akamai-vs-fastly-deliver-at-edge

Akamai and Fastly are both content delivery networks. They are both leaders in the CDN space, with Akamai serving as the legacy giant and Fastly providing more recent competition at the leading edge of content delivery. 

Akamai is an enterprise-focused service, which specializes in providing a high volume of bandwidth and content delivery for large enterprises or companies looking to scale up their content delivery rapidly. In contrast, Fastly is more accessible for midsizes companies. The newer competitor specializes in delivering a broader range of content, including dynamic content that was traditionally considered “uncacheable”. 

Features

Akamai and Fastly both offer similar feature sets, but with distinct areas of strength. 

Akamai offers more capabilities and scale for enterprise users. Reviewers highlight the customizable caching configuration to allow engaged businesses to optimize their CDN deployment. It also offers an industry-leading number and range of edge servers for high-speed performance and extremely high uptimes. Akamai also offers a robust rang of security features that enterprise scope and volumes of content rely on. 

Fastly, on the other hand, is a more accessible CDN option for non-enterprise users. It offers a much cheaper price point, as well as offering a better user and administrator experience. It’s also optimized for a wider range of content types, having been built from the ground up to better handle dynamic content. 

Limitations

There are also some limitations or drawbacks to Akamai and Fastly worth keeping in mind. 

For instance, since Akamai offers enterprise-level performance, it requires enterprise-level knowledge, management, and support from users. It’s interface, such as the control center, is not user friendly, and entails much more of a learning curve for developers not already familiar with Akamai. It’s also known for being more expensive and cost-prohibitive for smaller organizations. It is arguably less ideal for dynamic content. 

In contrast, Fastly’s modern experience and newer capabilities can come at the cost of coverage. It’s range of security options is more limited, especially for customers looking for advanced security options that would otherwise be standalone capabilities. Fastly also has a smaller server presence in most regions, which is true for virtually all CDN players vs. Akamai. However, the greater distance between servers may lower web page performance for some users. 

Pricing

Akamai and Fastly both offer pricing by GB of data, specific to any given region. Fastly’s pricing can be found here. Akamai’s pricing is available by quote from the vendor.