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Akamai App and API Protector vs FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) 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
7.3
FortiWeb enhances security, cuts costs, saves resources, offering a 70% ROI and improving financial and operational efficiency.
 

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
6.7
FortiWeb's customer service is inconsistent, with varied experiences in responsiveness, regional support, and subscription cost concerns.
Their support is truly exceptional when I compare it with similar large-sized companies.
The back-end development team is available, and if any issue arises, they will help us immediately by providing solutions when contacted.
 

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
7.2
FortiWeb WAF is scalable, supporting diverse users, with high ratings but some licensing flexibility challenges noted.
 

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
8.1
FortiWeb is seen as stable, routinely scoring high, but users suggest using FortiAnalyzer for enhanced security management.
 

Room For Improvement

Akamai App and API Protector needs enhancements in flexibility, UI, customer support, documentation, and advanced protection features.
FortiWeb WAF requires improvements in integrations, performance, support, scalability, and more enterprise features to compete with competitors.
If inbuilt larger logging capability is added, it would enhance usability, and features like clickable options to unblock or create exceptions would greatly assist customers in managing their websites.
If some of my customers want to migrate from F5 to Fortinet Firewall, or the Fortinet WAF solution, there are some migration issues.
 

Setup Cost

Akamai App and API Protector is expensive yet considered worth the cost by large enterprises for its quality services.
FortiWeb Web Application Firewall offers flexible pricing, core and advanced features, and scalable licensing for cost-efficient protection.
If the customer has multiple websites, the price reduces automatically because it depends on the number only.
 

Valuable Features

Akamai App and API Protector delivers scalable security, ease of use, and cost-effective protection with advanced features like DDoS defense.
FortiWeb Web Application Firewall provides user-friendly setup, protection against attacks, scalability, and cost-effective security features like machine learning.
The features of FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) that have proven most effective in protecting web applications include web filtering, DDoS protection, geo-location blocking, and blocking SQL injection attacks.
Fortinet's pricing is way more competitive than Cisco or Palo Alto.
 

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)
FortiWeb Web Application Fi...
Ranking in Web Application Firewall (WAF)
16th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
24
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 FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) is 1.0%, up from 0.3% 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.
Martin Ellmann - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides users with ease of policy configuration and good integration capabilities
The solution helps protect our company's web applications against common threats up to 99 percent. We feel very safe with the tool. Speaking about how the tool has effectively mitigated web security threats for an application, I would say that it is an application behind the web portal, so there are about a hundred or thousand people who can access a website. If it is a sensitive application, and we have to watch every access to it to make it really safe, that is the reason why we need WAF on the application. My company doesn't use AI with the tool. I recommend the product to others. I would say that others need to have it if they have a shopping website or something similar. I know it is hard to sell because we find it quite hard whenever my company tries to do so. The solution offers 100 percent integration with other Fortinet security products. The ease of policy configuration in the tool is okay. I rate the tool a nine to ten 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
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

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 do you like most about FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
The most valuable features of the solution are SD-WAN, filtration, web filter, application filter, and IPS.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
The pricing for FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) is reasonable. That said, it depends on how many websites we need to protect. The licensing is based on the number of websites or individuall...
What needs improvement with FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)?
Their AI technology is good. Overall, Fortinet is only good. The improvement needed is in their response time. In the past three to four years, whenever we called for support, they responded quickl...
 

Also Known As

Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
No data available
 

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. FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.