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Akamai Ion vs F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) 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)
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Man...
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Akamai Ion is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) is 15.3%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
Bonieber  Orofeo - PeerSpot reviewer
Identifying compromised traffic and securing data has been a significant advantage
One of the most beneficial features of F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) ( /products/f5-big-ip-local-traffic-manager-ltm-reviews ) is its ability to identify compromised traffic and its capabilities in authentication. Additionally, the security aspect of it provides a significant advantage as it helps us secure our data, which is a major investment and benefit for us. Before using this system, we had difficulties in storing our data and managing the traffic that comes in and out.

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've worked a little bit with iRules and it is amazing."
"The load balancing function, the monitors that you can create, and iRules programmability are most valuable."
"it has TCP LAN and WAN optimization features. It has has caching."
"The solution is very easy to use and easy to understand. It's quite an intuitive system."
"The solution is robust and reliable."
"One of the best features of the solution is the operating system."
"It integrates with AWS WAF, which makes it easy to deploy without changes to your infrastructure."
"The F5 GTM/BIGIP DNS (Global Traffic Manager) is a valuable feature. This feature allows for DNS load balancing, which means that high availability and load sharing can be done across services locally, as well as across datacenters with advanced capabilities​."
 

Cons

"The product must provide more flexibility."
"Log management should display data for more than two months."
"BIG-IP LTM is taking a long time to mature in cloud environments. They plan to improve cloud integration in the next version, but it isn't out yet. It's essential because more companies are moving to the cloud these days and using things like Kubernetes or microservices. F5 needs to improve in that direction, and they are."
"Technical support could be improved."
"The price for F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager is very high. This aspect could be improved."
"I'm not very sure about the security with F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM). We have our own private data center, but we are going to migrate our private data center into the Azure cloud environment. Security will then be a major concern when we migrate our own whole infrastructure to the public cloud."
"It reaches a point where scaling is no longer possible."
"It would be good to have better traffic and better data. It would be nice to have more granularity to see packets in terms of the header details, the analytics, etc. It would be nice if that was also part of it and to have analytics added to the traffic."
"Bugs are the part of program and they are fixed with every release, as with any vendor."
"Internet and cloud support could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."
"The price of the solution is sometimes expensive."
"We purchased through the AWS Marketplace because it was a popular way to go, and we were intrigued. The price of this product is not an issue. They have good pricing and licensing."
"BIG-IP LTM isn't a cheap solution - I'd rate its pricing as three out of five."
"There are additional costs depending on what modules or what functionality is required."
"The price is little bit on higher side compared to the cost of NGINX."
"If you are planning to use security features, better to go for strong hardware and the best bundle license, which is great for web security."
"In my view, the cost is somewhat on the higher side. There are discounts available, but I wouldn't say it's overpriced. It's not cheap either, and the value for money is a bit higher from that perspective."
"The cost is high for this product, so it's not suitable for small customers, e.g. those with small environments."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 needs improvement with F5 BIG-IP?
The price needs improvement as it is quite costly.
What is your primary use case for F5 BIG-IP?
We're using F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) ( /products/f5-big-ip-local-traffic-manager-ltm-reviews ) for our applications and for managing our incoming and outgoing traffic.
 

Also Known As

No data available
F5 BIG-IP, BIG-IP LTM, F5 ASM, Viprion, F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition , Crescendo Networks Application Delivery Controller, BIG IP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Eurail, Boston Scientific
Riken, TransUnion, Tepco Systems Administration, Daejeon University, G&T Bank, Danamon, CyberAgent Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Ion vs. F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.