AWS Shield vs Kentik comparison

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AWS Shield

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Kentik and AWS Shield compete in network security services. AWS Shield appears to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set and seamless integration with AWS environments, making it ideal for AWS ecosystems, while Kentik is valuable for those prioritizing in-depth network insights.

Features: Kentik provides advanced traffic analysis, real-time visibility into network performance, and detailed insights through intuitive dashboards. AWS Shield offers robust DDoS protection, easy integration with AWS services, and seamless defense mechanisms for AWS-hosted applications.

Room for Improvement: Kentik could enhance its feature set by improving real-time problem detection and offering more proactive alert mechanisms. The user interface can be complex for new users, requiring a steeper learning curve. AWS Shield, on the other hand, can improve its adaptability for non-AWS environments and enhance its cost-effectiveness for smaller enterprises not entirely dependent on AWS.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Kentik offers a streamlined onboarding process with responsive customer service and easy integration across diverse networks, making it adaptable to various environments. AWS Shield ensures rapid deployment within AWS ecosystems with minimal configuration, benefiting from native AWS support channels but may pose challenges outside AWS platforms.

Pricing and ROI: Kentik offers competitive pricing and enhanced ROI driven by comprehensive network insights and optimization. AWS Shield tends to be more expensive, but the integrated security benefits justify the cost for AWS users, providing the best ROI when used within AWS environments.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Shield vs. Kentik Report (Updated: June 2025).

AWS Shield vs. Kentik

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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

AWS Shield

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Kentik

Ranking in Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

17th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (33rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of AWS Shield is 6.9%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kentik is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Manikandan-R

Senior Project Manager at Synopsys Inc

Solution provides essential protection with good support and a simple setup

I have noticed a pattern developing in approximately five minutes. If it were possible to provide these patterns with historical data spanning six months, three months, or two months directly from the console, it would be extremely beneficial. It would allow for easy inquiries and facilitate the retrieval of relevant parts without having to manually check logs or examine movements. Instead, if all historical data were available, I could consult six months' worth of identified patterns efficiently through AWS without relying on external sources. This solution is particularly suitable for startups or medium-sized startups. I would rate the overall solution eight out of ten.

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ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON

Sales Manager at IFX NEtworks

Client experience and cybersecurity have improved with an easy setup

The solution is valuable for client experience, especially in the financial sector. The most important feature is cybersecurity. The pricing is good, but the functionality is the most important aspect for clients. The solution is easy to deploy and requires only one person to set up, making it easy and quick. Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is integrated with AWS. So, it gives you a good first step."

"I am impressed with the product's multiple features like security."

"We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, which is crucial for us. It's easy to use and set up and stops attacks on our servers. We haven't encountered any attack problems because the solution stops them in real-time. AWS Shield specifically focuses on defending against denial-of-service attacks, making it a great solution for that type of threat."

"The product is easy to use."

"The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature."

"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."

"The solution operates smoothly at its baseline level, and we do not encounter any issues at that level."

"It is quite scalable, and we have not faced any issues with its scalability."

"We're also using Kentik to ingest metrics. It's a useful feature, and its response time, whenever we're pulling back the data, is higher than our on-prem solution."

"One of the valuable features is the intuitive nature of building out reports, and then triggering actions based on specific metrics from those reports. It has a really good UI and the ability to surface data through the reporting functions is pretty good. That's helped a lot in the security space."

"In terms of the solution’s real-time visibility across our network infrastructure, I have not been able to find any other monitoring or netflow visualization tool that gives me the kind of information I get from Kentik. If I need to take a deep-dive into something that I see, it's really easy for me to do that. Whereas with most other things, I have to use five or six other tools to get that kind of data, with Kentik, I have it all in one place."

"I am able to do a lot of work on the visualization end to create different visualizations and different ways to get information out of it."

"The most valuable features have been anything around traffic engineering: being able to determine the source or destination of a surge of traffic, whether it's DDoS-related, or a customer just happened to have a sudden uptick in traffic. Being able to tell where that's coming from or where it's going to enables us to do things based on that."

"Monitoring operational efficiency is easy."

"Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives."

"I really love the Data Explorer. I use it all the time to go in and craft exactly what I need to see. I'm able to then take that story and explain it to the executives. I've done that a couple of times and it is helpful."

More Kentik pros

Cons

"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced."

"The product is expensive."

"We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need."

"The product needs to improve its logs and reports to make it read better."

"Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a situation is normal or abnormal."

"The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements."

"The time taken to detect anomalies must be reduced."

"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."

"I consider the pricing model as an area for improvement."

"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use. I still go back to the old interface. That's definitely one that they still need to work on. It doesn't seem like everything that you get in the V3, the older interface, is there. For instance, I was trying to add a user or do the administrative tasks in V4, and I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to do that."

"I believe they're already working on this, but I would love for them to create better integrations from network flow data to application performance — tracing — so that we could overlay that data more readily. With more companies going hybrid, flow logs and flow data, whether it be VPC or on-prem, matched with application performance and trace data, is pretty important."

"We had faced some issues during an outage and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools. It took time to resolve these issues, which is why I give them eight points."

"Sometimes, the tool has complications, so we must deal with the additional support from the tool's end."

"We asked for a way, regarding the potential networks that exist, to hook Kentik up with external tools like peering DBs to correlate things together and see what we can do... This is all in the [next] beta now."

"The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect."

"In recent months, I've noticed that while the industry is trending towards AI, Kentik has room for improvement in this area."

More Kentik cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."

"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."

"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."

"The tool is cheap."

"The tool's pricing is good."

"The tool is cheaply priced."

"We have an annual contract with Kentik that we renew each year for a set number of licenses. We also have some burstable licenses which we can spin up and spin down, and those are paid as they are used."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Shield?

We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, whi...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Shield?

The tool is cheap.

What needs improvement with AWS Shield?

Perhaps the time required to detect anomalies can be reduced. Presently, it takes some time to determine whether a situation is normal or abnormal. I am unsure how much this duration can be reduced...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?

I would say Kentik's pricing is not cheap. From my perspective as part of the technical team, I would not categorize it as expensive, but I know it is not cheap.

What needs improvement with Kentik?

There's always room for improvements and better relations when using any kind of product. We faced some issues with Kentik UI and alerting, which we asked them to fix, and they succeeded. They have...

What is your primary use case for Kentik?

We are using Kentik mostly for synthetic tests, and from one last year, network monitoring as well. We are using it for inter DC BGP tests and server monitoring as well.

Azure DDoS Protection vs AWS Shield

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Product Reports

AWS Shield

Download AWS Shield product report

Download Kentik product report

Overview

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.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Kentik's AIOps Network Traffic Intelligence platform unifies network operations, performance, security, and business intelligence.

With a purpose-built big data engine delivered as public or private SaaS, Kentik captures a high-resolution view of actual network traffic data and enriches it with critical application and business data, so every network event or analysis can be tied to revenue & costs, customer & user experience, performance & risk.

Sample Customers

netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent.

AWS Shield vs. Kentik