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Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Cloudflare comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Akamai Connected Cloud (Lin...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (7th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (12th)
Cloudflare
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) and Cloudflare aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) is designed for Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) and holds a mindshare of 12.8%, down 16.7% compared to last year.
Cloudflare, on the other hand, focuses on Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection, holds 18.8% mindshare, down 19.2% since last year.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection
 

Featured Reviews

Julio Graham - PeerSpot reviewer
Helpful automation scripts, good documentation, responsive support, easy to use and manage
The ability to fire up a virtual machine, use it, and then kill it, is quite a valuable feature for me. They have a lot of startup scripts, I think they are called stack scripts, whereby you can install something at a click of a button. For instance, you can install a whole server at the click of a button. Linode gives the users a lot of control. Another thing that I use quite a lot is their documentation. They have documentation on how to perform tasks and often, I use that to educate a client on how to do something or on how to maintain something, et cetera. This is because a lot of customers are used to simpler systems like an iPhone, where if you want an app then you just download it from a store, press a button and it installs, or press a button and it updates. The truth of the matter is that with servers and things like that, whilst people like the push button idea, it's a lot more complex than that. With these stack scripts, the people at Linode have thought about all of the things that a new user would not think about. They do all of that stuff and then walk you through it, and that's where Linode's documentation is really good. They walk you through what you have to do to secure a server, what you have to do to run a patch, or whatever. They've got all those sorts of knowledge bases of information, which I think is invaluable, especially for clients who are uneducated in these things. It's extremely important to me that Linode offers worldwide coverage via multiple data centers, for various reasons. One is that because we live in this global world, our customers are everywhere. Secondly, for people who need geo-redundancy, with for example a server in China and one elsewhere as a backup, it's great. It's also nice because if they were just US-based, I wouldn't be able to use them because I would need to go through a whole process of trying to certify the data integrity in other regions. I'm sure that most people wouldn't bother with this because of all of the EU laws and the UK laws around data privacy. The US's data privacy laws are far more relaxed than what they are on my side of the world. The fact that I can have a server in London means that I don't have to bother with all of that. My physical location of that server is in London and to me, it is really important. When you compare Amazon, they claim to have infrastructure all over the place but I think that the bulk is centered in Germany. Even if it is in a few different places, everything gets backed up to the US, which is a problem for a lot of people.
Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The ability to fire up a virtual machine, use it, and then kill it, is quite a valuable feature for me."
"They have a very nice web interface to allow you to manage and reorganize your server."
"The solution integrates easily."
"It has helped to minimize the risk and scale services at large in virtually no time."
"It is also important that Linode offers worldwide coverage via multiple data centers. The ability to deploy on multiple servers, worldwide, allows us to have distributed services and failover and redundancy."
"The creation of instances is very good, as is their interface which is not complex and is easy to use. With the dashboard it is easy to create a new instance and add your favorite things. You can add Debian, Ubuntu, or CentOS, or any flavor of operating system. You can select the RAM for your instance as well."
"Service availability is the most valuable feature. It gives every user 100 percent uptime."
"The most valuable feature is the static IP address, which has been very helpful for being able to log into the same address over the course of more than a decade."
"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."
"I get a lot of value from Cloudflare's API because it enables you to build a separate environment inside the solution. You can create a domain for performing test requests before you move to the production environment and connect various domains."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"Cloudflare allows us to self-host services such as Rocket.Chat and Node-RED, in high-availability mode, thanks to round robin DNS which allows us to share one hostname between our two locations."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is the GUI. You are able to control the solution very well through the interface. There is a lot of functionality that is embedded in the service."
"We're using dynamic components to build flexible pages to create and manage Git merge requests for code and reviews."
 

Cons

"Right now, they don't have multiple data centers. They have limited data centers. I am currently using the Singapore and Mumbai data centers, but I am looking for data centers in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. They need to improve the availability of their data centers and partnership engagements with cloud Panda solution providers, like us."
"It would be helpful if they offered a service where they handle the Linux security."
"They recently changed the web interface and although the older one did not look as good, the new one is less responsive."
"One thing that I'd really like to see is auto-scaling node pools for their Kubernetes. I don't think that they have that. That's a huge one and would be very helpful. Specifically, what I would like is auto-scaling node pools that would scale down to zero nodes, which is tricky. That's very important for certain use cases."
"It's not really an issue with Linode itself but upgrading Linux major versions can be challenging. It would be be fantastic if Linode developed a way to ease transitioning to a major new Linux upgrade."
"The suitability of this solution depends on the features that you need. If you're an Uber-sized company then you're probably not going to want to start using Linode. If you are a large-sized organization then you're going to want to start using one of the bigger providers that gives you the scalability and the feature set that you are probably going to be needing in the future."
"The network between different servers isn't very good. I have to install additional solutions to link the servers with each other."
"Because they are a smaller company, they do not have, for example, all of the ways for authentication that Amazon or Azure has."
"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."
"It should confirm audit findings of the assigned area with auditees to ensure that the audit conclusions are based on an accurate understanding of the issues."
"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."
"DNS Management."
"They lack a good way to manage DNS as a company, since everything is relegated to single account logins until you get to the higher levels. They have come out with a paid feature to remedy this, but I have not had a chance to fully review it yet to know if it fixes the access problem."
"In the last two years, there has been a certain amount of downtime when using the VDM."
"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"We have noticed multiple instances where Cloudflare falsely indicates that our servers are down, even when there is no actual load on them. This makes it challenging for us to identify the exact issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Overall, it is cost-effective. They offer flat, no lock-in pricing. We also get discounts. As compared to its competitors, it is costly, but at the same time, it has many features."
"is a little cheaper than Google or Amazon, more or less on par with the other competitors."
"There might be something a little bit cheaper but I find it very fair and competitive, and nothing to complain about."
"Compared to other providers, I find Linode's pricing a bit higher. Storage could be more affordable."
"Pricing-wise, I find it simple in that they give you a monthly fee, but they also charge it hourly. So, if you are using the service for a small part of the month, then you are only paying for that small amount instead of a whole month, like with other providers. It is a flat monthly fee if you use the service for the entire month. It just makes things so simple. Because they are focusing on Linux, you don't have to worry about licensing costs of Windows and things like that. So, the price that they give you is the price that you need to pay each month. I just find it so simple compared to the likes of AWS and Azure. It is nice, easy, and predictable. I know exactly what I am going to be paying each month and what resources I get for that price."
"It is quite affordable, which makes it a great choice."
"The pricing model is simple."
"Compared to other service providers, like AWS and Google, the cost of services are much less and more affordable. We are saving about 90 percent by going with Linode versus other cloud providers."
"We are using the free version."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"The product's pricing is cheap."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."
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Comparison Review

it_user68487 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 6, 2013
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Web Application Firewall
CloudFlare vs Incapsula: Round 2 Web Application Firewall Comparative Penetration Testing Analysis Report v1.0 Summary This document contains the results of a second comparative penetration test conducted by a team of security specialists at Zero Science Lab against two cloud-based Web…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Linode?
When I started using Linode, I found its functionality easy to navigate, user-friendly and responsive to my needs. It provides clear reminders about services I'm not using, like DNS zones, which I ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Linode?
The pricing is competitive, rated an eight out of ten. Despite a recent price increase due to inflation, the value is commendable.
What needs improvement with Linode?
The Cloud Manager interface sometimes feels slow, particularly when accessed from Asia. Compared to the previous non-React interface, the current version could be more responsive.
Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GRE tunnels. We have decreased site load times on Mobile 3G from 8 to 1,6 seconds ...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service that offers great redundancy and advanced security with built-in unmetered and ...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
 

Also Known As

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Cloudflare DNS
 

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Sample Customers

Best Buy, Panasonic, Giphy, Marco Polo, World Health Organization, Font Squirrel
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