We compared Akamai and Cloudflare based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
In summary, the key differences between Akamai and Cloudflare are highlighted in user feedback regarding their valuable features, customer service, implementation duration, pricing, return on investment, and areas for improvement. While Akamai is praised for exceptional performance, speed, and personalized solutions, Cloudflare stands out for its robust security measures, user-friendly interface, and efficient caching capabilities. Akamai receives positive feedback for its responsive customer service, competitive pricing, and positive ROI, while Cloudflare is commended for its real-time threat detection, flexible scalability, and reasonable cost. Areas for enhancement on Akamai include improving performance and speed, customer support, and analytics features, while Cloudflare could benefit from enhancements in network performance, user interface, documentation, customization options, pricing transparency, and integration with other services.
Features: Akamai's valuable features include exceptional performance, reliable content delivery, advanced security, efficient caching, and comprehensive analytics. On the other hand, Cloudflare offers robust security, reliable content delivery, efficient caching, user-friendly interface, enhanced website performance, protection against DDoS attacks, SSL support, easy DNS management, extensive analytics, real-time threat detection, and flexible scalability.
Pricing and ROI: When comparing the setup cost between Akamai and Cloudflare, both products are considered to have minimal and straightforward setup costs. Akamai offers flexible and customizable licensing options, accommodating different business needs. Cloudflare's licensing experience is smooth and satisfactory, with no expressed concerns or issues., Akamai users reported positive ROI with improved website performance and security, scalable and reliable platform. Cloudflare users also experienced positive ROI including improved website performance, increased security, and user-friendly interface.
Room for Improvement: Akamai could improve its performance and speed, user interface and navigation, customer support and responsiveness, occasional latency issues, and reporting and analytics features. Cloudflare could benefit from enhancements in network performance, user interface, documentation and support, customization options, pricing transparency, and integration with other services.
Deployment and customer support: Based on user feedback, both Akamai and Cloudflare have varying durations for establishing a new tech solution. However, Cloudflare emphasizes the importance of evaluating the context in which these terms are used, suggesting possible differences in deployment and setup phases., Akamai's customer service is highly praised for their responsive and efficient assistance, personalized solutions, and commitment to customer satisfaction. Cloudflare is commended for their exceptional assistance, quick and knowledgeable responses, and reliable and efficient support.
The summary above is based on 29 interviews we conducted recently with Akamai and Cloudflare users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"Akamai provides low-latency throughput."
"The most valuable feature in managing web traffic has been the ability to handle vertical scaling effectively."
"Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."
"The solution is very sustainable and flexible."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it has been quite helpful in our company, especially when it comes to applications needing updates frequently."
"The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy."
"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."
"New and innovative way to protect the client's data."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."
"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."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"The technical support is good."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall."
"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."
"It would be better if we could be notified about specific attacks."
"One area for improvement with Akamai could be pricing."
"I would like to see improvements in the security aspect. The web application firewall needs to be enhanced and offers more customization options."
"The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist."
"I'd like to see improvements in log files and data visualizations within the interface."
"The fact that it is an expensive product is its only shortcoming."
"One area of improvement is in the Access Rules. Hypothetically, if we wanted to block or challenge traffic outside of the United States, the only way to currently do that (as far as I know) is to enter every single country outside of the United States. That could be a labor intensive job. A solution could be to enable users to create a rule where traffic is only allowed within a certain country."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"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."
"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 have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."
"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."
"Technical support is lacking."
"The solution could work at being less expensive. It costs a lot to use it."
Akamai is ranked 3rd in CDN with 18 reviews while Cloudflare is ranked 1st in CDN with 56 reviews. Akamai is rated 9.0, while Cloudflare is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Akamai writes "An easy to setup product offering multiple useful functionalities under a single package". 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 is most compared with Azure Front Door, Imperva DDoS, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly and AWS Global Accelerator, whereas Cloudflare is most compared with Azure Front Door, Imperva DDoS, AWS Shield, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and Arbor DDoS. See our Akamai vs. Cloudflare report.
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