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Akamai Ion vs VMWare Avi Load Balancer 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
VMWare Avi Load Balancer
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Akamai Ion is 1.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMWare Avi Load Balancer is 4.9%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMWare Avi Load Balancer4.9%
Akamai Ion1.9%
Other93.2%
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…
reviewer2273484 - PeerSpot reviewer
Pre Sales at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Struggled with rising costs and limited value while managing internal traffic
The issue with load balancers is that they are all the same. I would rate it seven. I do not recall VMWare Avi Load Balancer having WAF protection. We use WAF and for this specific case, we use F5. It is not about VMWare Avi Load Balancer itself. For multi-cloud capability, you need to do NSX Extended and HCX in VMware. This is what will give you the flavor of multi-cloud. Others will be resources because once you reach NSX Extended, all resources will be under one cloud management. So it does not matter. It is not a feature in VMWare Avi Load Balancer that would be responsible for multi-cloud capability. Multi-cloud capability comes from a configuration called NSX Extended. It is very expensive. The pricing is expensive in that it is only an add-on. From my opinion, they should lower the price.

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 solution is entirely virtual, SDDC technologies drive it, and the integration with other projects is compelling."
"The solution has simplified our network infrastructure management."
"Moving from a legacy solution to a newer one has provided us with tangible returns."
"It is more common in the market, so it is easier to use because it is more common."
"Its visibility and login mechanism are the best parts. In addition to the great visibility it has a great dashboard and an easy to configure graphic user interface, a beautiful GUI."
"The integration into the host environment is the most valuable aspect right now."
"As an application load balancer, Avi Networks is great, with the best visibility and login mechanism, a great dashboard, and an easy to configure, beautiful graphic user interface."
"The solution is stable."
 

Cons

"The product must provide more flexibility."
"Log management should display data for more than two months."
"Avi Networks Software Load Balancer needs to improve its documentation."
"IDS and IPS sites need to be more progressive."
"Avi Networks is great. It could be good for a small company, but for the whole municipality, it's just not good enough."
"It is very expensive. The pricing is expensive in that it is only an add-on."
"One struggle with Avi Networks Software Load Balancer is its integration with other VMware products."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"When it comes to improvements for VMWare Avi Load Balancer, I think the documentation part needs a bit of work."
"In terms of improvement, the pricing and documentation need improvement. We have had problems getting the documents."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."
"I rate the solution price a four to five on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high, since it is an affordable tool."
"The licensing costs for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer are really variable. The product can be sold from a bandwidth utilization perspective. It can be sold from a per CPU perspective, depending on if you're looking at on-premises or hyperscale environments. Licensing costs vary quite a bit if you're familiar with the AWS Calculator, where you can see that it can widely vary per licensing model. On a scale of one to five, with one being not very good value for the money and five being great, I would rate the pricing for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer a five because its pricing is extremely competitive. Not all features are included with the license, for example, there's single licensing."
"The tool is expensive."
"With Avi Networks, you can buy a 10-Gig license and, if your primary data center goes down, in the flick of a switch you can move that license to your backup data center and it will generate the traffic... there are a lot of cost-effective measures."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
18%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
 

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.
What needs improvement with Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?
The issue with load balancers is that they are all the same. I would rate it seven. I do not recall VMWare Avi Load Balancer having WAF protection. We use WAF and for this specific case, we use F5....
What advice do you have for others considering Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?
We tested some scripts, but they did not fulfill everything. My recommendation is to reduce the price and make it two separate products, not only as an add-on for VMware. It should not be necessary...
What is your primary use case for Avi Networks Software Load Balancer?
We are using native cloud capability. The issue is not from us. VMware changed their module. They are selling perpetual licenses with multi-year support. The reason for this change is to make their...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Avi Software Load Balancer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Eurail, Boston Scientific
Palo Alto Networks, DGDean, Swisslos
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Ion vs. VMWare Avi Load Balancer and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.