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Akamai vs Imperva DDoS comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

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

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Ranking in CDN
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
Akamai
Ranking in CDN
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Imperva DDoS
Ranking in CDN
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (18th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the CDN category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 22.1%, up from 21.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai is 17.3%, up from 15.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Imperva DDoS is 6.2%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
CDN
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Alam Hernandez Baruch - PeerSpot reviewer
Fast and secure deployments simplify operations for government and fintech clients
It is a fast and secure DNS. It is very easy to deploy, and my customers are happy with this tool. Additionally, the CDN performance in Mexico is excellent, providing fast service and tools. It offers reliability during high-traffic periods, ensuring no impact on the environment. It helps my clients avoid using on-premise boxes, simplifying operations as they only use the prices on Cloudflare.
Aryan Singh1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers great enterprise support, ideal for solutions requiring high scalability and seamless integration with AWS infrastructure
For Akamai, it is definitely one of the best tools out there. However, there are challenges with how their approach is designed for large enterprises. While it's great for solutions with high scalability, like global e-commerce, it's not really built for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It has too many options and can be complex for SMBs to utilize. That's the biggest challenge we faced when migrating to Akamai from other solutions, like Cloudflare. It can be difficult to migrate between platforms. Due to its great features but high activation thresholds. So, while it's a powerful tool, it has limitations for some implementations. It was difficult to migrate from and to Akamai. It is challenging when we are building a website.
DerrickAkankwasa - PeerSpot reviewer
Provide DDoS protection and better security at effective rate
It is expanding its number of data centers for scrubbing traffic. Currently, there is only one POP for cleaning in South Africa. They might add another POP in North Africa, possibly in Nigeria or Egypt. Latency concerns customers, especially in regions like East and West Africa, where traffic has to travel to South Africa before returning. Increasing the number of POPs across the continent would help address these latency issues and improve overall service. While the platform is already quite strong, there’s always room for improvement, especially in keeping up with emerging trends and new types of attacks. Enhancing security capabilities could be beneficial. Integrating more advanced AI features could significantly improve its effectiveness and help customers leverage these tools more effectively. It would be great to see more focus on AI integration to handle and analyze data more efficiently.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The web application firewall brought us good security and a view of the accesses/blocks of the entire domain and subdomain that were accessed both by region (country) and IPs."
"Cloudflare consolidates various capabilities into one product, streamlining processes."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"It is easier to configure and develop documentation to see how we have configured firewalls."
"Cloudflare is a security SaaS provider that provides security and protects us from any application layer attack."
"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."
"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."
"All the policies of the CDNs are very beneficial."
"If an attacker conducts an attack, we can check what query he is running and whether he wants to see our password or any other files."
"The solution's technical support is very prompt and good."
"With 300 servers deployed worldwide, it's highly scalable and is the best web application firewall on the market."
"The solution's technical support is very good...The installation phase of Akamai was easy."
"It's a scalable and reliable solution."
"Akamai has a very established network of PoPs globally."
"The solution is very sustainable and flexible."
"Scalability is pretty easy on the base platform. You just add another, and you're ready to go."
"An improvement has been to our website: It increases the speed of our response, the capacity of the site, and optimizes the bandwidth.​"
"On the activity log, I can see the exact details, the visit, and the threat."
"IncapRules is one of the most valuable features, as you can create your own security and access control rules on top of your security policy. Using IncapRules we were able to easily block Layer 7 DDoS attacks several times."
"On the real time, you can see live traffic, which is flowing into our website."
"Provides Anti-DDoS protection, as well as other protections like SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting, and antiscanner. These types of protection are valuable to the business due to the daily attacks on our portals, and that often cannot be seen without a tool like this."
"The most valuable features for us are the DDoS and Bot."
"This product is a reliable defense from malicious attacks on a network environment."
 

Cons

"Eventually, things go sideways and require fixes when it would have been easier to prevent the issue initially."
"There could be more courses with engineers. I like e-learning, however, having a specialist in a classroom is more comfortable for me."
"It would be beneficial for us if Cloudflare could offer a scrubbing solution. This would involve taking a snapshot of my website and keeping it live during a DDoS attack, ensuring uninterrupted service for our users. DDoS attacks are typically short in duration, and having Cloudflare maintain the site's availability from its secure network would enhance the overall user experience. I would appreciate it if Cloudflare could consider implementing this feature. Many organizations already utilize similar capabilities in their CDN platforms, where a static snapshot of the web page is displayed during DDoS attacks. In terms of features, Cloudflare needs to enhance its resilience and stay more focused on adopting new technologies. For instance, solutions like F5 XC Box, Access Solution, and Distributed Cloud Solution have impressive features, and Cloudflare should strive to match and exceed those capabilities. There's a need for improvement in areas like AI-based DDoS attacks and Layer 7 WAF features. Cloudflare should prioritize enhancements in areas such as behavioral DDoS and protection against SQL injection attacks, considering the prevalent trend of public exposure to the internet for business reasons. Overall, Cloudflare needs to invest more in advancing its feature set."
"It would be helpful if the solution could continue evolving to compete with the other solutions on the market."
"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."
"There might be helpful if there was some web application firewall feature."
"For large enterprises, the pricing is okay. However, the enterprise price for small projects is a bit high. A mid-tier pricing option would be beneficial."
"There should be a specific price list for enterprise-level customers."
"I would like to see improvements in the security aspect. The web application firewall needs to be enhanced and offers more customization options."
"Akamai should improve its integrations."
"I'd like to see improvements in log files and data visualizations within the interface."
"The product's scalability can be improved since certain shortcomings regarding the security part of the solution currently exist."
"Akamai's configuration part is an area of concern where improvements are required to make the process easy."
"One area for improvement with Akamai could be pricing."
"Their support is very slow. If you file a support ticket, it takes a long time before it gets resolved."
"When we open tickets, we have a delay in response times."
"Analytics in the area of risk need to be improved to supply more information to the users for creating better environments."
"The salespeople tend to exaggerate its capabilities, which can cost you money if you don't verify the information."
"The solution needs to improve Integration with third parties for their on-prem deployment models. The integration is not that good yet."
"Certificate management could be improved."
"The cost could be lower; our end clients need to have a high budget to purchase this solution."
"The log analytics interface within Incapsula isn't really good. For example, if you have to get all logs from there, it's a very cumbersome process."
"Imperva now offers add-ons to add functionality, but I would like to see these included in the product, even if it would cost more."
"Imperva should have more points of presence in Africa."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"A free version of the solution is available."
"I give the price a five out of ten."
"For Cloudflare, I recommend it heavily for small businesses with revenue under a couple of million dollars. Onboarding is easy, and they even have a free plan. This makes it simple for businesses in the $100,000-$500,000 range to try it out and see its value, allowing them to scale up their infrastructure as needed."
"In terms of licensing costs, we don't pay for licensing for Cloudflare. We only establish communication, then for peering, Cloudflare takes care of the cross-connection in different data centers."
"The price is reasonable."
"The pricing for the service is reasonable, neither excessively cheap nor prohibitively expensive. It aligns well with the value of their solution."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"Price-wise, I find Akamai's pricing model's inclination to be more towards the expensive side of the spectrum, though I can't say that it is a very expensive product."
"The solution can be one of the more expensive options, reflecting their established market position."
"It is an expensive product. The licensing costs for the solution are based on the usage. If we need premium support, we need to buy it from Akamai."
"This is a very expensive solution but it works well."
"The price of the solution depends upon its usage."
"The pricing of Akamai is moderate, in my opinion. My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to Akamai. There are no additional costs besides the licensing costs for the solution."
"Quite high in price, but equivalent to other enterprise products on the market"
"The price of Akamai could be less expensive."
"Varies depending on the needs of the customer."
"We are satisfied with the pricing."
"The solution's price is high for small companies."
"The cost is somewhere around $10,000 a site. For every site, you pay individually. For every DNS entry, you have you pay."
"There is a license or subscription renewal that our customers pay."
"Imperva charges us based on bandwidth, which is better than other vendors that charge us according to data transfer."
"Pricing could be more competitive."
"The cost is on par with other solutions such as Cloudflare and Akamai."
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Comparison Review

it_user69348 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 17, 2013
Akamai vs. CloudFlare – Simple Stats
In the world of CDNs Akamai is the incumbent 500 pound gorilla, no question. They have a HUGE global presence, super solid technology and networks, and have the most experience with large enterprise clients. However, now there other strong players in the CDN market. One of the most…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 GR...
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...
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.
What do you like most about Akamai?
The most valuable feature in managing web traffic has been the ability to handle vertical scaling effectively.
What needs improvement with Akamai?
Akamai could improve by having a more robust and responsive support team. While the support is not bad, there is room...
What is your primary use case for Akamai?
We use Akamai ( /products/akamai-reviews ) as our CDN ( /categories/cdn ) to advertise prefixes and download traffic....
What do you like most about Imperva Incapsula?
We use Imperva DDoS to stop DDoS attacks and reduce the amount of unwanted queries against web services or web scraping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Imperva DDoS?
The pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Imperva DDoS are reasonable for the amount of technical capabilities provi...
What needs improvement with Imperva DDoS?
I would like to see improvements in the pooling of threats and attacks, possibly to enlarge the scale of indicators o...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
No data available
Imperva Incapsula
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Bank of America, Capital One, Cisco, Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines, Disney, Ebay, Facebook, Google, Home Depot, HP, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, LinkedIn, McDonald's, Microsoft, Netflix, Nike, Oracle, PayPal, Pinterest, Qualcomm, Rakuten, SAP, Spotify, Tesla, Toyota, Visa, Walmart, WeWork
Hitachi, BNZ, Bitstamp, Moz, InnoGames, BTCChina, Wix, LivePerson, Zillow and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai vs. Imperva DDoS and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.