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Akamai Ion vs NGINX Plus 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
NGINX Plus
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
7th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Akamai Ion is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 7.4%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NGINX Plus7.4%
Akamai Ion0.9%
Other91.7%
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…
Michael Olayemi - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables public access and secure configurations through reverse proxy
The primary valuable feature of NGINX for me is its ability to provide a reverse proxy. I have found that this feature supports our local server, and I am able to connect through our DNS system, making it accessible publicly. Additionally, the integration with SSL certificates and the configuration capabilities make it a valuable solution for my use case. Without NGINX, users would not be able to access our application, which means there is positive ROI from using NGINX as it is crucial for the functioning of my organization.

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."
"When I worked in a security research center, we tested NGINX to support DoS and DDoS attacks, and its results were great."
"This solution has everything."
"Nginx is extremely efficient in terms of the connection rate to the CPU cycles ratio, and in terms of the bandwidth to CPU cycles."
"Using NGINX Plus for web traffic distribution is fantastic. It offers performance similar to physical load balancers but with added flexibility."
"The load balancing module, which is equivalent to LTM, is the focus of the PSE. So far, the features of both are identical. I believe NGINX has more features for securing these services, but in terms of load balancing, both are massive solutions."
"Its versatility and capabilities make it invaluable for implementing patches and fixes when necessary."
"The best solution, by far, for web traffic control for things in production and just around the house."
"Application Gateway with application-level firewall tool and load distributor and balancer (also serves for A/B testing)."
 

Cons

"The product must provide more flexibility."
"Log management should display data for more than two months."
"Our most challenging part was to run an older PHP website reverse-proxied through NGINX. That was not fun."
"The KPI should be more focused on load balancing and the latency in application calling from the end system."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."
"NGINX Plus is moderately priced, but it could give better value for money."
"I would like to see the Grafana integration in NGINX which is already present in HAProxy. Grafana integration will help the solution visualize all the data analytics on the dashboard which is currently not present."
"Only improvement needed that I would point to is scalability. With it, I mean clusterized organisation on a low level. At the moment, the best alternative is RHEL HA."
"I would suggest adding GUI-based configuration panels to NGINX Plus to simplify setup and management tasks."
"The solution needs to be easier to setup and deploy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."
"Compared to other similar solutions on the market, I think it's over-priced."
"​NGINX Plus is worth it, if you need it. If you do not need the features or support, the free and open source package is more than capable. ​"
"It's an open source solution, so it's free."
"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."
"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."
"NGINX Plus is an open-source solution with limited additional features. When you try to get additional features in the solution, then you need to pay an extra amount to NGINX Plus."
"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."
"The cost is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise10
 

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.
Which is better - IIS or NGINX Plus?
IIS is a flexible, secure, and manageable web server to host anything on the web. IIS’s scalable and open architecture can handle the most demanding tasks. From media streaming to web applications,...
What do you like most about NGINX Plus?
It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Plus?
My use case involves using the free and open-source version of NGINX, making it cost-effective as I haven't incurred any costs.
 

Also Known As

No data available
NGINX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Eurail, Boston Scientific
Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Ion vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.