Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 6, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Akamai
Ranking in CDN
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cloudflare
Ranking in CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
70
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Akamai is 15.4%, down from 15.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudflare is 21.9%, up from 21.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN
Unique Categories:
No other categories found
Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) Protection
20.2%
Managed DNS
111.6%
 

Featured Reviews

SV
Jul 5, 2023
An out-of-the-box solution for live video streaming
From my perspective, there are a few areas that need improvement, especially in terms of security upgrades. Currently, Akamai does not provide the same level of security as Cloudflare, which supports applications through SSL HTTPs. This is one aspect that needs attention. Another aspect is the pricing. Akamai should target mid-level and small to medium-sized businesses, not just enterprise-level companies. The larger companies already benefit from it, so it shouldn't be the sole focus. We should focus more on medium-sized businesses as well. Mostly, I would like to see improvements in the security aspect. The web application firewall needs to be enhanced and offers more customization options. Additionally, while there are many available servers, they come as add-ons. This limits our ability to explore all the features, as they require additional payments.
reviewer9207524 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 11, 2023
Secure, reliable, and performs well
We use the solution to personalize content and suggestions for cloud environment and database administration We're creating and editing a service connection to SaaS data or third-party REST endpoints, which has been an intrinsic process to moderate governance and network discovery.  There's also…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."
"We can see how much traffic can be downloaded on the portal."
"The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy."
"Akamai has a very established network of PoPs globally."
"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 solution is very sustainable and flexible."
"The solution's technical support is very prompt and good."
"Akamai provides low-latency throughput."
"The attacker won't have details since my public IP is anonymous. It offers us good privacy."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare DNS is its global reach and it is always evolving."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"From what I've seen so far, there are no negatives to report as of yet"
"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."
"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."
 

Cons

"The fact that it is an expensive product is its only shortcoming."
"The solution could offer more integrations."
"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."
"Sometimes a little hard to navigate around the user console."
"Akamai's configuration part is an area of concern where improvements are required to make the process easy."
"I'd like to see improvements in log files and data visualizations within the interface."
"Their support is very slow. If you file a support ticket, it takes a long time before it gets resolved."
"It would be better if we could be notified about specific attacks."
"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"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."
"Cloudflare's console should be made more user-friendly."
"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."
"The reporting can definitely be improved to offer a lot more explanation on something that may have happened or has actually happened."
"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"It is an expensive product. The licensing costs for the solution are based on the usage. If we need premium support, we need to buy it from Akamai."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"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."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"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 cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"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."
"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."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"The price of the solution is 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
Educational Organization
27%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
One area for improvement with Akamai could be pricing.
What is your primary use case for Akamai?
Akamai is useful for web content delivery in business because it helps improve speed, reliability, and security. Caching content closer to users reduces latency and improves load times. This is esp...
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 GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds ...
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 that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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Cloudflare DNS
 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai vs. Cloudflare and other solutions. Updated: July 2024.
793,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.