Akamai CDN vs. DDoS-GUARD

Akamai is a superior premium services offering if that's what you need from a CDN. For more typical use cases, we're often more often than not implementing MaxCDN, or integrated CDNs from cloud providers (e.g. CloudFront, Azure CDN, etc). If you find that Akamai's offerings are really what you need, and you are okay paying the premium, the services themselves are great. There's a reason they're used by major enterprises of all sizes, and used for hosting video content from the NFL, etc.

Incentivized

It is well suited for handling predictable surges (100,000 daily requests), defending against volumetric attacks and Quick Setup for new client onboarding with amazing DNS Integration. It is probably less effective or I would say there is scope for improvement against sophisticated multi-vector attacks and direct-to-origin threats bypassing its cloud protection when IPs are exposed.

Incentivized

• Caching is one of the greatest benefits that Akamai allows for, saving time, money and experiencing the user experience.
• Knowing they provide DDOS and other attack protection gives you peace of mind.
• How finely you can tune all of the different settings available to you, from blocking IPs, cache settings, headers, redirects and even handling error statuses .

Incentivized

• Real-Time Traffic Filtering
• Integration
• Responsive Support

Incentivized

• Akamai platforms does not come with an intuitive UI to configure and it requires training for set up.
• Akami is mostly costly and will be proven very expensive for small organization that are not scaled.
• Akami activation takes a longer time for a lot of testing with multiple scenarios especially with edge servers scenarios.

Incentivized

• Detailed post-attack analytics
• Slow Response During Edge Cases
• More intuitive API dashboard

Incentivized

The setup is straightforward. DNS rerouting and a clear client area wizard protect our 30+ client sites fast considering our small team. The real-time dashboard simplifies monitoring 100,000 daily requests, and 24/7 support resolves issues like rate-limit tweaks. It could be a 10/10 if API dashboard is more intuitive and if reporting could be more granular

Incentivized

Their support documents are excellent and provide a lot of useful information for all their services. The only reason I didn't give them a 10 is that the time it takes for them to respond to an issue could be slightly faster.

Incentivized

Akamai offers sophisticated security and defense layers in addition to its content delivery network. Its focus on security is well known and beats offerings from AWS and Azure to punches. It redefined the cloud security market by extending its core offering.

Incentivized

We chose DDoS-GUARD for its cost-effective and flexible plans. This software had the ability to meet our requirements. That is to scale with our 30+ client websites and 100,000 daily requests. The Integration also seemed better than AWS ecosystems and simpler API management. This aligned better with our multi-platform needs and budget.

Incentivized

• Positive - Akamai vastly reduced the number of content delivery servers needed here, saving money, hardware and management overheads.
• Negative - I don't think it's a "cheap" option, but also, you get what you pay for and for such a powerful product you don't expect it to be free.
• Positive - some of the support we have had has been really good.

Incentivized

• It has ensured 99.9% uptime for 30+ client websites of ours during attacks. DDoS-GUARD has cut churn by 15%, retaining significant money in annual contracts. Our clients cite reliability as a key reason for renewals.
• Outsourcing DDoS mitigation to DDoS-GUARD saves us $50,000 yearly versus building an in-house solution. This helps and frees our team to focus on high-value app development and boosts our billable hours.
• With quick setup, we have been able to win 5 new contracts worth $75,000 annually and strengthened our position as a Cybersecurity Managed Services IT provider.

Incentivized