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Akamai App and API Protector vs Azure Front Door comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.8
Akamai App and API Protector offers superior traffic management, security, and cost savings for large infrastructures, despite higher costs.
Sentiment score
7.6
Azure Front Door offers cost savings and efficient management, yielding a clear return on investment despite initial transition uncertainties.
Azure Front Door offers a quick return on investment once it is set up.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
Customer service is excellent, while technical support has mixed reviews with praise for expertise but needs improved availability.
Sentiment score
7.2
Azure Front Door receives high marks for customer service, with users praising knowledgeable support staff and clear documentation.
I am able to set up a critical call with Microsoft, and they respond quickly to tickets with the highest severity.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Akamai App and API Protector excels in scalability, seamlessly handling extensive user demands and large-scale deployments with stability.
Sentiment score
7.6
Azure Front Door offers scalable, reliable solutions for enterprises, enhancing performance and managing applications efficiently despite higher costs.
I find that Front Door can become expensive for large-scale projects with more transactions and users.
Scaling can be done anytime as needed.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Akamai App and API Protector is highly stable and reliable, with no reported outages or issues over years of use.
Sentiment score
8.5
Azure Front Door is praised for high stability and reliability, though some DNS management issues are occasionally noted.
I rate Azure Front Door's stability a nine because it is easy to make updates through Azure Portal.
 

Room For Improvement

Akamai App and API Protector needs enhancements in flexibility, UI, customer support, documentation, and advanced protection features.
Azure Front Door requires enhancements in multi-cloud support, load balancing, IP support, latency, UI, pricing, rules, monitoring, and APIs.
If I could use Azure Front Door with private IP addresses, it would be more beneficial.
The only significant adjustment required is with URL set parameters that need to be passed for an existing domain.
 

Setup Cost

Akamai App and API Protector is expensive yet considered worth the cost by large enterprises for its quality services.
Azure Front Door's pay-as-you-go pricing offers flexibility, with costs and value balancing for various project needs.
Azure Front Door is cheaper for small projects, companies, or applications compared to using separate tools.
 

Valuable Features

Akamai App and API Protector delivers scalable security, ease of use, and cost-effective protection with advanced features like DDoS defense.
Azure Front Door provides scalable, secure, and affordable solutions with advanced features like SSL offloading, load balancing, and DDoS protection.
Azure Front Door provides DDoS protection and features related to WAF.
Azure Front Door includes a built-in web application firewall, which performs signature-based checks of the request payload, offering protection against common attacks or malicious requests.
 

Categories and Ranking

Akamai App and API Protector
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (4th), Cloud and Data Center Security (10th)
Azure Front Door
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
13th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
CDN (2nd), Microsoft Security Suite (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Web Application Firewall (WAF) category, the mindshare of Akamai App and API Protector is 3.6%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Front Door is 4.5%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

Featured Reviews

Deepesh  Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Bot Manager and different features to manage threats
As a product, it has good capabilities, including professional support. However, it's risky for us to rely on AI for real-time traffic management. We use in-house analytics but avoid automatic actions due to their high impact. For example, I live in a developing country. Everyone has different types of phones, apps, and everything else. So, if someone is using a legacy phone, that is still a use case here. If AI decides that this is an end-of-life phone or end-of-life Android operating system, it starts blocking that traffic. We may potentially lose millions or probably thousands and hundreds of thousands of hits per second. Everything is all about how well we serve payments because we're into payments. So, AI is used for analytics but not for real-time decisions. We can't afford to block traffic based on AI models due to the variety of devices and operating systems our users have.
SayedAbdelrhman - PeerSpot reviewer
Provide bot protection and has proficient documentation
During our discussion with the internal Microsoft team about assessing our environment, they confirmed that we have sufficient security measures, especially regarding edge protection. Internally, we believe we are now certified. In the future, we could consider adding layer four protection from the firewall. Front Door combines CDN and WAF protection, so further enhancing its features could benefit both the customer and us. We monitor the number of users attempting to access our IP or DNS servers. When designing the system, we initially needed to ensure our environment was protected with a WAF. However, WAF is currently too costly for us, so we created private links and connected them to Front Door. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
5%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai Web Application Protector?
The price is higher than others. It could be about 80% to 70% more expensive than other tools. So, it’s not just a slight difference.
What needs improvement with Akamai Web Application Protector?
It could have better analytics and reporting visibility in the OEM console.
What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides excellent support. Azure Front Door can quickly detect abnormalities before the...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Front Door?
I am not sure about the pricing but believe Azure Front Door might require a higher cost due to its entry point nature.
 

Also Known As

Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
Azure Front-Door
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai App and API Protector vs. Azure Front Door and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.