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Akamai App and API Protector vs Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.6
Cloudflare WAF offers quick ROI, crucial protection for e-commerce, saves bandwidth, and balances cost with valuable free features.
Sentiment score
4.8
Akamai App and API Protector offers superior traffic management, security, and cost savings for large infrastructures, despite higher costs.
Sentiment score
6.7
Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) offers cost-effective server deployment, saving users significantly on infrastructure expenses while providing valuable flexibility.
My experience with the pricing or licensing of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is that many features can be accessed for free, so the pricing is definitely reasonable.
Owner at Hga consulting
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
Cloudflare WAF support is mixed; responsive for some, but Indian customers face call availability and administrative issues.
Sentiment score
7.7
Customer service is excellent, while technical support has mixed reviews with praise for expertise but needs improved availability.
Sentiment score
7.7
Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) is praised for exceptional, proactive, 24/7 customer support, surpassing AWS and Google in personal service.
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to contact them.
Owner at Hga consulting
The technical support of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between five and seven at maximum.
IT Manager at Amla Commerce
They were very responsive to my issue.
CTO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
They respond with relevant and easy-to-follow solutions.
Managing Director at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall offers impressive scalability and automated management, but additional features may incur costs for smaller organizations.
Sentiment score
7.8
Akamai App and API Protector excels in scalability, seamlessly handling extensive user demands and large-scale deployments with stability.
Sentiment score
7.0
Akamai Connected Cloud excels in scalability and flexibility, suitable for small to medium tasks despite lacking advanced features.
The scalability of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall rates between 8 to 9, as it depends upon the use cases and what exactly the client needs.
IT Manager at Amla Commerce
For my usage, which is a small business, I rate the scalability of Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) around nine or ten.
CTO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is praised for stability, high performance, effective protection, daily use, and minimal downtime.
Sentiment score
8.1
Akamai App and API Protector is highly stable and reliable, with no reported outages or issues over years of use.
Sentiment score
8.0
Akamai Connected Cloud is highly reliable, with minimal downtime and swift issue resolution, earning strong user trust.
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudflare WAF needs feature enhancements, better usability, improved support, advanced DDoS protection, and solutions for latency and alerts.
Akamai App and API Protector needs enhancements in flexibility, UI, customer support, documentation, and advanced protection features.
Akamai Connected Cloud needs better security, global data centers, improved support, DevOps workflow, and enhanced features to meet customer demands.
Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
CTO at PlayNirvana
I think they're doing a good job with DNS and as support for any domains that I create or that my clients create, it's mandatory for me to ensure they have Cloudflare as their DNS provider.
Owner at Hga consulting
The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available.
Network Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
The main area for improvement is the lack of a backup feature to the local hard disk or storage.
System Administrator at mmcytech
The main improvement I would like to see from Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) is the ability to duplicate the server as it is and initialize a new one with the same features.
CTO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It would be useful to have the option to sort or group by tags on the domains page.
Managing Director at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
 

Setup Cost

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall offers affordable, flexible pricing with no upfront costs, noted for competitiveness and included support services.
Akamai App and API Protector is expensive yet considered worth the cost by large enterprises for its quality services.
Akamai Connected Cloud offers transparent, flexible pricing from $5/month, with a favorable cost-performance ratio, appealing to enterprises.
 

Valuable Features

Cloudflare Web Application Firewall provides comprehensive security features, easy setup, scalability, and competitive pricing with praised performance and stability.
Akamai App and API Protector delivers scalable security, ease of use, and cost-effective protection with advanced features like DDoS defense.
Akamai Connected Cloud excels with global coverage, ease of use, affordability, scalability, strong support, and superior speed versus competitors.
The custom rules and the geo-redundant geographical rule feature, which allows me to implement geographical rules for customers, add significant value.
Network Architect at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
We are in the gambling business, in the betting business, so we have constant daily DDoS attacks, and it's always working fine.
CTO at PlayNirvana
All the DNS and everything is routed through Cloudflare, so anybody coming to any of the sites has to go through Cloudflare first, making them the first wall of defense.
Owner at Hga consulting
The area in which Akamai excels compared to other competitors with a WAF is in threat intelligence, as threats continually evolve, requiring ongoing updates to backend algorithms to effectively capture smart bots.
Privacy & Risk Management Vice President, Information Security at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) is easy to use and has a fair price, making it accessible and straightforward, which is crucial when compared to other complex solutions.
System Administrator at mmcytech
Their support is really good. I can ask anything at any time, and they are able to resolve issues like reinstating deleted Linodes.
Managing Director at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) is cheaper.
Senior Software Engineer at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare Web Application ...
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Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (5th)
Akamai App and API Protector
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (18th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (8th), Cloud and Data Center Security (12th)
Akamai Connected Cloud (Lin...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (4th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Akamai App and API Protector3.1%
Imperva Application Security Platform7.7%
Fortinet FortiWeb6.0%
Other83.2%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)8.7%
Amazon AWS16.2%
Microsoft Azure9.0%
Other66.1%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

DB
CTO at PlayNirvana
Advanced security reporting has protected high-traffic betting platforms from constant attacks
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we have a dedicated IT team for that, and I'm not involved with Cloudflare much anymore. But if I were to compare them to F5, I would like to see more features that F5 offers. F5 has an option to bring the whole infrastructure, the whole WAF and all their packages, Bot Management, and everything else on your infrastructure. You need to install certain services from their side, and then you can choose if you would like requests to hit your servers immediately or if requests need to be proxied through F5 backbone. That would be a nice addition because we have 90% of the traffic as legit traffic coming from whitelisted servers. If it comes from whitelisted servers, I don't need to go every request through the backbone; I could easily just IP whitelist everything. Then I could maybe have Bot Management on my infrastructure that drastically reduces the price of Cloudflare. I would like to see Push CDN more improved in the next release of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. And maybe something similar to Pushpin that Fastly has, which is an option where you can push messages that then can be scaled globally over the network. From our perspective, if we have a listener that listens for stock updates, I would just need to have one processor that pushes those updates to the Cloudflare API, and then Cloudflare would broadcast that message to all listeners. Cloudflare will check the order of the message, and if you, as a customer, are not connected or have some kind of network issue, when you reconnect, you will receive the latest state and missing updates.
Gavin Pinho - PeerSpot reviewer
Privacy & Risk Management Vice President, Information Security at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Has provided strong protection against evolving threats but still needs support for configuration fine-tuning
The standout features of Akamai App and API Protector are rooted in it being the Web Application Firewall, where all traffic gets scanned, including the implementation of web firewall rules, and after this phase, traffic proceeds through the BMP, which is Bot Management. Akamai App and API Protector exceeds expectations in terms of AI capabilities, and it genuinely combines a plethora of advanced features. The area in which Akamai excels compared to other competitors with a WAF is in threat intelligence, as threats continually evolve, requiring ongoing updates to backend algorithms to effectively capture smart bots, and Akamai's commitment in that regard is backed by an excellent team, while other providers are still catching up.
AK
CTO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Reliability and simplicity have ensured a seamless experience for 15 years
I am not satisfied with the customization options from Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) because I still haven't tried any new capabilities provided by them yet. I am still keeping it as a virtual server because it is consistent and my business is stable using it. I didn't try the new features. The main improvement I would like to see from Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) is the ability to duplicate the server as it is and initialize a new one with the same features. This is my main need, and I think this feature was published a few months ago, but I am not sure of this. I may often need to replicate the server and initiate a new one for some business and drop it again.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Performing Arts
7%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise1
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
I don't see room for improvement to Cloudflare Web Application Firewall. One thing I don't know much about because we...
What is your primary use case for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
We are using Cloudflare Web Application Firewall's advanced reporting and analytics tools with their Zero Trust, so e...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai Web Application Protector?
The price is higher than others. It could be about 80% to 70% more expensive than other tools. So, it’s not just a sl...
What needs improvement with Akamai Web Application Protector?
There are no significant areas for improvement on the WAF side or for Akamai App and API Protector solution; they are...
What is your primary use case for Akamai Web Application Protector?
The main use case for Akamai App and API Protector is serving as the WAF, Web Application Firewall.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Linode?
I find Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)'s pricing very competitive. They never charge extra without improvements. I al...
What needs improvement with Linode?
I am not satisfied with the customization options from Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) because I still haven't tried ...
What is your primary use case for Linode?
My use case for Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) involves using the servers, specifically for servers. I am using the ...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare WAF
Akamai Web Application Protector, Akamai Kona Site Defender, Akamai Kona DDoS Defender
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Douglas Omaha Technology Commission, ZALORA, PrintPlanet
Best Buy, Panasonic, Giphy, Marco Polo, World Health Organization, Font Squirrel
Find out what your peers are saying about Imperva, Fortinet, F5 and others in Web Application Firewall (WAF). Updated: April 2026.
892,776 professionals have used our research since 2012.