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Akamai Ion vs NGINX Plus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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 Ion
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NGINX Plus
Ranking in Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) category, the mindshare of Akamai Ion is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX Plus is 8.1%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC)
 

Featured Reviews

HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable bot management with valuable traffic analytics and good delivery configuration
We are using Akamai Ion primarily for CDN services. It is more about delivery configuration, and for security, we use Akamai WAF security controls and Botman Akamai Ion helps protect us from DOS, SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and scraping tools. Real-time analytics are very helpful for…
Ritesh-Bakhru - PeerSpot reviewer
Quick installation and very easy to manage while doing orchestration or automation
NGINX cannot be a replacement for your traditional load balancer with what we use in the network today. However, with applications going toward microservices, NGINX is definitely a way forward. F5 has many traditional load balancing features, so they still need to bring some of those features to NGINX. NGINX is a very basic load balancer and cannot do as many customizations as F5. I think F5 is trying to implement those features in NGINX so they can improve the balancing on NGINX, but I think that will take some time. With the traditional F5 set up, the same OS can do load balancing, firewalls, and even policy enforcement. If we are able to bring some of those capabilities to NGINX, I think it would become a versatile solution and usage would definitely increase.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Akamai is easy to use and very effective."
"The most valuable feature is bot management."
"Valuable features include authentication, caching, reverse proxy routing, and load balancing."
"Using NGINX Plus for web traffic distribution is fantastic. It offers performance similar to physical load balancers but with added flexibility."
"-"
"The robust software architecture allows for it to be scalable and very stable."
"Application Gateway with application-level firewall tool and load distributor and balancer (also serves for A/B testing)."
"The overall product rating is ten out of ten."
"The web proxy and the database proxy are excellent."
"It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX."
 

Cons

"Log management should display data for more than two months."
"The product must provide more flexibility."
"I would like the configuration process to be more simplified."
"I would like to see the Grafana integration in NGINX which is already present in HAProxy. Grafana integration will help the solution visualize all the data analytics on the dashboard which is currently not present."
"Improvement needed in NGINX Plus could focus on optimizing memory usage for users."
"The scalability could be improved."
"The solution's GUI is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement."
"If NGINX brings some features for health check in the open source version, it would be better. ​"
"The center management system could be improved."
"The solution needs to be easier to setup and deploy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."
"There's an open-source version of NGINX that is free."
"The list price of NGINX Plus is close to $5,500."
"I use the solution's community edition which is free of cost."
"​NGINX is a free tool in Brazil. There are some companies which do support it.​"
"The cost is reasonable."
"I am not so happy with their pricing policy, but this is not the worse thing in my life. I can tolerate it."
"The solution is free, but you can spend a lot of money with a complex solution."
"​NGINX Plus is worth it, if you need it. If you do not need the features or support, the free and open source package is more than capable. ​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Akamai Ion?
Akamai is easy to use and very effective.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Akamai Ion?
The billing cycle is monthly, however, payment is done yearly. While expensive, it provides value for the services offered.
What needs improvement with Akamai Ion?
Log management should display data for more than two months. The traffic report needs to be more flexible. The response time of technical support should be improved.
Which is better - IIS or NGINX Plus?
IIS is a flexible, secure, and manageable web server to host anything on the web. IIS’s scalable and open architecture can handle the most demanding tasks. From media streaming to web applications,...
What do you like most about NGINX Plus?
It performs very well. That's one of the primary reasons we use NGINX.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NGINX Plus?
My use case involves using the free and open-source version of NGINX, making it cost-effective as I haven't incurred any costs.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
NGINX
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Eurail, Boston Scientific
Locaweb, AppNexus, Wix, Reliam, Montana Interactive, MuleSoft, Warpwire, Discovery Education, InkaBinka, WordPress.com, Gogo, GOV.UK, NASA
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Ion vs. NGINX Plus and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
839,255 professionals have used our research since 2012.