Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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 January 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Akamai Ion is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon Elastic Load Balancing is 1.9%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing1.9%
Akamai Ion1.3%
Other96.8%
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…
Syed Azhar - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Efficient traffic distribution and resource monitoring enhance operational reliability
Although I haven't faced any issues, improvements could involve making Amazon Elastic Load Balancing a global service, as currently, it is region-specific. Simplifying components required for load balancing, such as targets, target groups, listeners, and health checks, could also be beneficial. Ports or listeners present potential security vulnerabilities, so making it free of listeners may enhance security.

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."
"The tool integrates well with Amazon native services. Its valuable feature is integrations."
"The solution offers good load balancing."
"It is straightforward to deploy."
"The feature that I like the most is the scalability. The solutions I build often have many pieces, which are very complicated. If a client comes to me with a design, my developer has made this as a template or a cloud formation script. It's a design on paper, and I want it executed a certain way. I can do that quickly and repeatedly with AWS. That is a considerable advantage because I can take that template and do it five times in different zones. That is an excellent feature based on a template, et cetera."
"We use the solution for internet-exposed websites and internal load-balancing purposes."
"Customer support is good."
"Availability is one of the main benefits that Amazon Elastic Load Balancing provides to my company."
"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."
"Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is superior for load balancing in terms of both cost and functionality."
"The tool could enhance the internal load balancer with better health monitoring. The external load balancer needs more security parameters to protect it from the internet, as it currently lacks protection. It's okay for basic load balancing and those looking for basic functionality in an application load balancer. However, if someone is going to onboard a critical application, like in the banking sector, I wouldn't suggest Amazon Elastic Load Balancer because of security issues. There are no firewall restrictions."
"The reporting could be simplified so that the client sees a report of what they cached at the end of the month and the number of hits. It should have metrics above and beyond their Google analytics, etc. You can't do that with the solutions from AWS. You have to build sophisticated cloud trails, reports, dashboards, etc. The setup is significant, and it's hard to manage. You'll need to hire someone or pay a consultant on a regular basis to manage it, and it's not for the faint of heart."
"Clients sometimes face issues with Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, and it can take a long time to detect these issues."
"The solution needs to guarantee stability because multiple loads behind a load balancer can cause service unavailability."
"The machines created by Amazon Elastic Load Balancing have different IP addresses, which we are not able to whitelist or predict."
"The ELB would benefit from allowing deployment in a single availability zone for test servers to avoid unnecessary costs."
"The ELB would benefit from allowing deployment in a single availability zone for test servers to avoid unnecessary costs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is $30 per month."
"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 solution's pricing is low and I rate it a nine out of ten."
"The product is not cheap."
"There is a yearly license."
"The cost for using the application load balancer is approximately $18 to $21 per month."
"I have no issues with the tool's pricing."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) solutions are best for your needs.
879,853 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
33%
Media Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

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

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Akamai Ion?
Akamai is easy to use and very effective.
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 do you like most about Amazon Elastic Load Balancing?
Amazon Elastic Load Balancing transfers the data securely from servers to users and splits the traffic based on peak times.
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 ...
 

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: December 2025.
879,853 professionals have used our research since 2012.