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Akamai Ion vs NGINX Plus 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
NGINX Plus
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Akamai Ion is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 6.4%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NGINX Plus6.4%
Akamai Ion1.3%
Other92.3%
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…
Michael Olayemi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Checkit
Enables public access and secure configurations through reverse proxy
The primary valuable feature of NGINX for me is its ability to provide a reverse proxy. I have found that this feature supports our local server, and I am able to connect through our DNS system, making it accessible publicly. Additionally, the integration with SSL certificates and the configuration capabilities make it a valuable solution for my use case. Without NGINX, users would not be able to access our application, which means there is positive ROI from using NGINX as it is crucial for the functioning of my organization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is bot management."
"Akamai is easy to use and very effective."
"Its versatility and capabilities make it invaluable for implementing patches and fixes when necessary."
"I utilize NGINX for its capability to provide visibility and discovery options, helping discover and identify networks, which is crucial for ensuring application performance, managing latency, and checking server reachability."
"When you use NGINX, you have more options and power."
"The product is lightweight and fast."
"The primary valuable feature of NGINX for me is its ability to provide a reverse proxy."
"I find the solution’s community support and documentation most valuable. Compared to HAProxy, have found a lot of documentation and community support on Quora. If you would be asking me as a developer whether to choose this product, I would recommend this since it has good community support, documentation, and signature updates. The configuration of HAProxy is also very tedious. However, NGINX’s configuration is very simple."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is simple to configure."
"​The flexibility of its modules allow it to be scalable.​"
 

Cons

"The product must provide more flexibility."
"Log management should display data for more than two months."
"I would like the configuration process to be more simplified."
"Initially, I experienced hiccups whenever I installed the application."
"One area of improvement could be that NGINX could provide a means to generate self-signed SSL certificates."
"The solution needs to be easier to setup and deploy."
"Only improvement needed that I would point to is scalability. With it, I mean clusterized organisation on a low level. At the moment, the best alternative is RHEL HA."
"The solution must improve its performance."
"The scaling should be built into the software rather than configured from an outside source."
"The KPI should be more focused on load balancing and the latency in application calling from the end system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."
"​NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it.​"
"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."
"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."
"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."
"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."
"The cost is reasonable."
"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."
"It's an open source solution, so it's free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise11
 

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.
Which is better - IIS or NGINX Plus?
IIS is a flexible, secure, and manageable web server to host anything on the web. IIS’s scalable and open architecture can handle the most demanding tasks. From media streaming to web applications,...
What do you like most about NGINX Plus?
It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.
 

Also Known As

No data available
NGINX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Eurail, Boston Scientific
Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Ion vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.