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Akamai Ion vs Fortinet FortiADC 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
Fortinet FortiADC
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Akamai Ion is 1.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiADC is 8.7%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiADC8.7%
Akamai Ion1.9%
Other89.4%
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…
GANESAN K - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Engineer at Safezone Secure Solutions Private Limited
Has supported load balancing for medical applications and could benefit from more custom configuration options
Some customers need custom management for handling their applications across the servers. Instead of having a predefined solution, if we had space for custom-based algorithms to load balance the traffic, it would be better. We have faced such cases with A10, where we can leverage many custom scripts and do much more. Even though A10 primarily focuses on SMBs, they have also ventured into the enterprise market. Fortinet has been a pioneer for enterprise solutions, such as firewalls, SASE, ZTNA, and SD-WAN solutions, and they are in a leader quadrant. Therefore, they should have more options. From a pricing perspective, it is expensive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is bot management."
"Akamai is easy to use and very effective."
"FortiADC helps application availability and improves user-response time, and in addition, the price is competitive."
"Content caching and content compression are good features."
"Because ADC is the intermediary between the servers and the end-user application, it gives thorough information about the traffic, what the problem is."
"The user interface is very easy and integrates with Sandbox easily."
"Customer service is excellent."
"The most valuable feature is the SSL offloading capacity."
"It helps with defining server load balancing tasks and managing SSL certificates, ensuring the communication flow through the Fortinet gateway."
"The most valuable feature is its simplicity."
 

Cons

"Log management should display data for more than two months."
"The product must provide more flexibility."
"The WAF function implementation would be better if we could do it very easily and in a user-friendly way."
"The solution's WAF needs an upgrade because it is not as good as FortiWeb, VMware, F5, or Imperva."
"I think it would be helpful if Fortinet put more video examples on their cookbook site."
"The L7 Persistent load-balancing algorithm has not worked for me after having tested it many times with my customer's in-house application."
"Fortinet has some drawbacks, and it can be a bit challenging to scale."
"FortiADC is complex to configure so the interface should be improved."
"Because it is so generic, the documentation requires special attention. A person who has not worked on Fortinet FortiADC or a similar product will struggle to understand what the document is trying to say."
"When the FortiADC is part of a platform with components like FortiManager and FortiGate, automation and pushing configuration are very inconvenient."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."
"I believe the price is good. It's fair. There are no extra costs."
"The price is competitive"
"The solution is less expensive than F5 or Imperva and is the most reasonably priced option available."
"The solution could be more cost-effective."
"The product has average pricing. I rate its pricing a five out of ten."
"Compared to F5, FortiADC pricing is better."
"They offer a perpetual license."
"Our basic license excludes features such as antivirus and IDS. Due to license limitations, some functionalities are not configured."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
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.
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.
Do you recommend Fortinet FortiADC?
I recommend Fortinet FortiADC. My experience with Fortinet has been very positive. Our company has been using it for around five years. We mainly use FortiADC for the load balancing of application ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiADC?
Pricing is not considered on our side since we are the implementation team. Our pre-sales team considers the pricing and all the details.
 

Also Known As

No data available
FortiADC Application Delivery Controller, FortiADC
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Eurail, Boston Scientific
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Ion vs. Fortinet FortiADC and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.