Akamai Kona Site Defender vs Cloudflare comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Akamai Kona Site Defender and Cloudflare 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 Akamai Kona Site Defender vs. Cloudflare Report (Updated: March 2023).
688,083 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
"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.""The solution can scale extremely well.""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."

More Akamai Kona Site Defender Pros →

"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution.""It's very user-friendly.""The solution provides good load balancing and protection against DDoS attacks.""There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS.""Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. You don't necessarily need a certificate if you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host.""From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet""Cloudflare has many features.""Generally, I am satisfied with this product."

More Cloudflare Pros →

Cons
"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.""They are already very flexible, but room for improvement is there. Reports generation could be better and should be improved.""Support and the pricing need to improve."

More Akamai Kona Site Defender Cons →

"Latencies are always a problem.""We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution.""The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it.""In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM.""There are some issues with the CDN services.""Cloudflare does not have an on-premise solution. If they had different approaches they could be better suited to accommodate more customers, such as on-premise and hybrid deployments. For example, hybrid deployments would be useful where you could move the traffic from the enterprise to the cloud.""It should be easier to collect the logs with companies like Sumo. However, based on my discussions with the salespeople, I understand that's how they make their money. With the enterprise product, they want people doing those kinds of enterprise features to do the logging. They want them to pay a lot of money, and that's where I have an issue with them. That should be a default. You should be able to get the log no matter what. The logging should be universal.""It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."

More Cloudflare Cons →

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 →

  • "We don't have any issues with the price."
  • "The price is reasonable."
  • "The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
  • "It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level."
  • "In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."
  • "The solution has many features but there are ones that you need to pay for. Sometimes you have to find out which is available for free and which you have to pay for."
  • "I give the price a five out of ten."
  • More Cloudflare Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection solutions are best for your needs.
    688,083 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    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:Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds by… more »
    Top Answer:Generally, I am satisfied with this product.
    Top Answer:It's a premium model. You can start at zero and work your way up to the enterprise model, which has a very high pricing level. There are rivals on the market who provide the same solution at a lesser… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    7,854
    Comparisons
    6,254
    Reviews
    3
    Average Words per Review
    370
    Rating
    8.0
    Views
    20,893
    Comparisons
    18,227
    Reviews
    9
    Average Words per Review
    563
    Rating
    8.4
    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.

    Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distribution Denial of Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can use the solution and experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

    Currently, there are millions of internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

    Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the information requests are always only seconds away.

    Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to access Cloudflare highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project Athenian, also at no additional cost.

    Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end-users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD ( bring your own device) access ensure end-users and employees always have the best resources and technology available to them at all times.



    Cloudflare Benefits

    Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

    • Faster load times
    • Robust DNS security
    • Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)
    • Free universal SSL
    • Image Enhancement
    • Automatic Browser Caching
    • Next-generation cloud load balancer
    • Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
    • Rate Limiting
    • Minification
    • Zero-trust capabilities 
    • Cost-effective
    • Reduced carbon footprint

    Reviews from Real Users

    “Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a certificate.”  Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

    “What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering, so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network engineer at Ufinet

    The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service.” A PeerSpot user who is a Competence Center Manager at a tech services company. 

    Offer
    Learn more about Akamai Kona Site Defender
    Learn more about Cloudflare
    Sample Customers
    AvidMobile, itBit
    Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
    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%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider18%
    Energy/Utilities Company12%
    Marketing Services Firm12%
    Engineering Company12%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Educational Organization10%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business30%
    Large Enterprise70%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise72%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business67%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise18%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise54%
    Buyer's Guide
    Akamai Kona Site Defender vs. Cloudflare
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Kona Site Defender vs. Cloudflare and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
    688,083 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 Cloudflare is ranked 1st in Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection with 11 reviews. Akamai Kona Site Defender is rated 8.0, while Cloudflare is rated 8.4. 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 Cloudflare writes "It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes". Akamai Kona Site Defender is most compared with AWS WAF, Akamai Prolexic Routed, Cloudflare Web Application Firewall, Akamai Web Application Protector and Microsoft Azure Application Gateway, whereas Cloudflare is most compared with Azure Front Door, Imperva DDoS, Akamai, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and Arbor DDoS. See our Akamai Kona Site Defender vs. Cloudflare 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.