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Add to SafariWhen comparing KeyCDN vs Akamai, the Slant community recommends Akamai for most people. In the question“What are the best content delivery networks (CDNs)?” Akamai is ranked 3rd while KeyCDN is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Akamai is:
Being one of the worlds largest CDNs, Akamai's large scale gives it a huge point of presence (PoP) to handle volumetric attacks.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Transparent, pay-as-you-go pricing
Traffic prices are as low as $0.04/GB and volume pricing starts at 10TB/month.
Pro Simple and easy setup
CDN configuration is instantly deployed.
Pro Free Lets Encrypt SSL certificates for custom zone names
Pro HTTP/2 Support
One of the 1st providers to support HTTP/2
Pro Custom SSL for free
Allows uploading own certificate at no extra cost. Shared SSL is also available.
Pro Brotli support
KeyCDN supports Brotli compression for users who have Brotli enabled on their origin server.
Pro POPs in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan at no extra cost
Pro Real-time raw logs available for free
Pro Support SPDY 3.1
KeyCDN supports SPDY 3.1 for even faster secured connections.
Pro Large scale point of presence
Being one of the worlds largest CDNs, Akamai's large scale gives it a huge point of presence (PoP) to handle volumetric attacks.
Pro Deeply customizable rules
The Kona Site Defender rules are all customizable, with continuous updates from Akamai. This means you can see how they are protecting your site under the hood, and adjust them to your needs.
Pro Lots of dedicated bandwidth specifically for DDoS absorption
Through Prolexic's PLXedge, Akamai provides their customers with a total of 2.3 Tbps of dedicated DDoS absorption bandwidth.
Pro Rules for rate limiting
Akamai provides tools for rate controlling traffic segments based on their request rate behavior.
Pro Capped bursting fees
If a sudden attack sucks up a lot of bandwidth, the bandwidth costs are capped.
Pro Application layer protection
Akamai utilizes a proprietary web application firewall in order to provide scalable protection against application layer attacks.
Cons
Con Unreasonable anti-spam policy
Not suitable if you have an association with online advertising. A single email that may include your domain that appears on Spamcop will result in a threat to terminate your account and a requirement to disable the URL -- even if you are not responsible for the production or sending of the email.
Con Config changes take 5-10 minutes
Any config change is queued for several minutes before being applied, without any time estimate. Combined with caching and DNS delays, it can make debugging a bit more difficult.
Con Expensive
Akami's services cost more than triple comparative packages from other security companies. At 13k a month for DDoS protection, there are many other choices out there that cost less for the same protection.
Con Slower security rule propagation
Because of Akamai's large CDN structure, it can take some time for security rules to propagate, making it harder to adjust security responses on the fly.
