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A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs Akamai Ion comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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

A10 Networks Thunder ADC
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Akamai Ion
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
16th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of A10 Networks Thunder ADC is 5.9%, up from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai Ion is 2.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
A10 Networks Thunder ADC5.9%
Akamai Ion2.2%
Other91.9%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2788500 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Operations Engineer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Focused on reworking interface and ecosystem while load balancing has improved uptime
A10 Networks Thunder ADC is quite solid, but there are some issues that I face, particularly with the user interface. A current issue is that the GUI is less polished than competitors. When compared against F5 BIG-IP or Citrix ADC, the GUI is not as good. The documentation and learning curve are areas that can be improved by A10 Networks. Compared with larger vendors including F5, Cisco, or Palo Alto, A10 has a smaller ecosystem. Although A10 Networks Thunder ADC supports cloud and Kubernetes, many enterprises now expect deeper cloud-native functionality. Improvement areas include Kubernetes Ingress maturity, service mesh integration, and auto-scaling intelligence.
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Reliable bot management with valuable traffic analytics and good delivery configuration
We are using Akamai Ion primarily for CDN services. It is more about delivery configuration, and for security, we use Akamai WAF security controls and Botman Akamai Ion helps protect us from DOS, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and scraping tools. Real-time analytics are very helpful for…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The support we receive from the team is quite excellent, and nothing directly comes to mind regarding improvements for A10 Networks Thunder ADC at the moment."
"Being a public entity and having a public website which is highly visible with a lot of traffic, we are a target for DDoS. Within the last year, we have had a couple of DDoS attacks which could have affected our web traffic and taken down certain parts of our website. This did not happen because the A10 was able to mitigate the attacks using rate limiting that can be configured for DDoS mitigation on the box."
"It has provided improvement in regards to flexibility of our applications between data centers."
"The solution is stable."
"With A10, we have a very robust load balancing solution that is capable, like F5, of iRule or aFleX scripting."
"Since we switched to A10 Networks, we have had all the features that we need in a more value-oriented package."
"Overall, A10 ADC is pretty good, it's reasonably priced and easy to use."
"The most valuable features in A10 Networks Thunder ADC are the ease of configuration, user-friendliness, and simplicity to sell to customers."
"Akamai is easy to use and very effective."
"The most valuable feature is bot management."
 

Cons

"The costs can be quite high."
"The user interface is not as pretty as it could be."
"There is two-factor authentication built-in, but it could be more robust."
"One area where A10 Networks Thunder ADC could improve is the user interface, which is functional but not the most intuitive, especially for new users, making it a bit under-utilized."
"I would like them to provide learning tips and a community forum where users can share ideas. They need more detailed support articles on the A10 website."
"A10 Networks Thunder ADC is quite solid, but there are some issues that I face, particularly with the user interface."
"In future updates, I would like to see better speed in the features of A10 Networks Thunder ADC."
"The solution does logging, but the logging capacity is really small."
"Log management should display data for more than two months."
"The product must provide more flexibility."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is good they are very comparative."
"One of the main reasons for switching away from Cisco was the licensing model. A10 gives you global server load balancing for free, while Cisco charged a significant licensing fee for that."
"We just pay for support in addition to our licensing."
"For the hardware and license, we paid $35,000 per box, which was a one-time cost. Then, for the Gold Support on the two boxes, we pay $9400 annually."
"The price of the maintenance support is too expensive."
"The pricing is fine, considering the features they are providing. If you are an individual user, they'll price the product differently compared to how they price the product that is sold to an organization."
"We previously had F5 and switched because of costs."
"We did try out the solution’s Harmony analytics and visibility controller for its one-year trial. Due to the cost, we chose not to keep it onsite."
"The tool is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
I would recommend A10 Networks due that it delivers high performance in a small form factor to reduce OPEX with significantly lower power usage, rack space, and cooling requirements compared to oth...
Do you recommend A10 Networks Thunder ADC?
I do recommend A10 Networks Thunder ADC. It's very user-friendly, easy to configure, and flexible. It is a very useful solution - especially now, when a lot of employees are working remotely. I...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for A10 Networks Thunder ADC?
The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for A10 Networks Thunder ADC is a question for another department, not for me.
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Also Known As

Thunder ADC, AX Series
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

123inkt.nl, Bentley University, Box, Brainshark, Buienradar, Capgemini, CGN/LSN & NAT64, Chengdu Telecom, Club One, Code Ready, CRC Health Group, Cyso, Deutsche Telekom, Earth Class Mail, Excite, FFF Enterprises, Florence County, Framingham State University, From30
Eurail, Boston Scientific
Find out what your peers are saying about A10 Networks Thunder ADC vs. Akamai Ion and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.