Our primary use cases are for content delivery for all kinds of scenarios, video streaming, load balancing, caching, image managing, web application firewall, bot management and micro-segmentation.
Senior Consultant CDN at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Available worldwide with over 300,000 servers globally for content delivery
Pros and Cons
- "With 300 servers deployed worldwide, it's highly scalable and is the best web application firewall on the market."
- "Sometimes a little hard to navigate around the user console."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
We can offload a lot of traffic to Akamai and it's one of the best web application firewalls out there in the market.
What needs improvement?
The user console is quite overloaded, sometimes it's hard to find your way around.
With regards to additional features, Akamai continues to buy other companies and integrate their services into their product. It's kind of like a big bouquet of solutions and it would be good to see this continue in the future. From experience, sometimes you have different user consoles from the same supplier and that makes it hard to keep an overview and have reporting of everything in one place.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Akamai for approximately 20 years.
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Akamai
July 2025

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Akamai has been providing this service for 20 years and they have never had a substantial outage, they even have some products that have an uptime of over 20 years, the stability is very good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The Akamai content delivery service is available worldwide with over 300,000 servers globally, it's a very scalable solution.
How are customer service and support?
The Akamai technical support is pretty fast and support is knowledgeable.
How was the initial setup?
With regards to the setup of the product, depending on which use case it can be easy or a little more complex. Setting up caching and DNS is very straightforward, but Bot manager is more complicated.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
As this is a high end product, it's quite high in price, but it's at a similar level to competitors, Amazon and Google.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
The main competitor at this moment in time is CloudFlare. CloudFlare is focusing on small businesses and has an aggressive pricing structure. But for larger enterprises, Akamai is our preference and we have been very successful in reselling the product.
What other advice do I have?
For companies who wish to implement Akamai I would advise doing this through a partner like us, we have the expertise and knowledge of different solutions and setup's, and have compared other similar solutions. Some solutions could use different products like CloudFlare, so a client should look for an independent integrator instead of going direct with a vendor.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner

Head Of Digital Engineering Director at a media company with 10,001+ employees
It provides low-latency throughput
Pros and Cons
- "Akamai provides low-latency throughput."
- "I'd like to see more Web 3.0 and IoT solutions."
What is our primary use case?
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.
How has it helped my organization?
Akamai provides low-latency throughput.
What needs improvement?
I'd like to see more Web 3.0 and IoT solutions.
For how long have I used the solution?
Our organization has been using Akamai for three or four years. I took over the head engineering position a year and a half ago.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Akamai is quite stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Akamai is scalable. Definitely, yeah.
How are customer service and support?
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.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
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.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
We handle everything with our in-house team, but we work closely with Akamai engineers.
What was our ROI?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We've been using Akamai for the last two or three years, so we think we are getting value for the money.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
Akamai
July 2025

Learn what your peers think about Akamai. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Security Architect at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Enhanced security with an easy setup and good scalability
Pros and Cons
- "The initial setup is simple, especially for SaaS solutions."
- "Costing-wise and integration with other tools need improvement, especially API security."
What is our primary use case?
We monitor all the traffic which is coming from the Internet to our environment through the Akamai CDN.
How has it helped my organization?
It provides good security.
What is most valuable?
I cannot disclose specific features, but overall, it's a good product.
What needs improvement?
Costing-wise and integration with other tools need improvement, especially API security.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have used the solution for a long time.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the stability at seven out of ten. There are occasional downtimes, but not very frequent.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I rate the scalability at eight out of ten. It's very good.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is simple, especially for SaaS solutions. We use a hybrid model with both on-premises and SaaS.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
What other advice do I have?
I recommend the product to other users.
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Architect at a consumer goods company with 10,001+ employees
With a great support team and an easy installation phase, it serves as a CDN tool while also providing cloud security
Pros and Cons
- "The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy."
- "The fact that it is an expensive product is its only shortcoming."
What is our primary use case?
My company uses Akamai as a CDN tool and for cloud security.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features of the solution are the platform, deployment or infrastructure, and overall features it provides.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Akamai for five years. My company is a customer of Akamai.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is an easily scalable solution.
Akamai is a customer-facing product for my company, and we are a large-sized company.
How are customer service and support?
The solution's technical support is very good. I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
VP of Engineering at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
An out-of-the-box solution for live video streaming
Pros and Cons
- "Akamai is leveraged by many top-level businesses, ensuring reliability and support in case of outages or issues."
- "I would like to see improvements in the security aspect. The web application firewall needs to be enhanced and offers more customization options."
What is our primary use case?
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.
How has it helped my organization?
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with Akamai for three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a stable solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is a highly scalable solution.
How are customer service and support?
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.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
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.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
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.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Integrator
Very scalable, sustainable, and flexible with good technical support
Pros and Cons
- "The solution is very sustainable and flexible."
- "The solution could offer more integrations."
What is our primary use case?
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.
What is most valuable?
The solution is very sustainable and flexible.
What needs improvement?
The solution could offer more integrations.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using the solution for one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is very scalable.
How are customer service and support?
Our customers say that technical support is very good.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is a little bit complex.
What about the implementation team?
We implement the solution for customers and it usually takes one day depending on the scenario.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The solution's pricing is based on bandwidth.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend the solution and rate it a ten out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Reseller
Head of Information at a leisure / travel company with 51-200 employees
Simple integration, excellent support, and suitable for any organization
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of Akamai is its ease of use and simple integration. Additionally, the solution has new aspects added to it regularly."
- "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."
What is our primary use case?
Our website is very high in content, and for faster delivery to the end user, we are using their Akamai. The largest network is owned by them. Akamai runs on any company's cloud infrastructure.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of Akamai is its ease of use and simple integration. Additionally, the solution has new aspects added to it regularly.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Akamai for approximately three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Akamai is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of Akamai is good.
The solution is suitable for any sized organization.
How are customer service and support?
The support from Akamai is fantastic. They have one of the best supports available. You have assigned engineers targeting specific issues. The use of the support services is very easy.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
Akamai was simple to implement and set up.
The solution is not user-based. It's content-based. The number of GBs of transaction.
I rate the initial setup of Akamai a four out of five.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price of Akamai could be less expensive.
I rate the price of Akamai a two out of five.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
When comparing Akamai to other solutions they have a lot of bundled solutions. If you go to their competition, such as Amazon AWS, it would have a WAF, but it will not have a bot manager. If you use Cloudflare, the ease of integration is not as good as Akamai's. I have found most features are better in Akamai.
What other advice do I have?
Akamai is the market leader in its field of consultation and productivity.
I rate Akamai a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Network Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
A great solution for data transfer, supports TV connections and has a valuable traffic monitoring feature
Pros and Cons
- "We can see how much traffic can be downloaded on the portal."
- "When we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case for this solution is data transfer, and we deploy the solution on private cloud. Additionally, it allows content on the TV and supports TV connections.
What is most valuable?
We find the traffic monitoring feature valuable. For example, we can see how much traffic can be downloaded on the portal by pressing it.
What needs improvement?
The solution can be improved by creating a communication pathway with technical engineers because when we open tickets, we have a delay in response times.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using the solution for approximately two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable. We have approximately 100 people using this solution in our organization.
How are customer service and support?
We have had a good experience with customer service and support. I rate technical support a seven out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We did not previously use any other solutions.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward, and we have detailed information for deployment. Deployment took one week.
What other advice do I have?
I rate the solution a ten out of ten. The solution is good, but the communication pathways to senior-level support can be improved.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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