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Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Fastly comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Akamai Connected Cloud (Lin...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (3rd), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (8th)
Fastly
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
CDN (8th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (20th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) and Fastly aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) is designed for Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) and holds a mindshare of 9.8%, up 9.2% compared to last year.
Fastly, on the other hand, focuses on CDN, holds 5.5% mindshare, up 3.6% since last year.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)9.8%
Amazon AWS17.1%
Microsoft Azure10.2%
Other62.9%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
CDN Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Fastly5.5%
Cloudflare19.0%
Akamai14.7%
Other60.8%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

Julio Graham - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Support resolves issues quickly and helps in expanding storage efficiently
Their support is really good. I can ask anything at any time, and they are able to resolve issues like reinstating deleted Linodes. They include features like retaining deleted Linodes for 30 days. They offer volumes and object storage, which I can add quickly, and they are high speed. I can easily expand space for database work. Although I used to create images, I found them outdated and prefer installing new images.
PP
Technical support engineer at Adobe
Optimized ecommerce performance and improved access control through image handling and IP filtering
I believe that Fastly should provide guidelines for their WAF blocking rules. It should be public what the rules are that are blocking their contents. I believe Fastly should provide regional IP addresses instead of POP IPs. Fastly should provide features similar to Cloudflare regarding a block list. Additionally, a POP address should be there with a wide range of IP addresses provided, public static IP addresses, so customers can integrate egress IPs. Fastly should provide WebP image processing on the backend instead of on the fly. It would be a very useful feature to avoid unnecessary time for browser to browser and local cookies. I believe that Fastly service has a few gaps. We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers. There should be transparency.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The fact that you can get a person on the phone has just been fantastic."
"The management of different DNS domains is beneficial due to the user-friendly interface that provides all necessary options."
"When it comes to the Linode Kubernetes Engine and the amount of automation it provides, it's awesome, it's a game-changer. If a process randomly dies, it could take me a while to notice that it has died, if I haven't set up monitoring. With Kubernetes, it will just restart itself using Heartbeats."
"Linode has many other cloud servers across the globe."
"Linode offers cost-effective pricing, and it enables me to swiftly deploy my services."
"The cloud management panel is nice."
"It is also important that Linode offers worldwide coverage via multiple data centers. The ability to deploy on multiple servers, worldwide, allows us to have distributed services and failover and redundancy."
"Generally speaking, I have not found any faults using Linode. For what we wanted, they provided a complete solution."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
"Fastly combines both the CDN side and the Signal Sciences next-generation WAF, which is closely integrated with the CDN, allowing us to use both products seamlessly."
"Support is good; the product works as advertised. We have a Slack connection with them. So we can basically ask for help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly."
"The product helps our organization to access sites located in different regions quickly."
"Compute@Edge features are valuable to me."
"Rate limiting is a good feature that protects from volumetric attacks."
"Fastly uses configuration versioning, where you can deploy a new version in less than one minute."
"Fastly provides CDN, WAF, image optimization, and IP restriction."
 

Cons

"Because they are a smaller company, they do not have, for example, all of the ways for authentication that Amazon or Azure has."
"They are already working on the firewalls and VLANs, which need improvement, and are now in beta. I am on the beta program for the firewalls, but I can't use it yet because they are only in Mumbai and Australia, and I am not in those data centres. This is the one thing that I have been waiting for almost since the day that I joined them, so it is nice that they are doing that. The VLANs will be an improvement as well, and I am keen and waiting for that."
"When it comes to marketing and exposure, Linode needs improvement because I just randomly found them by looking for Linux solutions."
"Before they changed the dashboard, I found some of the more granular options easier to find."
"Right now, they don't have multiple data centers. They have limited data centers. I am currently using the Singapore and Mumbai data centers, but I am looking for data centers in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. They need to improve the availability of their data centers and partnership engagements with cloud Panda solution providers, like us."
"I'm not sure what could be improved at Linode since they're likely already making enhancements, especially with the Akamai acquisition and, I don't have any specific suggestions as I haven't encountered any major issues. I might consider using API for managing DNS records, but overall, I'm satisfied with Linode."
"The product must improve its security."
"They could have more international servers. There are certain places throughout Europe and Eastern Europe which are very open to doing a lot of technology business, such as Romania. Romania is very open to technology. At other service providers, I have stuff in Romania. I think there are some Eastern European locations that would be more open to it. So, if they could have more European points of presence, that would be more helpful."
"Support is not that great."
"It is missing a "staging" platform to deploy a test configuration with all of the real settings, which would allow us to properly test before putting it into production."
"What I don't like about Fastly is that they charge a heavy price."
"We are not getting quick responses from Fastly technical support engineers. Sometimes they depend on their D3 developers."
"Stronger analytics would be helpful, like showing configurations that haven't served a certain amount of traffic in a while. With many properties, things can get lost track of - duplicates or unused configurations not properly decommissioned."
"The solution's pricing could be better."
"Fastly's customer service area needs improvement."
"The product should provide improved bot detection and management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to other providers, I find Linode's pricing a bit higher. Storage could be more affordable."
"Overall, it is cost-effective. They offer flat, no lock-in pricing. We also get discounts. As compared to its competitors, it is costly, but at the same time, it has many features."
"The pricing model is very simple. I like the simplicity of it, starting at $5, then doubling as it goes up from there. That is a brilliant idea, and it is not complex at all. It is about as dead simple as you can imagine. So, if you want to double what you have, then you double your price, pay the money, and reboot. It is done. It's that simple. You can't beat that."
"The pricing model is simple."
"One key difference is that pricing is very hard to come by and to understand with all the bigger companies. Their pricing models are so weird and it's hard to figure out exactly how much I am going to pay for this kind of service. Everything is piecemeal. With Linode, it's simple and straightforward. You know exactly what you will have to pay at the end of the day."
"The solution is neither cheap nor expensive."
"I pay just over £20 per month and have done so ever since I started eight years ago, which to me is good value."
"The monthly cost depends on your requirements."
"In my opinion, Fastly is priced competitively."
"The solution is cheaper than other products in the market."
"The pricing has been very competitive."
"You need to pay a premium price for the tool."
"I've generally found Fastly to be very competitive in pricing, especially around Compute@Edge."
"Fastly is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"It is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
6%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Retailer
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Linode?
When I started using Linode, I found its functionality easy to navigate, user-friendly and responsive to my needs. It provides clear reminders about services I'm not using, like DNS zones, which I ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Linode?
I find Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode)'s pricing very competitive. They never charge extra without improvements. I always receive more features for the same price.
What needs improvement with Linode?
I am not satisfied with the customization options from Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) because I still haven't tried any new capabilities provided by them yet. I am still keeping it as a virtual se...
What do you like most about Fastly?
Support is good; the product works as advertised. We have a Slack connection with them. So we can basically ask for help, live, engage, and ring when they respond. Very quickly.
What needs improvement with Fastly?
I believe that Fastly should provide guidelines for their WAF blocking rules. It should be public what the rules are that are blocking their contents. I believe Fastly should provide regional IP ad...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Best Buy, Panasonic, Giphy, Marco Polo, World Health Organization, Font Squirrel
Twitter, Airbnb, Alaska Airlines, Pinterest, Vimeo, The Guardian, The New York Times, Ticketmaster, The Drupal Association, Opera, about.com, imgur, Etsy, Foursquare, GitHub, New Relic, shopify, Shazam, Firebase
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Akamai and others in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS). Updated: January 2026.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.