Akamai vs Amazon CloudFront comparison

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6,855 views|6,183 comparisons
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6,452 views|5,605 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Akamai and Amazon CloudFront based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two CDN solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Akamai vs. Amazon CloudFront Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution is very sustainable and flexible.""Akamai has a very established network of PoPs globally.""Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues.""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's technical support is very prompt and good.""The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy.""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.""With 300 servers deployed worldwide, it's highly scalable and is the best web application firewall on the market."

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"The most valuable feature of the solution is the speed of delivery.""We can personalize a lot of things inside CDN.""The AWS environment was very helpful in terms of integration.""Amazon CloudFront is a stable solution.""The speed and usability of the solution are valuable.""The solution has many features that are comprehensive.""The product is very well interconnected with other Amazon services.""Feature-wise, I like the solution's signed URL because it provides security for me."

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Cons
"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.""I'd like to see more Web 3.0 and IoT solutions.""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.""The solution could offer more integrations.""The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist.""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.""Their support is very slow. If you file a support ticket, it takes a long time before it gets resolved."

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"The product could support any network load balancer. At present, we can use only Amazon’s load balancer application.""During the setup phase, there were some hiccups in terms of security, the user role, and the permissions.""The solution can benefit from expanding its data center and server locations to multiple places for smoother content delivery with even lower latency. The latency we experience is sufficient for our needs, and we are doing well. However, if they expand their locations in the future, it could be a positive factor. Its competitors have multiple data and server locations.""With a mixed stack, things become a problem. With GCP and Azure, the DNS setup gets tricky when using CloudFront.""A lot of caching features must be added to the solution.""They should have more Edge locations so that CloudFront can be used much more. If they can make it a little bit cheaper and better than other networks, we will be able to use it more.""The product should be more intuitive.""The user interface could be improved."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
  • "Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
  • "The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
  • "The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth."
  • "The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."
  • "Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features."
  • "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."
  • "The price of the solution depends upon its usage."
  • More Akamai Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Its price is really on the high side. It should be cheaper in general."
  • "Amazon's pricing varies depending on the data transfer."
  • "I rate Amazon CloudFront's pricing a five out of ten."
  • "The product could improve its price."
  • "Amazon CloudFront is an expensive solution."
  • "The solution’s price is reasonable."
  • "Amazon CloudFront costs less than third-party services."
  • "For CloudFront, I'm quite satisfied with the pricing. Initially, it doesn't require many resources for this specific solution."
  • More Amazon CloudFront Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It's a scalable and reliable solution.
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:My company uses Akamai for all our web applications since it minimizes attacks, monitors traffic, and filters and blocks malicious emails.
    Top Answer:Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Global Accelerator or Amazon CloudFront global content delivery network was the better fit for us. We decided to go with… more »
    Top Answer:For CloudFront, I'm quite satisfied with the pricing. Initially, it doesn't require many resources for this specific solution. Additionally, the pay-as-you-go model with a generous free tier makes it… more »
    Ranking
    3rd
    out of 34 in CDN
    Views
    6,855
    Comparisons
    6,183
    Reviews
    12
    Average Words per Review
    484
    Rating
    8.9
    4th
    out of 34 in CDN
    Views
    6,452
    Comparisons
    5,605
    Reviews
    12
    Average Words per Review
    386
    Rating
    7.8
    Comparisons
    Learn More
    Overview

    Akamai is a powerful solution that aims to enhance the performance and reliability of websites and applications. With features like excellent performance, robust security measures, and efficient content delivery, it optimizes user experience. It also offers bandwidth optimization, caching, online asset security, and protection against DDoS attacks. Users value its wide network coverage and reliable customer support.

    Amazon CloudFront is a global content delivery network (CDN) service that accelerates delivery of your websites, APIs, video content or other web assets. It integrates with other Amazon Web Services products to give developers and businesses an easy way to accelerate content to end users with no minimum usage commitments. Amazon CloudFront can be used to deliver your entire website, including dynamic, static, streaming, and interactive content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your content are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance. Amazon CloudFront is optimized to work with other Amazon Web Services, like Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, and Amazon Route 53. Amazon CloudFront also works seamlessly with any non-AWS origin server, which stores the original, definitive versions of your files. Like other Amazon Web Services products, there are no long-term contracts or minimum monthly usage commitments for using Amazon CloudFront – you pay only for as much or as little content as you actually deliver through the content delivery service.

    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**
    Unilever, Spotify, Pinterest, MLB Advanced Media, Foursquare, PBS, Airbnb, Netflix, WIX, Comcast, Automobili Lamborghini, Rovio, Discovery Communications
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider38%
    Media Company13%
    Leisure / Travel Company13%
    Consumer Goods Company13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization27%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm40%
    Integrator10%
    Retailer10%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization19%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise33%
    Large Enterprise53%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise44%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise55%
    Buyer's Guide
    Akamai vs. Amazon CloudFront
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai vs. Amazon CloudFront and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Akamai is ranked 3rd in CDN with 13 reviews while Amazon CloudFront is ranked 4th in CDN with 13 reviews. Akamai is rated 9.0, while Amazon CloudFront is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Akamai writes "An out-of-the-box solution for live video streaming". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Amazon CloudFront writes "A CDN solution that has rich documentation and resources ". Akamai is most compared with Cloudflare, Azure Front Door, Imperva DDoS, AWS Global Accelerator and Fastly, whereas Amazon CloudFront is most compared with Azure Front Door, Cloudflare, Windows Azure CDN, Fastly and AWS Global Accelerator. See our Akamai vs. Amazon CloudFront report.

    See our list of best CDN vendors.

    We monitor all CDN reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.