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Akamai Ion vs Loadbalancer.org 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
Loadbalancer.org
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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 Loadbalancer.org is 3.7%, up from 3.3% 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…
Roger Seelaender - PeerSpot reviewer
Great WAF - low-maintenance solution that performs as advertised
The solution can be improved with the development of a SIP engine because it is difficult to manage SBCs. All SBCs are really tough to write rules for. If we could put this in front of an SBC to have the right rules to possibly block the traffic, that would be very helpful. The solution can also improve the relationship between Loadbalancer.org and Metaswitch, or now, Microsoft because Metaswitch was purchased by Microsoft. They both position themselves as certified but don't always talk to each other. I wish there would be closer integration between the solution and the vendors when either release new upgrades to their product line. Often we find issues on either end post upgrades.

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 found scalability in Loadbalancer.org valuable."
"For now, it's stable."
"It does what it’s supposed to do which is balancing an important intranet site we are using, so if one server dies, the second becomes active straight away."
"The SSL Layer 7 load balancing is valuable."
"The support we have received from Loadbalancer.org has been good."
"The features I find valuable in this solution are the ease of managing the logs on the WAFs, the ease to identify break-in attempts into the network, the front-end firewall, and a more specific firewall."
"Loadbalancer.org is less complex than Citrix."
"We can more easily set up a test environment, because you can easily configure your forms. It makes it more flexible for us, to convert our test environment to a production environment, without having to change DNSs on the outside. You just configure the forms on the inside. So without changing the actual endpoint for the end user, we can create completely different networks in the background."
 

Cons

"The product must provide more flexibility."
"Log management should display data for more than two months."
"If I have to say something, I suppose they could add an automated configuration backup to an FTP location (or something similar) so you don’t have to manually do it. I don’t see this as a problem, of course, as the configuration rarely changes and we only need one backup, but maybe for other users that feature would be handy."
"I would like it if Loadbalancer had the ability to make rules for specific shared bots."
"There are many features you can set in the backend of Loadbalancer. They should simplify the configuration. The administrator should be able to configure it more simply. How it is now, you can only configure it if you have a lot of experience."
"​The automatic refresh of the System Overview webpage: It sometimes has an extra webpage reload (after a change) before you see it is executed. This can be confusing."
"The interface from Loadbalancer.org should be improved."
"Possibly a more graphical overview page (with colors) to give a two second overview to see if everything is working fine."
"Originally we had some stability issues with it, so they replaced it with a new box and it's fine."
"They're mostly designed to balance a particular type of traffic. I wanted to load balance DNS, and they just don't do it the way that we wanted to. So they're not used as DNS load balancers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."
"Licensing fees are paid annually."
"It is inexpensive, and even their “unlimited” version, the VA MAX is still far cheaper than competitors."
"It was easy to upgrade the license for unlimited clusters and servers. Pricing is fair."
"I’m not entirely sure about the rating since I'm not very technical. I haven't thoroughly compared the ratings. So, if you're asking for my impression so far, I would rate it around five out of 10."
"It's worth the cost. It's not cheap, but it's a good solution. If you're looking for a good solution, this is a good solution. Is it cheap? No. Is it worth the money? Yes, I think it is."
"I love that they do not price on some arbitrary throughput rating where you are guessing at what the load balancer is going to handle."
"These guys make their pricing scheme really easy.​"
"They're not the cheapest, not the most expensive, but I think value-wise, they're 100%."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
8%
Media 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.
Do you recommend Loadbalancer.org?
Since Loadbalancer.org is an open-source solution, I would recommend this solution for smaller businesses that don’t have major scaling requirements and don’t have the budget for a commercial solut...
What do you like most about Loadbalancer.org?
Existing customers are trying to migrate from the physical F5 load balancer to the AVI load balancer because it is scalable and easily managed.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Eurail, Boston Scientific
Vodafone, NASA, Mercedes, NBC, Siemens, AT&T, Barclays, Zurich, Penn State University, Fiserv, Canon, Toyota, University of Cambridge, US Army, US Navy, Ocean Spray, ASOS, Pfizer, BBC, Bacardi, Monsoon, River Island, U.S Air Force, King's College London, NHS, Ricoh, Philips, Santander, TATA Communications, Ericcson, Ross Video, Evertz, TalkTalk TV, Giacom, Rapid Host.
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Ion vs. Loadbalancer.org and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.