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Akamai Ion vs HAProxy 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
HAProxy
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Service Mesh (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Akamai Ion is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HAProxy is 11.9%, down from 12.7% 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…
Kaushlendra Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Used for load balancing, but its dashboard and reporting could be improved
We use the solution for load balancing The solution's implementation and troubleshooting are not easy. The solution's dashboards and reports could be improved. I have been using HAProxy for 12 years. We didn’t face any issues with the solution’s stability. I rate the solution’s stability an…

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."
"HAProxy's TCP load balancer is excellent and super stable."
"Software defined load balancing allows us to dynamically adjust and codify routing decisions. This speeds up development."
"Load balancing is valuable, and we are also using the WAF feature."
"We don't have a problem with the user interface. it's good."
"I estimate that this product has saved our company hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in possible downtime from previous load balancers. We make a lot of our money from online sales, so it is critical to have 99.9% uptime."
"It is scalable."
"​It has allowed us to evenly distribute the load across a number of servers, and check their health and automatically react to errors."
"I can't speak to all of the HAProxy features because we don't use them all, but load balancing is very good."
 

Cons

"Log management should display data for more than two months."
"The product must provide more flexibility."
"We need to handle new connections by dropping, or queuing them while the HAProxy restarts, and because HAProxy does not handle split config files."
"The visibility could be improved."
"There are three main areas to improve: 1) Make remote management more modern by adding API. 2) Propose a general HA ​solution for HAProxy (no I'm using keepalived for this). 3) Thread option should be a bit more stable."
"We would like to see dynamic ACL and port update support. Our infrastructure relies on randomly allocated ports and this feature would allow us to update without restarting the process."
"The solution can be improved by controlling TCP behavior better and mandating to clients what the expected outcome must be in order to avoid receiving contestant timeout logs."
"HAProxy could improve by making the dashboards easier to use, and better reports and administration tickets."
"The basic clustering is not usable in our very specific setup. The clustering is mainly a configuration replication and is great in a case of active-passive usage. In the case of an active-active (or with more than two nodes) where the configuration is not fully identical, it cannot be used as-is."
"The GUI should be more responsive and show the detailed output of logs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."
"HAProxy is free open-source software."
"I use the open-source version of the product. I don't have experience with the licensed version of the solution."
"HAProxy is free software. There are optional paid products (support/appliances)."
"The only cost is for the image manager, who is responsible for uploading the image, and that is trivial."
"I think that the pricing is very fair, I would definitely recommend buying the Enterprise license."
"When it comes to pricing HAProxy is free."
"We are using HAProxy as an open-source."
"If you don't have expertise then go with the licensed version. Otherwise, open-source is the best solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
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.
Do you recommend HAProxy?
I do recommend HAProxy for more simple applications or for companies with a low budget, since HAProxy is a free, open-source product. HAProxy is also a good choice for someone looking for a stable ...
What do you like most about HAProxy?
The solution is effective in managing our traffic.
 

Also Known As

No data available
HAProxy Community Edition, HAProxy Enterprise Edition, HAPEE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Eurail, Boston Scientific
Booking.com, GitHub, Reddit, StackOverflow, Tumblr, Vimeo, Yelp
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Ion vs. HAProxy and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.