What is the difference between Akamai and Cloudflare?
CloudFront has 16 edge locations (points where it serves content from), whereas Akamai has literally thousands (they claim about 60k). Akamai caters to the enterprise market almost exclusively, and they charge a real premium for their services.
Akamai and Cloudflare are both classified as content delivery network tools. Cloudflare speeds up performance and boosts up by protecting millions of websites, APIs, and SaaS connected to networks. Akamai is one of the leading sources for mobile, cloud, media, and security anywhere.
Akamai Connected Cloud is a continuum of compute from core to edge, paired with our security, CDN, and 24/7/365 support. This will enable you to more efficiently build, deploy, and secure performant workloads that require single-digit millisecond latency and global reach.
Cloudflare is built with data protection in mind. We are a privacy-first company with end-to-end encryption. We comply with local regulations for data locality and storage.
We have compiled a list of solutions that reviewers voted as the best overall alternatives and competitors to Cloudflare CDN, including Varnish Software, Azure Content Delivery Network, Amazon CloudFront, and bunny.net.
Cloudflare is a pull CDN: First request goes to your server, then is cached at that specific data center for subsequent visitors in that region. Other CDNs often offer Push CDN, which you can preload their cache. Cloudflare is a somewhat transparent CDN: It doesn't use a special CDN subdomain for cached files.
So what is Cloudflare? Cloudflare is on a mission to help build a better Internet. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks. Today, businesses, non-profits, bloggers, and anyone with an Internet presence boast faster, more secure websites and apps thanks to Cloudflare.
Akamai delivers web content over its Intelligent Platform by transparently mirroring elements such as HTML, CSS, software downloads, and media objects from customers' servers. The Akamai server is automatically chosen depending on the type of content and the user's network location.
Akamai is a content delivery network (CDN) that helps to improve the performance, reliability, and security of websites, web applications, and other internet-based services. It works by caching content on a global network of servers, which are strategically located around the world.
Powerful tool to improve web delivery
Akamai has thousands of edge servers worldwide to serve your content as fast as possible to the proximity of the user. This speeds up page load time and user experience.
Why is Cloudflare the best?
Cloudflare offers multiple security layers, including DNSSEC, Cloud WAF, and Rate Limiting. These features protect your site from a wide range of threats, including DNS spoofing, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, DDoS attacks, and malicious traffic.
Cloudflare benefits from a low-cost advantage over its competitors. The growth in artificial intelligence could become a significant revenue opportunity. Cloudflare continues to report record margins and free cash flow.
CRITICAL REVIEW
Cloudflare definitely helped in improving our overall performance for delivering both static and dynamic content, reducing traffic on the origin significantly. Cloudflare CDN is also cost effective compared to other available solutions. The only thing that is missing is active customer support.
Top Competitors and Alternatives of Cloudflare
The top three of Cloudflare's competitors in the Network Security category are Hornetsecurity Spamfilter with 0.54%, SonicWall with 0.37%, Sophos with 0.36% market share.
Some of the top web hosts trust Cloudflare and its ability to give their websites a security and performance boost. But here's the thing: Cloudflare's firewall on its own is not enough to ensure your site's security.
Beyond hiding your origin's IP address from potential attackers, Cloudflare also stops malicious traffic before it reaches your origin web server. Cloudflare automatically mitigates security risks using our WAF and DDoS protection. For additional details on security, refer to our guide on how to Secure your website.
Cloudflare is a zero configuration CDN. As soon as you activate your site on Cloudflare, we cache your site's static content by default. Our CDN caches more than 35 file extensions automatically, and allows users to write page rules to extend the list of file extensions we cache.
Cloudflare has been recognized as a Leader in the 2022 IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Commercial Content Delivery Network Services.
Cloudflare is now the fastest global cloud network for web applications. Faster performance is better for business. Faster page speeds increase conversion rates and user engagement.
Possible performance degradation: In some cases, using Cloudflare can actually lead to slower website speeds if the network is congested or if the website's traffic is particularly heavy.
Do you really need Cloudflare?
Ideal for global visitors: If you want people from around the world to visit your site, using Cloudflare is a great idea since it will let your pages be generated from local servers.
Whether it's worth paying for CloudFlare if your site's traffic is below the free threshold depends on your website's specific needs and priorities. If website performance and security are important to you, then paying for CloudFlare may be worthwhile even if your traffic is below the free threshold.
Akamai is a market leader in DNS, with a proven record of handling high traffic volumes while repelling attacks.
Bot Manager | Welcome the bots you want and mitigate those you don't. | API |
Brand Protector | Monitor and mitigate threats to your brand and web assets. | API |
Case Management | Manage support requests to resolve issues with your Akamai applications and services. | API |
Akamai collects network traffic data, including IP addresses and related internet transaction data that Akamai servers log as a result of the delivery of information over the Akamai platform, as well as data associated with user activity and interaction with web and internet protocol sessions transiting Akamai's ...
References
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