Akamai Reviews

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.

CDN and WAF are the main hardcore features in Akamai that we use in our company.

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.

If you ask about Akamai as a whole, then I would say that there are a lot of areas where improvements are required. In general, there are a few areas where I really think that Akamai's services need improvement. In Akamai, as far as CDN is concerned, I feel that its features are an area where some improvements or upgrades are required. Caching strategy is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution where improvements are required. Suppose you are using a feature called cache tags, which are basically a set of tags that are used to represent certain elements in the URL. When you use cache tags, you can flush out cache or parts of it or all the URLs that are associated with that tag. Akamai doesn't have a feature to cache the tag, as it currently has the feature to purge the cache in the tag. Akamai currently doesn't have a feature with which you can get all the URLs based on the tag and then apply some caching on top of it, making it a feature that Akamai lacks.

I have been using Akamai for four years. I am a customer of Akamai.

It is a stable solution. Though there are some minor issues with Akamai, it is an overall stable product.

I have worked with Akamai in two organizations to date. Considering the current organization where I work, we have the best possible support from Akamai, owing to which I don't have any flaws about them to discuss. In my previous organization, I used a standard for generic support from Akamai, which diligently followed the set protocol of Akamai, which is to reply to any queries from users within 24 hours.

I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

The product's initial setup will be difficult for someone who has never dealt with CDN. For me, the product's initial setup was easy since I have been associated with CDN for quite some time now. With Akamai, I have always found its initial setup phase easy since everything is UI-oriented in the tool, making it an easy process.

The solution is deployed on the cloud services offered by Akamai.

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. Akamai's pricing model makes it fall under a premium category.

I would absolutely recommend Akamai to those who plan to use it. Based on my experience with three CDNs that I have worked with, I found Akamai to be the best, a reason why I have been using Akamai for the past three to four years.

I rate the overall product an eight and a half out of ten.

Our company uses the solution as a content delivery network. We enhance website performance and have about 150 customers in Taiwan who use the solution. 

The solution is very sustainable and flexible. 

The solution could offer more integrations. 

I have been using the solution for one year. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is very scalable. 

Our customers say that technical support is very good. 

The setup is a little bit complex. 

We implement the solution for customers and it usually takes one day depending on the scenario. 

The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth. 

I recommend the solution and rate it a ten out of ten. 

We're a media site, so we use Akamai for content delivery and streaming. 
It's spread across multiple departments. We're using several Akamai tools, including Property Manager, Cloud Identity, Bot Manager Premium, the CDN, and AMD for video streaming. 

Akamai provides low-latency throughput.

I'd like to see more Web 3.0 and IoT solutions. 

Our organization has been using Akamai for three or four years. I took over the head engineering position a year and a half ago.

Akamai is quite stable. 

Akamai is scalable. Definitely, yeah.

Akamai support is excellent. I rate them nine out of 10 because they have great debugging tools, and they're highly competent. We have their premium partnership, so their engineers are proactive and responsive whenever we have issues. It's pretty smooth.

Positive

The company switched to Akamai before I joined, but there were two or three solutions before that. Standardization was important for them because it's a media organization. They wanted one solution, so they put everything into Akamai.

Akamai was deployed before I joined, but we work with the Akamai product team closely. When they release a new product, we try to see if it fits. You only need a lean staff to deploy and maintain Akamai. We use three staff members to manage Akamai.

We handle everything with our in-house team, but we work closely with Akamai engineers.

There are two things: value for the money and return on investment. We haven't calculated the return on investment, but the value for the price we are paying is definitely there.

We've been using Akamai for the last two or three years, so we think we are getting value for the money. 

I rate Akamai eight out of 10. At end of the day there, I defer to Gartner's Magic Quadrant. They're one of the premium leaders on the OTT side, and we are a media organization. They're right on top of the Gartner report, so that's a good product. 

We monitor all the traffic which is coming from the Internet to our environment through the Akamai CDN.

It provides good security.

I cannot disclose specific features, but overall, it's a good product.

Costing-wise and integration with other tools need improvement, especially API security.

We have used the solution for a long time.

I rate the stability at seven out of ten. There are occasional downtimes, but not very frequent.

I rate the scalability at eight out of ten. It's very good.

The initial setup is simple, especially for SaaS solutions. We use a hybrid model with both on-premises and SaaS.

There are many CDN providers in the market, but I do not want to compare Akamai with them.

I recommend the product to other users.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Akamai is useful for web content delivery in business because it helps improve speed, reliability, and security. Caching content closer to users reduces latency and improves load times. This is especially important for businesses like Azure, as it enhances the user experience and ensures content is delivered efficiently. Additionally, Akamai's security solutions help protect against cyber threats like DDoS attacks.

The most valuable feature in managing web traffic has been the ability to handle vertical scaling effectively. I appreciate the integration with Oracle business, but what stands out are the new capabilities and possibilities within Akamai's products. These enhancements are what I like the most.

One area for improvement with Akamai could be pricing.

Smaller companies may find Akamai less sustainable and scalable compared to larger enterprises.

Deploying Akamai can vary in ease depending on the technical requirements. While it is generally straightforward, some cases may encounter technical difficulties, particularly in complex security setups. The difficulty lies in integrating Akamai's solutions with the specific security needs of the organization.

Companies need to pay for an Akamai license, which can be yearly or monthly. It is not overly expensive but not the cheapest option available.

My experience with Akamai in improving website security has been good. They are well-regarded for their technology, especially in their main area of expertise. However, expanding into other areas is a bit tough because people mainly know them for what they are already famous for. We're working on showing that they are effective in other technologies too.

Akamai's cloud security solutions have positively impacted our organization. While the market perception might not fully reflect their effectiveness, their products are highly regarded. This perception challenge may stem from Akamai's historical approach and the market's existing knowledge about the company. 

Akamai is stable, reliable, and user-friendly, typically delivering optimal performance. However, smaller companies might struggle to grasp the full value, particularly in complex security aspects like micro-segmentation.

For those considering using Akamai, my advice is to engage with others who have experience with the platform. While Akamai is a well-known brand, it is important to recognize that its expertise lies in complex security areas more suited for enterprise-level companies. For smaller businesses entering this market, it is essential to establish Akamai as a trusted name through effective communication and understanding of their specific needs.

The value and benefits of working with Akamai lie in their ability to provide real solutions to the problems they address. They are a strong company with robust products, capable of resolving the specific needs their customers face.

Overall, I would rate Akamai as an eight out of ten.

My company uses Akamai as a CDN tool and for cloud security.

The most valuable features of the solution are the platform, deployment or infrastructure, and overall features it provides.

I can't point out any downsides of Akamai since it is presently one of the best solutions in the market.

In our company, we are good with how the solution works for us since we continuously use it to improve our processes.

New features will keep getting added to the product as the needs of businesses or organizations grow, making it a never-ending process.

The fact that it is an expensive product is its only shortcoming. The pricing of the product can be made better.

I have been using Akamai for five years. My company is a customer of Akamai.

It is a stable solution.

It is an easily scalable solution.

Akamai is a customer-facing product for my company, and we are a large-sized company.

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

Positive

The installation phase of Akamai was easy.

Akamai is a SaaS cloud-based solution.

It takes around ten to fifteen minutes to deploy the solution.

The number of people required for the deployment phase of the product varies since it depends on the size of an organization. Smaller organizations would need one or two people for the deployment, while the bigger ones would need more people.

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.

My company does not have to get involved in the maintenance of the product since it is a cloud-based solution.

Akamai is a highly reliable platform.

It is a very good solution offering unique features to users. The scaling capabilities of Akamai platform are its best feature that nobody in the market can match or offer.

I rate the overall solution a ten out of ten.