a rather passionate stand on HAProxy vs NGINX. And that’s why we chose HAProxy as one of the major building blocks of our commercial load balancer appliance.

Unlike other vendors, we’re very open about what we use and why. And when we implement new functionality, we give it back to the community, for example:

• Integrating a 'server side' feedback agent into the main branch of HAProxy
• Releasing an open source SNMP MIB and agent for HAProxy
• Integration of an external health check into the main branch of HAProxy

Simply put, more eyes means that open source tools are stronger, better, faster and more secure. Which is fundamentally why we believe open source is better than proprietary.

And we're not alone. Thousands of people use open source to attain more flexible technology solutions and faster innovation.

So why pay more to be locked in to a commercial product?

Be aware that commercial vendors may try and debunk open source by playing on your fears:

• Fear that you are on your own
• Fear that you’ve configured it wrong
• Fear that you won't be able to fix it
• Fear that its not as good as commercial
• Fear that you will be hacked
• Fear that you will be blamed

Don’t cave in to your fears — You should stick with HAProxy.

I truly mean that. Thousands of people already do and they are happy.

Most commercial load balancers have very similar functionality to HAProxy. They are just easier to use in certain situations, and may have lots of nice extras like reporting and graphing.  SNAPT was a great example of how to sell a nice frontend to HAProxy.

In fact, as I’ve discussed before, commercial load balancers are all very similar to each other, which by definition makes them a commodity.

Hopefully you are no longer scared of using HAProxy.

But if you decide you might need something more, then speak to us to get advice on your options and how to get exactly what you need.

We genuinely care about your outcomes and will never knowingly mis-sell a product just to make a quick buck.  Because if it doesn’t solve your problem, what's the point?

Your freedom to choose the best solution is important to us. And if we don’t think we can help you — then we’ll be honest about it.

Our sole purpose is to understand what you need to be successful, and help you deliver that by:

• Listening and understanding where you want to end up on your journey
• Giving you confidence with security, performance and stability
• Offering advice and consultancy that goes beyond just load balancing
  

And because we already use and love HAProxy it’s not only easy to move to us, but in the unlikely event that you try our products but then change your mind, with Loadbalancer.org you can simply take your existing config and go back to the free version of HAProxy.

How’s that for a get out of jail free card?

P.S. We mean what we say about helping you make the right choice for you. HAProxy Enterprise is nothing to do with us - but we are friends and you should check them out as well. Tell them we sent you!

Talking of friends, we're very sad to hear whats happened to SNAPT Aira, that was another great commercial alternative to HAProxy.

But don't forget to talk to us first!