AWS Shield vs Akamai Kona Site Defender comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Akamai Kona Site Defender and AWS Shield based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed AWS Shield vs. Akamai Kona Site Defender Report (Updated: March 2023).
686,748 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"I like that the charges are all based on usage and labor costs. For the time that we spend onboarding almost 252020 FQDN, Akamai charges us only for the traffic usage, but it's only charging us for the labor costs for onboarding.""The solution can scale extremely well.""The most valuable feature is the custom rules feature. This is because many of our customers require a lot of custom rules. Because it's a very customized project for our customers, I think they have the best of everything already.""The features are powerful and better than F5."

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"The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature.""It is integrated with AWS. So, it gives you a good first step."

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Cons
"Support and the pricing need to improve.""They are already very flexible, but room for improvement is there. Reports generation could be better and should be improved.""It would be better if there weren't any issues with latency. We had latency issues, but I think they are all solved now.""The pricing could be reduced a bit."

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"The management of it is a bit hard. If you don't engineer it on the front side, it is hard to go back in and change it. It could be improved in terms of architecture requirements and then ongoing support requirements as a secondary component to it. People tend to set up things like this, and they just expect it to work without the care and feeding that needs to go back into it either from an application team or a network environment team.""We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Akamai is very expensive."
  • "There is no license at all for Akamai. They are going to charge us only for the usage."
  • "The price they are offering is quite reasonable for premium customers, but it's very expensive if you're a small and medium-sized enterprises."
  • More Akamai Kona Site Defender Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It depends on your subscription level and the volume that you're spending with AWS. So, it is very relative to the consumption alignment in your subscription level. It is a well-constructed, scalable pricing option, but it is relative to how much you're spending on AWS. Because the more you spend, typically, the more you get off on services like this. I find it to be comparable to other solutions."
  • "The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."
  • More AWS Shield Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The product really isn't very user-friendly. They could improve it so that it's easier for their customers to navigate and use. From a management perspective, it's difficult. Managing these rules with… more »
    Top Answer:We primarily use the solution as an application firewall.
    Top Answer:The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature.
    Top Answer:The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month. That's about US$10 per day, which we feel is fair. AWS Shield does not have all the feature… more »
    Top Answer:Ultimately, the cost of the solution goes up as we add features, but I believe over time AWS has been adding more frequently asked features. Depending on the website, if our website has more… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    7,854
    Comparisons
    6,254
    Reviews
    3
    Average Words per Review
    370
    Rating
    8.0
    Views
    1,834
    Comparisons
    1,669
    Reviews
    2
    Average Words per Review
    895
    Rating
    8.5
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Kona Site Defender, Kona
    Learn More
    Overview
    Akamai's Kona Site Defender extends security beyond the data center while maintaining site performance and availability in the face of fast-changing threats. It leverages the power of the Akamai Intelligent Platform to detect, identify and mitigate Denial-of-Service (DoS) and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks before they ever reach the origin.

    AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection.

    Offer
    Learn more about Akamai Kona Site Defender
    Learn more about AWS Shield
    Sample Customers
    AvidMobile, itBit
    netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Leisure / Travel Company29%
    Retailer14%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm27%
    Computer Software Company19%
    Insurance Company6%
    Retailer6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company21%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Media Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business30%
    Large Enterprise70%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise72%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise67%
    Buyer's Guide
    AWS Shield vs. Akamai Kona Site Defender
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Shield vs. Akamai Kona Site Defender and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
    686,748 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Akamai Kona Site Defender is ranked 8th in Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection with 4 reviews while AWS Shield is ranked 10th in Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection with 2 reviews. Akamai Kona Site Defender is rated 8.0, while AWS Shield is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Akamai Kona Site Defender writes "Great technical support, scales extremely well, and is very stable". On the other hand, the top reviewer of AWS Shield writes "An AWS-integrated and scalable service, but the management of it is a bit hard". Akamai Kona Site Defender is most compared with AWS WAF, Akamai Prolexic Routed, Cloudflare Web Application Firewall, Akamai Web Application Protector and Azure Front Door, whereas AWS Shield is most compared with Cloudflare DDoS, Cloudflare, Azure DDoS Protection, Arbor DDoS and Akamai Prolexic Routed. See our AWS Shield vs. Akamai Kona Site Defender report.

    See our list of best Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection vendors.

    We monitor all Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.