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Akamai Ion vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway 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
Microsoft Azure Application...
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
3rd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Akamai Ion is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is 7.3%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Application Gateway7.3%
Akamai Ion0.9%
Other91.8%
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
DevenderVannela - PeerSpot reviewer
Ensures efficient traffic management and robust security while simplifying complex configurations
The best features for Microsoft Azure Application Gateway basically protect your application and provide security-related features and also divert the traffic to different instances of your application. I have used URL-based routing, which helps manage traffic efficiency. It is a bit hard to manage in the long run, but it does provide value. I have used the gateway's Web Application Firewall feature, which enhances security as it is the first entry point to your network from the outside world. It helps protect against unwanted requests and other threats that can be configured. Regarding the integration with Azure Active Directory, it helps with authentication processes to configure all the users or the groups. The monitoring capabilities on Azure provide insight into application performance and potential threats because monitoring comes with many products. On Azure, you have Azure Monitor itself to help you monitor the application by collecting data. You have Application Insights and the logging workspace on Azure. By combining these three, you can implement monitoring solutions on Azure applications. Auto-scaling is important because it helps in resource management for customers. Scaling is one of the key features of moving to cloud for any customer. During peak times or special events, such as retail site promotions, user load increases significantly. To address this, based on the number of incoming requests or server capacities such as CPU and memory, you can automatically identify these peak scenarios and configure either scaling up or down automatically based on certain parameters.

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."
"The production is a valuable feature."
"We find it valuable because it is compatible with our existing Azure solution."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway gives us a lot of benefits, including domain mapping."
"The health probe is pretty good for your backend health. It tells you whether it's communicating and talking to the endpoint correctly. It is quite useful."
"The tool is easy to use and quite flexible. It has policy management features as well. The solution screens all traffic to our web applications before passing it to the application. We recently tested it on one of our poorly developed applications, and the upgrade gave us a 100% result based on our tests. It's very effective as a security measure, and people can detect threats even through the web application."
"Microsoft has a vast variety of tools, and it blends very well."
"The pricing is quite good."
"Azure Application Gateway's most valuable feature is ease of use. The configuration is straightforward. It isn't difficult to adjust the size of your instances in the settings. You can do that with a few clicks, and the configuration file is the same way. You can also set rules and policies with minimal time and effort."
 

Cons

"Log management should display data for more than two months."
"The product must provide more flexibility."
"Scalability can be an issue."
"The user interface could be better."
"Microsoft needs to work on their documentation."
"The solution has many limitations. You cannot upgrade the VPN to the application gateway. So I started with version one, which has limited capabilities, and they provided version two. And unfortunately, I cannot upgrade from v one to v two like other services. So I have to decommission the version one and create a new one with version two. Also the version one was complex with the certificates uploading the SQL certificates."
"The solution is easy to use overall, but the dashboard could be updated with a better layout and graphical design so that we can see the data a bit easier. Microsoft could also add more documentation. The documentation Microsoft provides doesn't tell us about resource requirements. We found that the instances we had weren't sufficient to support the firewall, so we had to increase them."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is harder to manage than Imperva. It is not intuitive and stable compared to other products."
"We have encountered some issues with automatic redirection and cancellation, leading to 502 and 504 gateway errors. So, I experienced some trouble with containers."
"The solution could improve by increasing the performance when doing updates. For example, if I change the certificate it can take 30 minutes. Other vendors do not have this type of problem."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has less price than other application gateway solutions."
"The solution's pricing is not complex. It is not expensive from our point of view."
"The product is not expensive."
"The solution is reasonably priced."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is a pretty affordable product. My company needs to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs of the solution. The additional costs apart from the licensing costs of the solution vary."
"The cost is not an issue."
"Between v1 and v2, there is a lot of change in the pricing. It is very costly compared to AWS."
"The solution is reasonably priced compared to other solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Akamai Ion?
Akamai is easy to use and very effective.
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's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides excellent support. Azure Front Door can quickly detect abnormalities before the...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft Azure Application Gateway web application firewall software was the better fit ...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the performance side of things, which is why we use it.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Eurail, Boston Scientific
Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Ion vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.