No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Akamai Ion vs Amazon Elastic Load Balancing comparison

 

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

Akamai Ion
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
15th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Akamai Ion is 2.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon Elastic Load Balancing is 2.5%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing2.5%
Akamai Ion2.0%
Other95.5%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

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…
RR
Senior technical manager at a recreational facilities/services company with 11-50 employees
Has helped improve availability and manage peak traffic more efficiently
I am using Elastic File Store for Amazon File Services, which is the full name of the Elastic File System we are working with. I have been working with Amazon Elastic Load Balancing for more than three years for various applications and moving on from F5. We use Amazon Elastic Load Balancing with AWS FSx, a file service from NetApp. When there is high load and an auto-scaling group is attached, Amazon Elastic Load Balancing provides assistance. It provides content-based routing features of the application load balancer, though this adds to cost, so we have those only for critical apps. I utilize the Network Load Balancer, which we still have on-premises. The Network Load Balancer is helpful for performance enhancement and availability. Amazon Elastic Load Balancing offers flexibility as it can be accessed from various regions and zones. Availability is one of the main benefits that Amazon Elastic Load Balancing provides to my company. For any critical application that needs to be available, we use it primarily for availability. Amazon Elastic Load Balancing helps during peak traffic times by using round-robin ordering to move traffic.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Akamai is easy to use and very effective."
"The most valuable feature is bot management."
"I find it valuable that you can provide rule prioritization and set priorities for path-based routing."
"Amazon Elastic Load Balancing transfers the data securely from servers to users and splits the traffic based on peak times."
"The solution is known for its scalability and stability."
"I recommend the AWS network load balancer for high-traffic web applications due to its speed and control over configuration settings, which allows handling low-level details efficiently."
"The network load balancer is really fast."
"Security and monitoring for high-performance applications are some of the top features."
"It has very good features. It is very configurable. Security with TLS, et cetera is also very easy."
"Amazon Elastic Load Balancing helps me efficiently distribute incoming application or network traffic across multiple targets, such as Amazon EC2 instances."
 

Cons

"Log management should display data for more than two months."
"The product must provide more flexibility."
"The product should be made as an alternative to Amazon services. It would be easier for us if you got one service that is available everywhere."
"Clients sometimes face issues with Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, and it can take a long time to detect these issues."
"The ELB would benefit from allowing deployment in a single availability zone for test servers to avoid unnecessary costs."
"The machines created by Amazon Elastic Load Balancing have different IP addresses, which we are not able to whitelist or predict."
"One issue that we faced with ALB was that leaf-level certificate validation was not happening. It is not that user-friendly in that aspect."
"The product's stability is an area with a slight shortcoming, which can be improved."
"They should improve the solution's pricing."
"The latency compared to the network load balancer could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."
"The product is not cheap."
"There is a yearly license."
"The solution's pricing is $30 per month."
"The solution is expensive."
"I have no issues with the tool's pricing."
"The solution's pricing is low and I rate it a nine out of ten."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of connections one uses. It is a free tool for a certain amount of connections, which runs into thousands, and after that, there is a certain amount to be paid to Amazon."
"The cost for using the application load balancer is approximately $18 to $21 per month."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Media Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai Ion?
The billing cycle is monthly, however, payment is done yearly. While expensive, it provides value for the services offered.
What needs improvement with Akamai Ion?
Log management should display data for more than two months. The traffic report needs to be more flexible. The response time of technical support should be improved.
What is your primary use case for Akamai Ion?
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.
What needs improvement with Amazon Elastic Load Balancing?
Cost is definitely an area of improvement for Amazon. Availability can be improved through the addition of more regions. For example, in India, we have just two regions at the moment, which impacts...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Elastic Load Balancing?
We use several Amazon solutions including Lambda, S3, and EKS. Within EKS, there are various microservices, and DynamoDB is one of them in terms of databases. We also use various applications such ...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Elastic Load Balancing?
I would prefer to remain totally anonymous. I am a partner with Amazon. I rate this solution as 8 out of 10.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Eurail, Boston Scientific
Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Ion vs. Amazon Elastic Load Balancing and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.