Likelihood to Recommend Akamai is a well-established brand name with a great product. It meets and many time exceeds the needs for global content delivery and security management layer at the edge. Fine grain security tuning seems cumbersome as the definition of the app keeps changing. It also requires an investment of time for the setup which doesn't necessarily make sense for smaller scale scenarios. Some products offered by AWS, Azure or the Google Cloud can be more tightly integrated with cloud provider offerings thus easier to configure.
Read full review Google Cloud CDN is available globally and supports various load balancers available in different regions around the globe, so I find Google Cloud CDN as one of the best choices for CDN as it serves globally and it is really fast, safe, and secure. It might be not suitable for you if you do not have any technical background.
Read full review Pros Content offloading - once rules are set up within Akamai you don't need to even think about how many images or large JavaScript or CSS files (for example) are being served from your own estate, Akamai takes care of it all via rules that are quick, easy and flexible. Page caching - for pages that don't change very often Akamai allows you to set up rules, quickly and easily, to serve up your page content for you, which takes even more load away from your origin servers. Quick rollback - the Akamai system allows easy testing of rules and changes via a staging system, and also offers a quick rollback option, which is perfect for the rare occasions when something has been set up incorrectly. Read full review The intelligent categorization and management of site content cache in Google Cloud CDN is unique and offers the best results with simple settings. It has powerful servers in all geographical regions of the world and the speed of the site will increase many times for the customer with smart routing. It has AnyCast IP feature and website receives a single global IP address. In this case, the site loads at the same speed worldwide. Read full review Cons The interface in their control centre could be a bit more user-friendly with some of the settings in places that you wouldn't expect them to be. The search offsets this problem to an extent but it's still sometimes slower than you'd like to find what you are looking for. Read full review Unable to use any kind of code to show different content. Absence of cloud workers as provided by Cloudfront, Cloudflare and Akamai. No support for dynamic routing. Read full review Support Rating Their support documents are excellent and provide a lot of useful information for all their services. The only reason I didn't give them a 10 is that the time it takes for them to respond to an issue could be slightly faster.
Read full review I didn't have the need to use support from Google when I was either testing or setting up my website. Information was easily found by searching online if I needed to, and the options that I needed to install or enable were there on the setup page. Honestly, I was a former systems administrator so most of this stuff is not challenging for me.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review We have limited software developers and don't have the need for a big cloud service provider along with their costs. Google Cloud CDN brings to usr, reliability and brand familiarity. Google Cloud CDN also doesn't bother us with pitches or 1000 emails about the products. We went and signed up for it, without dealing with a pushy salesperson.
Read full review Return on Investment Akamai RoI improved over a period of times since it comes with heavy costs, however global deliveries in over 100 counties and global web platforms usage helps improve RoI With the complex UI challenges, ROI could be impacted negatively when you have to invest in operations and time. Read full review Google Cloud CDN has worked great as a tool to provide more reliable and faster interactive web experiences such as with e-learning sites. The product can require additional training costs, even for experienced IT administrators. Overall, ongoing costs can also be prohibitive for organizations with smaller web presences. Read full review ScreenShots