Kentik and Akamai App and API Protector are both leaders in network analysis and security. Kentik seems to shine in network visualization and analysis, while Akamai is prominent in DDoS protection and scalability.
Features: Kentik is recognized for its SaaS delivery model, providing extensive NetFlow visualization and robust real-time visibility for network monitoring. Additionally, it supports detailed traffic analysis and customization of alerts. Akamai App and API Protector is noted for its strong DDoS protection, scalability, and seamless integration of security controls, including a customizable WAF and detailed traffic filtering.
Room for Improvement: Kentik could enhance user permissions granularity and API usability, while making its visualization dimensions more intuitive. Users would also benefit from improved automation and mitigation feature integration. Akamai could refine its WAF interface, advance its reporting capabilities, and improve pricing competitiveness and intelligent dashboard monitoring.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:Kentik is praised for its proactive customer support and offers deployment flexibility, including on-premises and private cloud. Akamai, focusing on public cloud deployment, also enjoys positive feedback for its support, although experiences with response times vary. Kentik supports traditional data center models, whereas Akamai is oriented towards cloud integration.
Pricing and ROI: Kentik is seen as cost-effective with significant ROI, particularly in traffic insights and transit cost optimization. Akamai, though considered expensive with usage-based pricing, justifies its cost through a comprehensive feature set attractive to larger enterprises. Both could benefit from more flexible pricing and billing models to reach diverse customers.
For the small project I was working on, using the basic tier provided a huge improvement at zero cost.
In terms of return on investment with Cloudflare, it costs my time to set them up, but basically once they're set up, it's done.
In production environments, especially for service providers on IP networks and data centers, Kentik helps in reducing the time to identify and resolve issues.
Cloudflare does not offer hands-on technical support to fix customer problems but rather a self-service model.
I would rate the technical support with Cloudflare as excellent every time I've had to call them.
We use other solutions where support is available through Slack channels and is more interactive, with someone responding within a couple of minutes or seconds.
I have mostly used forums for any support needed because the setup is straightforward and the documentation is quite good.
They have monthly calls and discuss the product roadmap with us to determine what is needed.
It is a SaaS tool, but the fact that they have workloads deployed across the world proves that it is a highly scalable tool.
The tool offers very good performance, even during high-traffic periods.
I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.
Kentik's integration with Kubernetes makes scaling easier.
You can scale as many devices and tests as you want, but you should have a good number of credits in your accounts.
I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.
The service is very stable with no impacts during high-traffic periods.
In production, however, dimensioning of the underlying platforms is something to be mindful of.
Based on stability, I would give Kentik a nine.
Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor.
Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements.
There are some performance considerations when it comes to dynamic content that involves fetching data from databases or using APIs.
More work is required to integrate AI for troubleshooting, simplifying root cause analysis, and providing suggested solutions for network issues.
I find it to be cheap.
I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.
The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive.
The pricing is good and aligns with the market target.
Kentik’s pricing is competitive in the marketplace.
Techniques like minification and image compression reduce the size of assets, leading to better performance and faster user load times.
The solution has been able to compare it to the market, and I think the product has taken great strides in automating quite a bit of things, and they use a lot of AI.
Most of our DNS records that are presented to the internet are proxied whenever possible, providing another layer of defense from our perspective.
The area in which Akamai excels compared to other competitors with a WAF is in threat intelligence, as threats continually evolve, requiring ongoing updates to backend algorithms to effectively capture smart bots.
The most important feature is cybersecurity.
One of the most valuable features of Kentik, especially for service providers, is its ability to visualize all the BGP peering and the status of the BGP peering platform.
Kentik is easy to use and set up.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Cloudflare | 16.2% |
| Akamai App and API Protector | 4.4% |
| Kentik | 0.8% |
| Other | 78.6% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 46 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 8 |
| Large Enterprise | 26 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 4 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 7 |
| Large Enterprise | 18 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 4 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 3 |
| Large Enterprise | 8 |
Cloudflare enhances web performance and security with features like CDN caching and DDoS mitigation while providing easy DNS management and intuitive setup through its user-friendly dashboard.
Cloudflare is recognized for its comprehensive web security and performance solutions. Speed improvements are achieved through caching mechanisms and DDoS protection, combining ease of DNS management with flexible page rules. The robust analytics and threat insight tools provide valuable data, assisted by a user-friendly dashboard allowing quick setup and configuration. An API offers dynamic DNS settings ensuring low latency and high performance across the globe.
What are Cloudflare's key features?Cloudflare finds utility across industries for DNS management and defense mechanisms. Its content delivery network assures fast content distribution and fortified security. Businesses integrate features like web application firewalls, load balancing, end-to-end SSL, and zero trust to protect websites from cyber threats while ensuring resilience and reliable performance.
Akamai App and API Protector provides website security by preventing DDoS attacks, acting as an application firewall, managing content delivery, and monitoring APIs. It adapts to threat profiles and is used for fast media delivery and identifying malicious activities.
Akamai App and API Protector offers strong protection, adaptable security features, and efficient traffic management. Its WAF blocks IP addresses and country-specific threats while preventing SQL injections. Companies utilize it for scalable CDN services and comprehensive traffic analysis. Known for its cost-effectiveness and user-friendly dashboard, this protector stands out for its customizable rules and technical support. Users also highlight the ease of integration and detailed attack insights available through its advanced dashboard.
What are the key features of Akamai App and API Protector?In media, Akamai App and API Protector ensures smooth streaming by handling high bandwidth demands. E-commerce companies use it to guard against fraud and data breaches. Financial sectors rely on its ability to protect sensitive transactions. Implementations in healthcare focus on safeguarding patient data while maintaining compliance with regulations.
Kentik's AIOps Network Traffic Intelligence platform unifies network operations, performance, security, and business intelligence.
With a purpose-built big data engine delivered as public or private SaaS, Kentik captures a high-resolution view of actual network traffic data and enriches it with critical application and business data, so every network event or analysis can be tied to revenue & costs, customer & user experience, performance & risk.
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