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Akamai vs Cloudflare vs Imperva Bot Management comparison

 

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:
 

Mindshare comparison

CDN Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Akamai17.1%
Cloudflare21.8%
Azure Front Door15.7%
Other45.39999999999999%
CDN
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cloudflare18.9%
Arbor DDoS12.0%
Radware DDoS8.6%
Other60.5%
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
Bot Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Imperva Bot Management6.7%
Akamai Bot Manager25.0%
F5 Shape Security18.7%
Other49.6%
Bot Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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.
RiaanDu Preez - PeerSpot reviewer
A product that offers advanced bot detection capabilities and reporting features
The scalability of the product is high. I rate the product's scalability a ten out of ten. It is very easy to use the scalability features of the product, especially if the product is deployed on the cloud model, but it may be a different story if the tool is deployed on an on-premises model. The difficulty of using the scalability feature nude of the product arises when the client does not have the capacity to scale up. My company deals with businesses of all sizes. One of my company's clients who uses the solution has five members and a large e-commerce environment. There are also enterprise-sized clients who use the solution.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Akamai provides low-latency throughput."
"Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."
"It's a scalable and reliable solution."
"The worldwide reach of the Akamai CDN is one of the key values of this CDN and the agreements worldwide that they keep running."
"Akamai's scalability is good."
"With 300 servers deployed worldwide, it's highly scalable and is the best web application firewall on the market."
"This solution can be used for web , video and media caching and streaming."
"The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy."
"The UI is good."
"The most valuable features of the solution are performance and security."
"I rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"The technical support is good."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."
"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."
"The stability of the product is good since I haven't had any problems with the solution."
"I am impressed with the product's automatic bot mechanism. It also gives us the control to create our own custom bot rules."
 

Cons

"The solution could offer more integrations."
"Their support is very slow. If you file a support ticket, it takes a long time before it gets resolved."
"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."
"I'd like to see improvements in log files and data visualizations within the interface."
"Local connectivity would be great linked to our own telecom/Cablevision CDN."
"It would be better if we could be notified about specific attacks."
"I'd like to see more Web 3.0 and IoT solutions."
"Caching strategy is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution where improvements are required."
"Even if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to buy Cloudflare in my country."
"Cloudflare doesn't have a reverse lookup. We can only do a DNS lookup to get the IP address from the hostname. It doesn't work if you want to look up the hostname from an IPA address."
"Technical support is lacking."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"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."
"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"Support response time could be improved."
"Sometimes, it takes a bit of time for the technical staff of the solution to get back to our company with a resolution for our problems."
"The tool needs to include artificial intelligence and machine learning. It also needs to improve profiling."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features."
"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."
"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 solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."
"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"
"The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"I believe their performance has improved, but I'd like to refrain from discussing the pricing aspect related to the cloud. The pricing, in my opinion, could be simplified, and I think they should consider reevaluating the pricing for support, as it can be quite high. At times, this cost can make it challenging to choose CARFAGuard or opt for the support."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"We don't have any issues with the price."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"The tool's pricing is good."
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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
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Media Company
15%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise25
No data available
 

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?
Other solutions are probably easier to set up, but you have more capability in Akamai. It would be beneficial if they...
What is your primary use case for Akamai?
We are using many of the solutions from Akamai, with the WAF in front of it and distribution to multiple targets wher...
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 Imperva Bot Management?
The stability of the product is good since I haven't had any problems with the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva Bot Management?
I rate the product price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price. The pric...
What needs improvement with Imperva Bot Management?
At the moment, I am okay with the product. I haven't found something that needs to be improved yet. I am not physical...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Cloudflare DNS
Distil Networks, Distil Bot Detection and Mitigation
 

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.
StubHub, Yelp, Glassdoor, DowJones, The Wall Street Journal, Whitepages, CrunchBase, AOL, Staples, Wayfair, EasyJet, Autotrader, Skyscanner, Orbitz, and Conde Nast, Amadeus, and Thomson Reuters, just to name a few.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in CDN. Updated: August 2025.
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