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Akamai vs Azure Front Door comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
Akamai
Ranking in CDN
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Azure Front Door
Ranking in CDN
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (13th), Microsoft Security Suite (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 22.2%, up from 21.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 17.3%, up from 15.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Front Door is 16.5%, down from 19.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Aryan Singh1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers great enterprise support, ideal for solutions requiring high scalability and seamless integration with AWS infrastructure
For Akamai, it is definitely one of the best tools out there. However, there are challenges with how their approach is designed for large enterprises. While it's great for solutions with high scalability, like global e-commerce, it's not really built for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It has too many options and can be complex for SMBs to utilize. That's the biggest challenge we faced when migrating to Akamai from other solutions, like Cloudflare. It can be difficult to migrate between platforms. Due to its great features but high activation thresholds. So, while it's a powerful tool, it has limitations for some implementations. It was difficult to migrate from and to Akamai. It is challenging when we are building a website.
SayedAbdelrhman - PeerSpot reviewer
Provide bot protection and has proficient documentation
During our discussion with the internal Microsoft team about assessing our environment, they confirmed that we have sufficient security measures, especially regarding edge protection. Internally, we believe we are now certified. In the future, we could consider adding layer four protection from the firewall. Front Door combines CDN and WAF protection, so further enhancing its features could benefit both the customer and us. We monitor the number of users attempting to access our IP or DNS servers. When designing the system, we initially needed to ensure our environment was protected with a WAF. However, WAF is currently too costly for us, so we created private links and connected them to Front Door. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The features of Cloudflare were found to be more beneficial and led to the decision to utilize it over other options."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is security."
"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."
"The UI is good."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"The solution offers the flexibility to control configuration rules."
"The solution is very sustainable and flexible."
"Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."
"This solution can be used for web , video and media caching and streaming."
"As of now, the best thing about Akamai is WAF, and though CDN is a good feature, it comes in second place when compared to WAF. I am very impressed with the WAF offered by Akamai."
"We have received excellent support from their team; I have not worked with any other applications where they have delivered professional services as good as them."
"With 300 servers deployed worldwide, it's highly scalable and is the best web application firewall on the market."
"The worldwide reach of the Akamai CDN is one of the key values of this CDN and the agreements worldwide that they keep running."
"The most valuable feature of Akamai is its ease of use and simple integration. Additionally, the solution has new aspects added to it regularly."
"I find the technical support excellent, and I rate it a ten."
"The most valuable feature is that you can implement resources globally. It does not depend on location and ability or something like that. This is to connect clients around the world."
"Azure Front Door provides DDoS protection and features related to WAF."
"The web application firewall is a great feature."
"Rules Engine is a valuable feature."
"I particularly appreciate its load-balancing capabilities as it allows us to manage multiple instances and support a global presence effectively."
"You can assign as many web application firewall policies as you want to the same instance of Front Door."
"The solution is good."
 

Cons

"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."
"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."
"Technical support is not well developed. While there are good engineers, Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model."
"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"Eventually, things go sideways and require fixes when it would have been easier to prevent the issue initially."
"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"Akamai's configuration part is an area of concern where improvements are required to make the process easy."
"Caching strategy is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution where improvements are required."
"While it's great for solutions with high scalability, like global e-commerce, it's not really built for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It has too many options and can be complex for SMBs to utilize."
"Local connectivity would be great linked to our own telecom/Cablevision CDN."
"The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist."
"Costing-wise and integration with other tools need improvement, especially API security."
"Akamai could improve by providing its own cloud services. We have to use third-party cloud services at this time, such as Amazon AWS. The offering becomes a lot easier for an SMB if everything was in one single platform to be used for the services."
"It would be better if we could be notified about specific attacks."
"The product needs to improve its latency."
"My suggestion for improvement would be to enhance the Data Export feature to include specific tables, particularly the Azure Diagnostics table."
"There could be improvements regarding its pricing for large-scale projects."
"The user interface needs improvement as it is difficult to create the mapping to link the problem with your private address sources."
"There could be improvements regarding its pricing for large-scale projects."
"The tool should improve its cost."
"In the tool, there needs to be a good amount of monitoring in the area of health probes to capture in front of what is happening."
"We should be able to use Front Door defenders with multiple cloud vendors. Currently, they can be used only with the Azure cloud. Azure Front Door should also be able to do global load balancing and provide internal front door services. Microsoft should clearly define what Traffic Manager, Application Gateway, and Azure Front Door products do. These are similar products, and people get confused between these products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable."
"We are using the free tier of the solution."
"The solution is expensive when compared to other products but offers unlimited bandwidth."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."
"From the resource component, it's very costly, and Akamai's charges are also high. So, any organization with a high-tech budget can definitely afford it, but companies with 10-15% of their revenue as a technical budget probably won't be able to. That's where they have a lot of room for improvement if they want to onboard those early users."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"Price-wise, I find Akamai's pricing model's inclination to be more towards the expensive side of the spectrum, though I can't say that it is a very expensive product."
"The pricing of Akamai is moderate, in my opinion. My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to Akamai. There are no additional costs besides the licensing costs for the solution."
"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."
"The pricing of the solution is good."
"The transition to the premium tier has led to increased costs, making it more expensive than the classic tier."
"It is on a pay-as-you-go basis."
"Considering the standard licensing of the tool, even though we have not checked the billing as of now, it might not be very costly."
"The product is expensive."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user69348 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 17, 2013
Akamai vs. CloudFlare – Simple Stats
In the world of CDNs Akamai is the incumbent 500 pound gorilla, no question. They have a HUGE global presence, super solid technology and networks, and have the most experience with large enterprise clients. However, now there other strong players in the CDN market. One of the most…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What do you like most about Akamai?
The most valuable feature in managing web traffic has been the ability to handle vertical scaling effectively.
What needs improvement with Akamai?
Akamai could improve by having a more robust and responsive support team. While the support is not bad, there is room...
What is your primary use case for Akamai?
We use Akamai ( /products/akamai-reviews ) as our CDN ( /categories/cdn ) to advertise prefixes and download traffic....
What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Front Door?
I am not sure about the pricing but believe Azure Front Door might require a higher cost due to its entry point nature.
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Azure Front-Door
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Capital One, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Disney, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Home Depot, HP, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, LinkedIn, McDonald's, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Oracle, PayPal, Pinterest, Qualcomm, Rakuten, SAP, Spotify, Tesla, Toyota, Visa, Walmart, WeWork
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Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai vs. Azure Front Door and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.