Akamai CDN vs. Google Cloud CDN

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Akamai CDN
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Akamai Technologies, headquartered in Boston, offers Akamai Connected Cloud, a content delivery network (CDN) with a variety of services used to guarantee application, API, and media delivery.N/A
Google Cloud CDN
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
The Google Cloud CDN is touted as a low cost option with tight integration with Google Cloud apps and services.N/A
Pricing
Akamai CDNGoogle Cloud CDN
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Akamai CDNGoogle Cloud CDN
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Akamai CDNGoogle Cloud CDN
Best Alternatives
Akamai CDNGoogle Cloud CDN
Small Businesses
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 out of 10
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 out of 10
Cloudflare
Cloudflare
Score 8.7 out of 10
Enterprises
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront
Score 7.0 out of 10
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront
Score 7.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Akamai CDNGoogle Cloud CDN
Likelihood to Recommend
7.3
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Akamai CDNGoogle Cloud CDN
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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Google Cloud CDN is available globally and supports various load balancers available in different regions around the globe, so I find Google Cloud CDN as one of the best choices for CDN as it serves globally and it is really fast, safe, and secure. It might be not suitable for you if you do not have any technical background.
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Pros
  • 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 .
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  • Google Cloud CDN works really well with other Google cloud platform produces like Google Cloud Storage.
  • Users of Google services will have an easier learning curve.
  • The service can really enhance the overall speed of websites and platforms online.
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Cons
  • 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.
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  • Unable to use any kind of code to show different content.
  • Absence of cloud workers as provided by Cloudfront, Cloudflare and Akamai.
  • No support for dynamic routing.
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Usability
No answers on this topic
There is not really an interface for managing rules directly, compared to market leaders, Google's implementation is probably strong on the technical side but for the average user it might be lacking. There are no advanced features which can be compared to what other leaders in the CDN sector are providing or they can be achieved but with high implementation cost and usage of other products in the Google Cloud suite
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Support Rating
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.
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I didn't have the need to use support from Google when I was either testing or setting up my website. Information was easily found by searching online if I needed to, and the options that I needed to install or enable were there on the setup page. Honestly, I was a former systems administrator so most of this stuff is not challenging for me.
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Alternatives Considered
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.
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We have limited software developers and don't have the need for a big cloud service provider along with their costs. Google Cloud CDN brings to usr, reliability and brand familiarity. Google Cloud CDN also doesn't bother us with pitches or 1000 emails about the products. We went and signed up for it, without dealing with a pushy salesperson.
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Return on Investment
  • 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.
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  • It has certainly reduced costs and significantly reduced the loading of servers. It has always helped in times of high traffic.
  • Full integration with Google Cloud data storage also saves time and enhances change power.
  • Great for Streaming Video which increases the speed of playing live videos.
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ScreenShots