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Akamai App and API Protector vs F5 Silverline Managed Services comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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
6.6
F5 Silverline Managed Services offers effective cybersecurity solutions, with variable ROI perceptions and appreciation for time and cost savings.
 

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
6.1
F5 Silverline's customer support is responsive but varies; users praise personalization but note challenges with escalations and response times.
Their support team is responsive, and they deliver timely updates, addressing any glitches promptly.
They resolve the issues by joining me to fix them.
 

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
7.8
F5 Silverline offers scalable managed services, efficiently handling enterprise demands with flexible expansion and seamless capacity management.
F5 Silverline Managed Services is scalable enough without observed limitations.
The solution is fully scalable, and I would give it a rating of ten on a scale of one to ten for scalability.
 

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
7.3
F5 Silverline delivers stable performance with strong monitoring, minimal downtime, effective support, and high stability ratings despite occasional issues.
They offer regular updates, and overall, I would rate the stability of the solution as nine out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

Akamai App and API Protector needs enhancements in flexibility, UI, customer support, documentation, and advanced protection features.
F5 Silverline needs improved pricing, integration, user interfaces, automation, API, and enhanced features like AI and bot detection.
Introducing preemptive support prompts would reduce the manual effort required for creating policies or blocking specific IPs.
Improvements could include the creation of highly optimized profiles.
 

Setup Cost

Akamai App and API Protector is expensive yet considered worth the cost by large enterprises for its quality services.
Enterprise users view F5 Silverline pricing as competitive but costly, with room for negotiation and flexible licensing options.
On a scale where ten is very expensive, I would rate the pricing as three.
The solution is expensive
 

Valuable Features

Akamai App and API Protector delivers scalable security, ease of use, and cost-effective protection with advanced features like DDoS defense.
F5 Silverline Managed Services provides easy setup, robust security features, excellent scalability, and effective DDoS protection with comprehensive reporting.
It allows for centralized management of certificates, protecting applications from top ten attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
The monitoring tab displays GET and POST requests in a readable format, making it accessible even to non-tech-savvy individuals.
 

Categories and Ranking

Akamai App and API Protector
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
8th
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (10th)
F5 Silverline Managed Services
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
23rd
Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 F5 Silverline Managed Services is 1.2%, up from 1.1% 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.
Archana Heeralal - PeerSpot reviewer
A reasonably priced product with a good UI, but the navigation is difficult, and the support team takes a long time to respond
Since we use the solution’s cloud, the product has more control over the back end. The customer will not have control. It is part of the product’s feature. When we get more complex requirements or if we want to write more complex tools, the support team will have the visibility to write them because they have control. The navigation is difficult to use. The navigation should be improved. Other products are quite straightforward. If I try to implement a new application and do an onboarding, it is not very easy. We must go to one feature, inside which there will be more features. It should be simplified, and a menu should be provided.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
 

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.
Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?
For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Silverline Managed Services?
The solution is quite reasonably priced, with costs being lower in comparison to competitors. On a scale where ten is very expensive, I would rate the pricing as three. It offers cost savings and i...
 

Also Known As

Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
F5 Silverline Web Application Firewall, F5 Silverline DDoS Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet
City Bank, Ricacorp Properties, Miele, American Systems, Bangladesh Post Office
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai App and API Protector vs. F5 Silverline Managed Services and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.