Overall Satisfaction with Akamai
We use Akamai primarily for its many CDN product variants. In using a CDN, we afford ourselves the ability to offload the majority of from our servers onto CDN servers, which both reduces our own bill and provides a better experience for customers due to closer edge locations. Akamai, in particular, is a premium-tier offering within the CDN space, and we've had great luck from a stability and dependability perspective.
- Edge caching with Akamai's CDN tools allow for offloading repetitive work from more expensive application servers
- Akamai's DDOS protection services are amongst the most robust in the industry
- The user interface can be daunting and confusing to new users
- The pricing tiers are often not competitive with standard CDN service offerings from other companies
- Akamai offers a number of front-end optimizations that you can choose to implement to speed up page loads and offer a better customer experience
- Akamai's high prices can often negate savings that you get from offloading file-hosting responsibility; ensure your use case demands Akamai's offerings before moving ahead
We've used -- and considered -- a whole number of CDN offerings. The good news is that almost all of the CDN products on the market are terrific, and will pay for themselves via increased customer satisfaction and lower monthly hosting bills. For some cases, we're still more likely to suggest CloudFlare (which has a free tier) or an integrated offering from a cloud provider, like Cloudfront.