I have been working with big-ip products for approximately 15 years and recently wanted to criticize a topic. A very simple operational requirement “Send an email whenever a critical system event occurs”.
This is something I can configure within a few minutes on other platforms such as Paloalto Networks firewall or Fortinet Fortigates or even in Netscaler.
This feels somewhat unexpected in 2026, especially given that many competing platforms provide a simple GUI-based alerting framework out of the box.
I assume it’s due to a lack of customer demand. The F5 has a good history of listening it’s customers and adding features when there is a large amount of customer and market demand. An example being the new system of Hardened Releases.
Most of my customers have no requirement for a BIG-IP to send an email for critical system events. They have monitoring systems that will detect the failures and generate emails. Others have systems that watch the log message and send emails for major events. Some are adding AI systems for monitoring and notification.
You primary listed firewalls. The firewall market has different product requirements that the application controller / load balancer market.
I believe the Netscaler and BIG-IP have different requirements because they serve different application controller / load balancer sub markets. I all ways recommend BIG-IP. I feel that it’s the better product.