Akamai CDN vs. StackPath Edge Delivery

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 great as a primary or backup CDN. We have had no issues with performance. The cache hit ratio is high. Some of the options are hidden within the API and you have to configure them with API calls, such as configuring signed fetch requests to an S3 origin. These should be in CLI or Web Console. The deployment of edge side scripts with the CLI or CI/CD could be improved.

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

• Price competitive.
• Easy to use.
• Good reporting.
• Quick to deploy.
• Start-up friendly.
• Good technical information via blog, FAQ and community discussion.
• I can talk to real person for urgent 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

• Analytics.
• Many options hidden in API.
• Web console.

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

1. Total solution (CDN, WAF, monitoring, DNS hosting) which offers me a turn-key solution.
2. Power customer portal which empowers to configure my service performance.
3. Clear and granular service packages that meet my budget.
4. They provide in-person real-time communications which can provide me urgent support.
5. They offer start-up friendly program.

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

• Easy 25-30% improvement in website performance vs non CDN solution
• Less expensive and faster object storage than AWS
• Aided greatly in maintaining KPIs in terms of performance, availability

Incentivized