Akamai Reviews

The primary use case of late or the past couple of years has been securing web applications and web-facing applications. WAF becomes a primary solution. The way we are able to value-add further is thanks to the base, the CDN that Akamai uses. Because on top of it, everything else is built. Every security solution that they have today, essentially CDN topped by WAF, DDoS, and other solutions, including API security. That is where the value comes in, and CDN, WAF, DDoS becomes a very good bundle for the customer from both a value and cost perspective.

One benefit is having their operations faster, meaning they can actually accelerate their business with the help of CDN in the picture. They don't have to work on productivity as it increases because they have a seamless CDN in place.

Second is security. They are able to make many changes in their application without having the need for regular manual checks because the solution takes care of it at the back end. That's how the value is given to the customer. The system is monitored 24/7, and assets are protected.

From a product perspective, I don't see much room for improvement because they keep building and doing extensive R&D. They have acquired several products which make sense from an API perspective. Noname was a recent acquisition. Neosec was also a recent acquisition for API security. They continue building their products.

On the commercials and pricing based on the region, they might have to work a bit because sometimes we lose on commercials.

It has been six years, six and a half years.

It's a more mature tool, a scalable tool. Customers have flexibility, and it gives much more enriched visibility into their infrastructure.

The support perspective is amazing.

I have moved to another system integrator, but we do position Akamai. We are resellers for Akamai.

It's plug-and-play. Simple.

It depends on a case-to-case basis. We come forward with Cloudflare, Imperva, Radware sometimes. These are some competitions that come across.

They are one of the top solution vendors in the market. Premium though, but they're the best.

We've worked closely with digital-native customers, not so much from the media segment. Fintechs, financial organizations, banking segment, manufacturing, these are the ones we have worked with. Not much on media because most of the media houses are already covered by Akamai. 95% of media houses are already covered by Akamai.

It gives a seamless view of how your infrastructure is, from an attack perspective, from a threat perspective, how your assets are behaving. It gives a very comprehensive view.

It depends on the customer's environment. Wherever the customer wants, but mostly it is on the private cloud or public cloud because it's a cloud-based SaaS solution that Akamai has to offer. Implementation is feasible anywhere.

The solution is aimed at Enterprise customers because it is on a premium side.

On a scale of 1-10, this solution rates at 9.5.

We are using many of the solutions from Akamai, with the WAF in front of it and distribution to multiple targets where AWS is one of the targets. We are building up websites that we are pointing to our AWS accounts, some to on-premises, and some to Azure.

We have services that we are deploying in AWS.

Our use has been quite limited as we aimed to understand what it provides and how to integrate it because we have tried to put Akamai in front without disturbing each other.

It is reducing the load on the traffic into where we have the back-end systems, and reduces the time significantly for customers accessing static information. Since it is distributed with more than 4,000 data centers all over the world, it creates much faster delivery to the clients. They are also supporting both IP version four and six.

For WAF, when they are deploying features, you can have both automatic updates from the vendor with protection, and for very important websites, you can put it in test mode to see how the new solution is working compared with the existing configuration. You can see the results on both the new configuration and the existing configuration in real time.

I appreciate the logging capabilities where you can log each request. What we are doing is logging each request to Splunk, which provides very good insight into how the website is working and what is working well or poorly.

Other solutions are probably easier to set up, but you have more capability in Akamai. It would be beneficial if they could make some cases less complex to set up.

There could be improvements in how many rules you can provide.

We are using both deployment models.

Normally a deployment takes five to 10 minutes.

We are using it continuously.

We have received excellent support from their team. I have not worked with any other applications where they have delivered professional services as good as them. They have followed up during many years. What I have seen from others is that they bring good people for the setup and then leave. What Akamai does is that they continue providing very good people throughout the entire contract period.

Positive

I have worked extensively with the firewall, not in AWS, but we have Akamai in front of it.

They are quite complex to work with. We have multiple sites and different configurations. In GitLab, we are delegating areas where each team can deploy.

For me, it works effectively. I appreciate the way they have set it up. It has significant granularity, and I am very satisfied with most aspects of it.

On a scale of 1-10, I would give Akamai a rating of 9.

The purpose is to use Akamai as a CDN solution to distribute all the static content we have on our website and all the static pages worldwide. We have about 50 branches around the world, and this enhances the accessibility of our website.

All the policies of the CDNs are very beneficial. You can block all geolocations or any access attacks. It depends on what you need to configure because there are a lot of definitions, options, and features that you can configure on the Akamai CDN platform. It's beneficial since it's one of the best solutions in the world for CDN. It fits our needs.

Our contract supports a very low SLA. We have not encountered challenges from downtime since we have a contract that supports our SLA. We have scalability in the contract as well. When we surpass traffic limits, we can scale and be flexible with the resources we need.

After three or four months from this perspective, I don’t know all the features on the platform yet, so I am still learning about it.

I have been on this assignment for three or four months.

Our contract supports a very low SLA, so we have not seen any challenges from downtime because we have a contract that supports our SLA. We have scalability in the contract, and when we exceed the traffic limits, we can scale and be flexible with the resources we need.

I haven't experienced scalability yet, however, according to my manager, we can scale very quickly. We can duplicate all our edges for Akamai very quickly.

Support is responsive and helpful. Every time we reach out to them, it is a really comfortable and good experience.

Positive

We only used a WAF - not a CDN.

We are a big company, so deployment was a long time ago. Akamai has been part of my company for nearly eight to nine years. The deployment happened a while ago, and we have only been maintaining the platform and trying to build all the necessary configurations or rules that support production as you see from the CDN purposes and the WAF security.

We are a big company, so deployment happened a long time ago. Akamai has been part of my company for nearly eight to nine years. The deployment occurred a while ago, and we have only been maintaining the platform and trying to build all the necessary configurations or rules that support production as you see from the CDN purposes and the WAF security.

I don't remember pricing exactly. It is a lot. We have around 110 subdomains on the platform. If I wanted to get premuium support, it costs a lot.

I would recommend the solution. It's a huge infrastructure company that provides a lot of availability and flexibility to customer needs when it comes to CDNs. 

Akamai has many configurations and rules that we can manipulate to avoid attacks or prevent any price scraping or manipulation on our website. There are features to defend against XSS attacks or SQL injections, more on XSS on web pages. 

The rating is seven out of ten. 

Neutral

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.

It's a scalable and reliable solution.

The support has been great. My entire experience with the support has been great. 

Their enterprise support is knowledgeable and responsive, providing clear timelines. The way they communicate and help out. They even offer valuable insights on how to best utilize the solution.

Positive

We've worked on Akamai, Cloudfront, and CloudFlare. 

CloudFront is a perfectly viable option if you're using solely AWS. However, if you're using Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or other cloud providers, it might not be the best fit.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten for enterprise level. 

But when it comes to small and medium businesses, it is a five out of ten. It is not a solution for SMBs. It's actually because of the three parts. The first point is that migration and customization are actually hard components. When you don't have a lot of room for expenditure on those components, Akamai needs a dedicated team with experience in Security Data and a lot of skillsets. That's why it's hard for people to jump onto it. 

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.

My company uses Akamai for all our web applications since it minimizes attacks, monitors traffic, and filters and blocks malicious emails.

Akamai is a good threat intelligence platform. Akamai uses the latest technologies like machine learning, AI, and rule-based protection. The solution also blocks all malicious emails.

As Akamai offers rule-based protection, the rules have to be configured on priority and should be done at the earliest since new development keeps taking place. Akamai's configuration part is an area of concern where improvements are required to make the process easy.

In Akamai, one should be able to change the rules in the rule-based protection. Traffic filtering is an area in the solution that has to be updated to the latest one to be possibly active to manage the latest and upcoming attacks.

I have been using Akamai for seven to eight years. I am a customer of the product.

It is a very stable solution.

It is an easily scalable solution.

Right now, the application from Akamai runs in our company for around 200 to 250 systems.

The solution's technical support is very prompt and good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

Apart from Akamai, my company uses ArcSight, McAfee, and Forcepoint. Akamai is better than McAfee and Forcepoint. Akamai's protection is very good since it is able to block all malicious emails and offer easy rule-based protection while staying updated with the latest machine learning technology.

Regarding the installation part, hardware-based WAF is a bit difficult, but software-based WAF's installation phase is very easy.

The installation process for the hardware takes maybe four to five hours, while the software can be installed very comfortably as it is easy.

For the installation process of hardware, I think two people are required.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model and the cloud.

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's maintenance part is something that only one person can manage.

I think for all the web-based applications, we can switch to Akamai. I recommend the solution to those who plan to use it.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

My company uses Akamai to get applications, especially static ones.

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 CDN part of the solution helps us improve the agent's download and installation.

The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist.

I have been using Akamai for more than two years. I use the solution's latest version since we use the SaaS version of the product in our company that keeps the solution updated. My company is a customer of Akamai.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The product does not speak about the number of users since everything revolves around the transaction with the vendor.

My organization had to contact the technical support team of the product when we had to make some changes. The product's technical support team was quite helpful and quick to respond.

I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of Akamai was easy. We had only one project requiring onboarding of FQDN before giving the origin IP address making the setup process quite easy.

The solution is deployed on a hybrid cloud.

Akamai provided our company with UAT-1 so that after we test the product, we can deploy it in our production environment, for which we need to monitor our applications for at least two to three weeks to monitor if anything blocks our access. After the monitoring period, it is helpful in allowing one to proceed with a week's time frame for the deployment.

Regarding the price of the solution, it is difficult for me to compare Akamai to some other products, though there are other providers of CDN solutions, like Cloudflare. I feel that Akamai is the most complete solution since Akamai offers Prolexic, DDoS, WAF, and CDN.

The price of the solution depends upon its usage.

Akamai is the best choice for those operating with their applications or website.

I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

The product can be used for content distribution and performance improvements.

Akamai has a very established network of PoPs globally. The product is very strong when it comes to distribution and security. Akamai is a well-established and trusted partner in security and bad bot management.

Up-and-coming CDNs are coming into the market to compete with more established vendors like Akamai. They're competing in areas specific to edge computing. I want to see the product increase in innovation and activity in that area. I'd like to see improvements in log files and data visualizations within the interface.

I have been using the solution for three years.

The product is very stable as a platform. There are sometimes issues around traffic and capacity limits that could be relaxed a little bit more.

The platform can handle scaling. However, Akamai has placed a limitation on it. A bit more flexibility in working around these limitations should be provided. In my organization, 15 people are working on the solution.

Support is good. We can raise tickets. That's usually the main way of getting support within Akamai. It’s slightly better in support when compared to Fastly. There are support channels within Akamai.

The solution could be set up relatively quickly. It depends on the complexity of your architecture. Akamai gives a lot of support for setup, which is great. The product is deployed as a SaaS version within its cloud.

We have set up the product in days. If someone has a much larger organization, the project would require planning according to their specifications. The maintenance of the tool is the same as any other CDN. It takes regular work. We couldn't just leave a CDN and not work on it. A team within the organization takes responsibility for that functionality.

The value of CDN is huge for a large organization to improve performance in user experience. We can deliver fixes for issues across the entire platform using Edge Compute.

The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position. The pricing for Edge Compute is very competitive.

Fastly is just beating Akamai on computing at the moment. It's a very fast-evolving space. They are all trying to release new functionalities. In some respect, Akamai is better than CloudFront. It's a big decision to decide which CDN to work with. 

If someone plans to use the product, they must engage Akamai's teams and get a good idea of what these platforms are like. For enterprises, Akamai will clearly tell them what they are dealing with. Akamai would want to have quite a few conversations with the individual teams to get a feel for the functionality they can give. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

So one of our main use cases is website hosting. It can be the website primarily targeted at a specific demographic or global. That's one use case. 

Another use case is providing an out-of-the-box solution for video streaming. If your business is primarily focused on live video streaming, Akamai might be the right solution for you. Other content delivery network (CDN) solutions, like Virtual Sand, do not support video streaming. That's the main reason for choosing Akamai. 

Additionally, Akamai is leveraged by many Fortune 500 companies. If there's an outage or any issues, you don't need to worry about the service level agreement (SLA) because most of your competitors and top-level business companies also rely on Akamai.

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.

I have been working with Akamai for three years.

It is a stable solution.

It is a highly scalable solution.

If you have an in-house team of engineers to manage, you may not require much technical support. However, if you have limited support or are new to the platform, you might need customized software and dedicated technical support, which comes with an additional cost.

Therefore, you need to pay extra for the support. 

Neutral

Setting up Akamai is a bit more complex compared to Cloudflare or similar services. It's more like an enterprise solution, so you need to sign a contract. The initial setup requires expertise either within your team or with support from Akamai to configure it for your infrastructure.

We have an in-house application because our main focus is website development. Additionally, we are working on an application that has a global reach.

Deployment primarily involves providing all the necessary services. Once you run the agent software on your infrastructure server, the client runs on the cloud infrastructure, such as Amazon, Azure, or GPT, or even on-premises data centers. Akamai, or any CDN solution, can be deployed as a cloud solution. You connect the DNS from your application to the Akamai cloud. When a request is made to your domain, instead of going directly to your server, it goes through Akamai first. Akamai then forwards the request to your internal server. This way, information is cached based on the local regions, improving performance.

Generally, a minimum of two to three engineers, preferably site reliability engineers, are required to handle the deployment and maintenance effectively.

Moreover, maintenance can be a bit challenging. Only someone with end-to-end knowledge of Akamai would be able to maintain it effectively.

Documentation and resources are available, but they are not publicly accessible. Only enterprise-level customers who are committed to Akamai receive the documentation. However, you still need support from their teams, especially when new features are rolled out. Unfortunately, there isn't an open support community where people can help each other. Cloudflare, on the other hand, offers more support in these aspects.

Akamai is an expensive tool. Moreover, we have a pay-as-you-go model for additional features. 

Akamai offers many additional services, but they often come as add-ons. On the other hand, Akamai is acquiring smaller companies to expand its offerings, particularly in the areas of security and other aspects. However, they are still in the incubation stage in terms of these aspects. 

In comparison, Cloudflare is more focused on security. The choice between these companies depends on your specific use case. For example, if you are an e-commerce platform, the high-quality resolution of product images is crucial for the end user. In such cases, Akamai may be the best solution, especially for handling high-resolution images and video streaming. 

However, if your application is a general website and you need CDN for caching and instant traffic from your server, Cloudflare and other similar solutions may be suitable.

Cloudflare comes with default denial-of-service protection, but if you're considering Akamai, you may also need to think about additional solutions like Reblaze for better security. Akamai primarily functions as a CDN, while Reblaze specializes in preventing SQL injection and DDoS attacks.

If you're focused on security, you should consider Reblaze. After deploying Akamai, if you experience numerous bot attacks on your site, you can implement Reblaze for additional security measures.

After installing Akamai, we introduced Reblaze to handle various security aspects. Our setup involves data coming from Reblaze to Akamai and then to our servers.

There are multiple benefits. Depending on the use case, if you only need a CDN for caching content, whether it's static or dynamic, they can consider using Cloudflare. It could be the cheapest option compared to Akamai, which comes at a higher cost.

Another factor to consider is if your website primarily streams videos. If you're a publication or media company with a website that heavily relies on images and streaming videos, Akamai is a suitable tool and platform, especially considering the Content Delivery Network (CDN) capabilities.

I would rate Akamai a nine out of ten, as it is a market leader.

We use Akamai to monitor all incoming and outgoing traffic. If we see malicious traffic or other activities from an IP, we block that IP.

We can use Akamai to see each segment and data packet from the firewall, whether it is going on or what they are trying to search in our environment. We can also use the solution to block the IPs. If an attacker conducts an attack, we can check what query he is running and whether he wants to see our password or any other files.

The solution can be more specific regarding the alerts it gives. Currently, we have to check each and every traffic for every IP. It would be better if we could be notified about specific attacks.

I have been using Akamai for one year.

Around four users are using the solution in our organization.

Initially, we contacted the technical support team to learn how to use Akamai and block ASN numbers and IPs. The technical support team is very helpful. If we have any doubts, they will contact us immediately and explain how to do it.

I would recommend Akamai to other users because it is a WAF firewall that will notify them of malicious traffic and attacker activities. Learning to use Akamai for the first time will be easy if you know how to analyze the logs.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.