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Akamai vs CDNetworks CDN comparison

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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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (4th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (3rd), Managed DNS (1st), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (18th)
Akamai
Ranking in CDN
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CDNetworks CDN
Ranking in CDN
12th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 16.4%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 12.6%, down from 16.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CDNetworks CDN is 1.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cloudflare16.4%
Akamai12.6%
CDNetworks CDN1.1%
Other69.9%
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

M.A. Faisal - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at bKash Limited
Advanced protection has secured critical web workloads and provides clear traffic visibility
From a security perspective, there remains a security loophole, as some browsers in the market can bypass the Turnstile solution, which requires approximately 40 seconds to do so. From a performance perspective, this is acceptable. We also tried Google reCAPTCHA, and that can also be bypassed. From a security perspective, I would say neither solution is completely secured. Regarding uptime, we have faced a couple of incidents due to Cloudflare in recent years, so I cannot say we receive 100% uptime for our region. We sometimes face challenges, including downtime and other issues. As a result, we are not receiving 100% uptime from Cloudflare's solution. Since most of our customers are in this region, we need alternatives. We need something more competitive than Cloudflare. Unfortunately, in Bangladesh, Cloudflare has three points of presence already, and we cannot find any other solution provider in Bangladesh as an alternative, which presents another challenge. Competitor solutions have more attack signatures, which ensure better security compared to Cloudflare's predefined configurations. Customers do not have options to modify any configuration parameters in Cloudflare, whereas other competitor solutions, such as F5 Distributed Cloud, allow customers to tune configurations according to their requirements. Cloudflare could improve in this area. Additionally, regarding visibility, Cloudflare has static visibility, but they could adopt dynamic graph features for their customers.
JV
Sr. Strategic Accounts Manager at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Improved security and faster operations with a seamless integration
They are one of the top solution vendors in the market. Premium though, but they're the best. We've worked closely with digital-native customers, not so much from the media segment. Fintechs, financial organizations, banking segment, manufacturing, these are the ones we have worked with. Not much on media because most of the media houses are already covered by Akamai. 95% of media houses are already covered by Akamai. It gives a seamless view of how your infrastructure is, from an attack perspective, from a threat perspective, how your assets are behaving. It gives a very comprehensive view. It depends on the customer's environment. Wherever the customer wants, but mostly it is on the private cloud or public cloud because it's a cloud-based SaaS solution that Akamai has to offer. Implementation is feasible anywhere. The solution is aimed at Enterprise customers because it is on a premium side. On a scale of 1-10, this solution rates at 9.5.
Jakir Shaikh - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Caching content across regions has improved access speed and reduced downtime risks for global users
The best features CDNetworks CDN offers are low latency, improved service performance, and easy accessibility for users from anywhere. The low latency and improved service performance have helped users significantly. For instance, users in India trying to access a data center in the USA would experience a long wait, but with multiple CDNetworks CDN points of presence around India, users are getting the content nearby their country or region, thus eliminating the need to connect directly to the USA data center. CDNetworks CDN has many points of presence and their service is also very good. They are very proactive, and if there is an issue in the backbone network, CDNetworks CDN connects all the points of presence through their backbone, and they have edge swaps which makes it faster for users to get the service. CDNetworks CDN has positively impacted the organization significantly. If CDNetworks CDN is down for a moment, there could be a million dollar loss due to the nature of the work being solely in the financial domain, which highlights the criticality of the financial sector. If CDNetworks CDN goes down or any part of it experiences issues, there is a substantial business-critical impact.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Their free account offers an awful lot of functionality and savings alone, before you get on to the minimal $20 a month for a Pro account which comes with its own great list of features."
"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."
"Using the CDN of Cloudflare improved the speed significantly, reducing the page loading times to appropriate levels."
"The tool is user-friendly."
"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"If it was not for CloudFlare, I would have to hire a dedicated resource to manage all this for me."
"Stability is great; I love their mechanisms, I love their GUI, I love their front end, I love their behind the scenes, algorithms and everything, it all makes sense."
"The most valuable feature of Akamai is its ease of use and simple integration. Additionally, the solution has new aspects added to it regularly."
"The stability and efficiency of Akamai have enhanced our network's performance significantly."
"Akamai has been providing this service for 20 years and they have never had a substantial outage, they even have some products that have an uptime of over 20 years, the stability is very good."
"This solution can be used for web , video and media caching and streaming."
"It's beneficial since it's one of the best solutions in the world for CDN."
"The worldwide reach of the Akamai CDN is one of the key values of this CDN and the agreements worldwide that they keep running."
"The solution is very sustainable and flexible."
"It's a scalable and reliable solution."
"The low latency and improved service performance have helped users significantly, for instance, users in India trying to access a data center in the USA would experience a long wait, but with multiple CDNetworks CDN points of presence around India, users are getting the content nearby their country or region, thus eliminating the need to connect directly to the USA data center."
 

Cons

"Access to the solution's dashboards is not intended for a service company. You are practically blind, and to validate a problem, you must view the customer's screen."
"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"The solution could use more analytics on the backend to give us more insights into everything. More reports would be helpful."
"With CDN loads, sometimes we get an error that the host server is unavailable when the connection between CloudFlare and the server timed out."
"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."
"The tool needs to improve caching of servers. The product needs to include PFX certificate as well."
"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better."
"The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist."
"Costing-wise and integration with other tools need improvement, especially API security."
"I'd like to see more Web 3.0 and IoT solutions."
"Their support is very slow. If you file a support ticket, it takes a long time before it gets resolved."
"Caching strategy is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution where improvements are required."
"Akamai's configuration part is an area of concern where improvements are required to make the process easy."
"It would be better if we could be notified about specific attacks."
"When we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."
"CDNetworks CDN is currently very good, but there is room for improvement on weekends as some issues occur on Saturdays and Sundays, where there is a little less response from CDNetworks CDN."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is reasonable."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"I think the pricing is competitive. I think as far as licensing is concerned it's pretty straightforward because it's based on domain. It's just that sometimes domains could be tricky with some customers."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"The pricing of Akamai is moderate, in my opinion. My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to Akamai. There are no additional costs besides the licensing costs for the solution."
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"Price-wise, I find Akamai's pricing model's inclination to be more towards the expensive side of the spectrum, though I can't say that it is a very expensive product."
"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."
"It is an expensive product. The licensing costs for the solution are based on the usage. If we need premium support, we need to buy it from Akamai."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"From the resource component, it's very costly, and Akamai's charges are also high. So, any organization with a high-tech budget can definitely afford it, but companies with 10-15% of their revenue as a technical budget probably won't be able to. That's where they have a lot of room for improvement if they want to onboard those early users."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare?
The tool's pricing is moderate. I rate the product’s pricing a five out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expens...
What needs improvement with Akamai?
Other solutions are probably easier to set up, but you have more capability in Akamai. It would be beneficial if they...
What is your primary use case for Akamai?
We are using many of the solutions from Akamai, with the WAF in front of it and distribution to multiple targets wher...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai?
The pricing is good, with no complaints about costs, which is essential when deciding to have Akamai in your network.
What needs improvement with CDNetworks CDN?
CDNetworks CDN is currently very good, but there is room for improvement on weekends as some issues occur on Saturday...
What is your primary use case for CDNetworks CDN?
CDNetworks CDN is used primarily for Malala, where vendors connect through the networking infrastructure via CDN. CDN...
What advice do you have for others considering CDNetworks CDN?
If someone is looking to implement CDN and has a data center in one part of the world while users are connecting from...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Capital One, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Disney, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Home Depot, HP, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, LinkedIn, McDonald's, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Oracle, PayPal, Pinterest, Qualcomm, Rakuten, SAP, Spotify, Tesla, Toyota, Visa, Walmart, WeWork
Hostelworld, MailUp, Leader Summaries, Linkstorm, The French Tennis Federation, Oxybul, King Jouet, Thomsons Online Benefits, Calam_o, Yatedo, Wistia, Wacker
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare, Imperva, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in CDN. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.