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Akamai Ion vs Fortinet FortiADC comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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 Ion
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
15th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortinet FortiADC
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Akamai Ion is 2.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiADC is 8.3%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiADC8.3%
Akamai Ion2.0%
Other89.7%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Reliable bot management with valuable traffic analytics and good delivery configuration
We are using Akamai Ion primarily for CDN services. It is more about delivery configuration, and for security, we use Akamai WAF security controls and Botman Akamai Ion helps protect us from DOS, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and scraping tools. Real-time analytics are very helpful for…
GANESAN K - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Engineer at Safezone Secure Solutions Private Limited
Has supported load balancing for medical applications and could benefit from more custom configuration options
Some customers need custom management for handling their applications across the servers. Instead of having a predefined solution, if we had space for custom-based algorithms to load balance the traffic, it would be better. We have faced such cases with A10, where we can leverage many custom scripts and do much more. Even though A10 primarily focuses on SMBs, they have also ventured into the enterprise market. Fortinet has been a pioneer for enterprise solutions, such as firewalls, SASE, ZTNA, and SD-WAN solutions, and they are in a leader quadrant. Therefore, they should have more options. From a pricing perspective, it is expensive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Akamai is easy to use and very effective."
"The most valuable feature is bot management."
"FortiADC helps application availability and improves user-response time, and in addition, the price is competitive."
"The product has flexible and interesting licensing options."
"The main feature that we use is GSLB (Global Server Load Balancing). GSLB makes the customer's network more reliable by scaling applications across multiple datacenters. GSLB as a disaster recovery solution can direct traffic based on site availability."
"Fortinet FortiADC is a good product; we implemented a Fortinet FortiADC cluster and use application load balancing, and the implementation process is straightforward and cluster implementation is also very easy."
"Customer service is excellent."
"We can do patches offline without causing customers outages. The web application firewall features, especially those related to the OWASP Top Ten, provide automated protections. This allows more flexibility in patching the backend applications. Additionally, it offers visibility into the requests being made to the applications, and you can't protect what you can't see."
"The solution is less expensive than F5 or Imperva and is the most reasonably priced option available."
"Fortinet FortiADC is a stable product."
 

Cons

"Log management should display data for more than two months."
"The product must provide more flexibility."
"I had a terrible experience with Fortinet support. I only used support once when I bought the solution. I got no response for two days. However, I believe that it's no longer the case. Fortinet solutions have problems when they're launched. For example, we had issues with Fortinet's authenticator when it came out. We also had trouble with FortiNAC in the beginning."
"Technical support and documentation could both be improved."
"Because it is so generic, the documentation requires special attention. A person who has not worked on Fortinet FortiADC or a similar product will struggle to understand what the document is trying to say. The documentation could be more specific, and more detailed."
"The user interface could be more friendly and CLI could be more like that of Fortigate."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"The initial setup was not complex, but it was not simple either."
"The solution's WAF needs an upgrade because it is not as good as FortiWeb, VMware, F5, or Imperva."
"I will queue all the details clearly on the ticket, including the diagram, log files, and everything else. Once a case is assigned, they ask the same questions again without checking the submitted details."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."
"I rate Fortinet FortiADC's pricing one out of ten. It is fixed."
"Compared to F5, FortiADC pricing is better."
"Our basic license excludes features such as antivirus and IDS. Due to license limitations, some functionalities are not configured."
"I believe the price is good. It's fair. There are no extra costs."
"The solution's pricing is an issue and should be improved."
"The price is competitive"
"The solution is less expensive than F5 or Imperva and is the most reasonably priced option available."
"The solution could be more cost-effective."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai Ion?
The billing cycle is monthly, however, payment is done yearly. While expensive, it provides value for the services offered.
What needs improvement with Akamai Ion?
Log management should display data for more than two months. The traffic report needs to be more flexible. The response time of technical support should be improved.
What is your primary use case for Akamai Ion?
We are using Akamai Ion primarily for CDN services. It is more about delivery configuration, and for security, we use Akamai WAF security controls and Botman.
Is Citrix ADC (formerly Netscaler) the best ADC to use and if not why?
For ADC, any ADC can do a good job. But in case if you want to add WAF functionality to the same ADC hardware you have to look for other ADC's like F5, Imperva, Radware, Fortinet, etc.
Do you recommend Fortinet FortiADC?
I recommend Fortinet FortiADC. My experience with Fortinet has been very positive. Our company has been using it for around five years. We mainly use FortiADC for the load balancing of application ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiADC?
Pricing is not considered on our side since we are the implementation team. Our pre-sales team considers the pricing and all the details.
 

Also Known As

No data available
FortiADC Application Delivery Controller, FortiADC
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Eurail, Boston Scientific
Black Gold Regional Schools, Amadeus Hospitality, Jefferson County, Chunghwa Telecom, City of Boroondara, Dimension Data
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Ion vs. Fortinet FortiADC and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.