AWS Shield vs Prolexic comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Akamai are both solutions in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.8, while Akamai is ranked #19. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 5.9% mindshare in DDOS, compared to Akamai’s 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Akamai users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Prolexic and AWS Shield are competing products in the domain of DDoS protection services. AWS Shield seems to have the upper hand due to its seamless integration with the AWS ecosystem, making it more attractive for existing AWS customers.

Features: Prolexic's strengths lie in its tailored defense strategies, high-volume attack handling, and detailed analytics. It offers extensive reporting features for network security professionals. AWS Shield's key features include native AWS integration, automatic scaling during attacks, and real-time threat mitigation, which benefit businesses already using AWS platforms.

Room for Improvement: Prolexic could benefit from a more streamlined integration process with third-party services and greater automation capabilities. Its reporting interface, while detailed, may improve in user-friendliness. AWS Shield could enhance customization options, provide more granular control beyond the AWS ecosystem, and offer a more transparent billing model for advanced services.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Prolexic provides comprehensive deployment support with detailed guidance, suitable for enterprises needing hands-on configuration and robust customer service offering personalized assistance. AWS Shield simplifies deployment through its integration with AWS services, ensuring efficient onboarding and automated protection; however, support tends to align with standard AWS service protocols, which may be less personalized than Prolexic.

Pricing and ROI: Prolexic generally involves higher upfront costs but delivers significant ROI for enterprises requiring robust protection and customization, especially for frequent large-scale attacks. AWS Shield offers cost-effective solutions with its Standard option included with AWS services, appealing to businesses seeking basic DDoS mitigation. Its Advanced tier incurs additional costs but enhances security and integration benefits for AWS-centric operations.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Shield vs. Prolexic Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield vs. Prolexic

December 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection category, the mindshare of Cloudflare is 19.9%, down from 20.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Shield is 5.9%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prolexic is 3.0%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad

Owner at Tech Exchange

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.

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SteveNg

Head of Strategic Alliances at Quantum Security

The solution automatically scales according to traffic, only takes minutes to deploy, and is maintenance-free

Ultimately, the cost of the solution goes up as we add features, but I believe over time AWS has been adding more frequently asked features. Depending on the website, if our website has more transactions, more sensitive information, and more value, then, of course, we need more features. For us, we only require basic information, a website, some custom consumer, end user, and front-facing purposes. We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need. The pricing of the solution can be improved.

Read full review

ÖS

Rasman

Senior Network & Security administrator at a hospitality company with 201-500 employees

Eliminated DDOS attacks, provides excellent mitigation service

I rate it eight out of 10. It would get a nine if the web portal was better and 10 if the price was lower. We have been using it for three years. We canceled the contract recently and are looking into using another vendor to reduce the price by two-thirds.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a stable solution. I rate the stability a ten out of ten...I rate the scalability a ten out of ten."

"The UI is good."

"Its most significant benefit to date is the speed with which it refreshes DNS records on the internet once you change it. If you are changing a website or registering a new record, it is very quick."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is external DNS. It is also very secure. They have their own main server and once you configure it, the product takes care of everything. There are no issues in resolving IPs and low latency is also present."

"The DDoS protection is the most valuable aspect of the solution."

"Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications."

"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"

"The tool is user-friendly."

More Cloudflare pros

"The product is easy to use."

"We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't degrade the performance of our solution. Additionally, it's easy to configure, which is crucial for us. It's easy to use and set up and stops attacks on our servers. We haven't encountered any attack problems because the solution stops them in real-time. AWS Shield specifically focuses on defending against denial-of-service attacks, making it a great solution for that type of threat."

"The product has a good mechanism to analyze trends and trigger events."

"The solution's ease of use is the most valuable feature."

"It is integrated with AWS. So, it gives you a good first step."

"I am impressed with the product's multiple features like security."

"The solution does not have hardware or maintenance requirements and is very easy to scale."

Cons

"Although I think it's quite good, it doesn't provide me with all the features I would expect to have if I were using Imperva."

"We're facing challenges due to an upgrade in the machine learning model. The problem arises from some users abusing the APIs, resulting in an influx of suspicious traffic. Cloudflare's learning model mistakenly identifies this traffic as human. Consequently, it assigns it a higher trust score, akin to legitimate human traffic, causing complications in our architecture. Previously, such traffic would have been categorized as suspicious, enabling us to apply appropriate blocking rules. However, we encounter difficulties distinguishing between genuine and suspicious traffic with the new categorization. Despite these challenges, overall, Cloudflare remains the preferred solution compared to Azure, AWS CloudFront, and Google Cloud Armor."

"I would like Cloudflare to offer a dedicated account manager for large enterprise clients like us."

"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."

"The integration of LLMs on the dashboard is something that is needed in the tool."

"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."

"There are some issues with the CDN services."

"The timing aspect can lead to it being considered overpriced. This is a particular concern we have with Cloudflare, as they may struggle with accurately detecting the client."

More Cloudflare cons

"The product needs to improve its logs and reports to make it read better."

"The time taken to detect anomalies must be reduced."

"The product should give users more flexibility to customize their security policies according to their requirements."

"We end up having to pay extra for features that AWS adds that we don't need."

"The product is expensive."

"The management of it is a bit hard. If you don't engineer it on the front side, it is hard to go back in and change it. It could be improved in terms of architecture requirements and then ongoing support requirements as a secondary component to it. People tend to set up things like this, and they just expect it to work without the care and feeding that needs to go back into it either from an application team or a network environment team."

"The solution needs additional product options for small and medium enterprises."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"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."

"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."

"Cloudflare's pricing is not much higher and is good for middle-level organizations."

"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."

"A free version of the solution is available."

"The price is reasonable."

More Cloudflare pricing and cost advice

"We pay $3000 per month for the solution."

"The tool's pricing is good."

"The tool is cheap."

"The cost depends on traffic each month, so on average, it costs us between US$200 and US$300 per month."

"It depends on your subscription level and the volume that you're spending with AWS. So, it is very relative to the consumption alignment in your subscription level. It is a well-constructed, scalable pricing option, but it is relative to how much you're spending on AWS. Because the more you spend, typically, the more you get off on services like this. I find it to be comparable to other solutions."

"The pricing is a pay-as-you-go model that is charged by the hour."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Comms Service Provider

Insurance Company

Educational Organization

31%

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

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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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What do you like most about AWS Shield?

We have integrated the tool with Active Directory. The most important feature is that it's transparent and doesn't de...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Shield?

The tool is cheap.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Shield?

The time taken to detect anomalies must be reduced. The tool has a few parameters based on which it tries to understa...

See all answers

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Comparisons

Quad9 vs Cloudflare

Compared 48% of the time

Azure DNS vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Front Door vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Akamai vs Cloudflare

Compared 4% of the time

Infoblox DDI vs Cloudflare

Compared 1% of the time

More Cloudflare Competitors

Azure DDoS Protection vs AWS Shield

Compared 25% of the time

Cloudflare One vs AWS Shield

Compared 25% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs AWS Shield

Compared 5% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs AWS Shield

Compared 3% of the time

More AWS Shield Competitors

Cloudflare One vs Prolexic

Compared 26% of the time

Akamai App and API Protector vs Prolexic

Compared 24% of the time

Arbor DDoS vs Prolexic

Compared 12% of the time

Azure DDoS Protection vs Prolexic

Compared 4% of the time

Imperva DDoS vs Prolexic

Compared 3% of the time

More Prolexic Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudflare

December 2024

Download Cloudflare product report

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield

December 2024

Download AWS Shield product report

Buyer's Guide

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection

December 2024

Download Prolexic product report

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS

No data available

Akamai Prolexic Routed

Learn More

Cloudflare

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Akamai

Overview

Cloudflare is a highly-regarded Content Delivery Network (CDN) and a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) protection solution. The robust global connectivity cloud platform that is Cloudflare ensures users are able to connect to the Internet quickly, securely, and reliably. Cloudflare is one of the world's largest networks in the marketplace today. Using Cloudflare, businesses, educational entities, NGOs, vloggers, bloggers, and anyone else with an internet presence can experience more secure, faster websites and applications.

Currently, there are millions of Internet locations on Cloudflare, and the Cloudflare network
continues to grow every day by the thousands. The solution is able to fulfill the requests for
millions of websites seamlessly and serves on average 45 million HTTP requests per second.

Cloudflare has safe, secure data centers in close to 300 cities worldwide to ensure every
client request is filled as quickly as possible. It is Cloudflare’s edge network that makes this
possible by keeping content and other services as close to each client as possible, so the
information requests are always only seconds away.

Many organizations that work in democracy, civil society, human rights, or the arts are able to
access Cloudflare's highest levels of protection for free via Project Galileo. Additionally, official
election websites can be secured from hacking and fraud through Cloudflare’s Project
Athenian, also at no additional cost.

Cloudflare can also help organizations of all sizes develop a robust zero-trust strategy to
ensure the highest levels of productivity and profitability. Employees, stakeholders, and end users have a greater level of satisfaction and overall improved user experience, which can, in
turn, result in higher revenues and overall ROI. Zero-trust and BYOD (bring your own device)
access ensure end users and employees always have the best resources and technology
available to them at all times.

Cloudflare benefits

Cloudflare has many benefits. Some of its most valuable benefits include:

- Faster load times

- Robust DNS security

- Intuitive cloud Web Application Firewall (WAF)

- Free universal SSL

- Image enhancement

- Automatic browser caching

- Next-generation cloud load balancer

- Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

- Rate limiting

- Minification

- Zero-trust capabilities

- Cost-effective

- Reduced carbon footprint

Reviews from real users

“Many websites require an SSL certificate because they sell stuff and want SSL. Cloudflare
comes with an SSL certificate built in. It's automatic. You sign yourself up for Cloudflare, and
an SSL certificate automatically protects your website. If you have a connection between your
website and your host, the server, Cloudflare, and the host, you don't necessarily need a
certificate.” Spencer M., Owner at Tech Exchange

“What I like best about Cloudflare is that my company can use it to trace and manage
applications and monitor traffic. The solution tells you if there's a spike in traffic. Cloudflare
also sends you a link to check your equipment and deployment and track it through peering,
so it's a valuable tool.” Daniel P., Network Engineer at Ufinet

“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.” PeerSpot user, Competence Center Manager at a tech services company

AWS Shield is a managed Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection service that safeguards applications running on AWS. AWS Shield provides always-on detection and automatic inline mitigations that minimize application downtime and latency, so there is no need to engage AWS Support to benefit from DDoS protection.

Akamai Prolexic is a cloud-based DDoS protection solution that defends your data center and hybrid infrastructure to ensure availability and uptime. It provides comprehensive port and protocol protection against the broadest range of DDoS attacks, including high-bandwidth sustained attacks and complex multi-vector attacks. Prolexic is available as an always-on or on-demand service, contains a Network Cloud Firewall, and offers flexible integration models based on your desired security posture across hybrid origins. Prolexic is backed by a proven platform with more than 20 Tbps of dedicated DDoS defense capacity and our 24/7/365 global SOCC for a fully managed solution.

Prolexic stops DDoS attacks closer to the source to maximize performance for users and to maintain network resiliency through cloud distribution. Instead of originating advertisements for your prefixes from your cloud/data centers, you’ll make either a border gateway protocol route advertisement change or DNS redirection (A record or CNAME record) to originate from one of many Akamai scrubbing centers globally. Your intended traffic is then routed to the user via Anycast through the closest scrubbing center. Prolexic will inspect the traffic to determine if it is good or bad, and apply proactive and/or custom mitigation controls designed to stop attacks instantly if needed. This ensures fast and accurate DDoS protection. Clean traffic is then returned to the customer origin via GRE tunnels, Layer 2 VLAN connections, and/or VIP-to-origin back-end mapping with little perceived latency. Prolexic also features a Network Cloud Firewall that allows IT teams to auto generate or manually manage access control lists.

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.

netflix, dow jones, mapbox, pearson, rovio, youview, moviestar planet, asurion, payplug, hour of code

Fidor Bank

Buyer's Guide

AWS Shield vs. Prolexic

December 2024

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