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Akamai versus AdvancedHosting

Easily compare Akamai and AdvancedHosting for POP locations, products, pricing, features & support. We hope this helps you better understand the similarities and differences between these content delivery networks.

 logo AdvancedHosting logo

Company

Company Akamai AdvancedHosting
Short profile Akamai is one of the oldest CDNs and generally considered to be the largest global CDN. They have 'servers everywhere' and a wide range of products and services. The company is actively involved in Let's Encrypt and is pushing HTTP/2 adoption. AdvancedHosting provides dedicated servers, cloud servers, cloud storage, CDN, AnycastDNS, DevOps as a Service and domain registration since 2002. The CDN has ~25 POPs on 4 continents, supporting delivery of video and static assets.

Products

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Product Akamai AdvancedHosting
Dynamic content deliveryNon-cacheable content delivery. User login, shopping cart ... Dynamic Site Accelerator
Small file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of small files (file size <1 MB) Ion CDN for Static Content
Large file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of large files (file size >1 MB) Download Delivery
Live videoDelivery of live video. RTMP? Transcoding/transmuxing? Adaptive Media Delivery CDN for Video
Video on demandDelivery of on demand video CDN for Video
Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization Image & Video Manager
DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain Edge DNS Anycast DNS
WAFWeb Application Firewall Web Application Protector
Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. Kona DDoS Defender
Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs
Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers EdgeWorkers

Network

How many POP locations do Akamai and AdvancedHosting have in different parts of the world?

Region Akamai AdvancedHosting
North America ? 9
Latin America ? 2
Europe ? 9
Russia & CIS ? 1
Asia excl. China ? 3
China ? 0
Oceania ? 0
Middle East ? 0
Africa ? 0

Pricing

Pricing & contract duration Akamai AdvancedHosting
Minimum contract term 12 months None
Minimum monthly costs Unknown $0.01
Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests Unknown None
Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred Unknown Yes
NA/EU traffic (low volume) Unknown $0.025 per GB or $0.5 per Mbps
APAC traffic (low volume) Unknown $0.025 per GB or $0.5 per Mbps
LATAM traffic (low volume) Unknown $0.025 per GB or $0.5 per Mbps

Features

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Web acceleration Akamai AdvancedHosting
Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing. Can't sign up and get started. Must talk to sales.
Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? 2 to 3 minutes (video takes longer)
Apex/root domain OK Blog: Root domain on CDN and performanceNo performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com If you also use their Fast DNS for your domain
HTTP/2
HTTP/3 HTTP/3 announcement
WebSockets WebSockets docs
IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6?
Compression CDN Guide: CompressionReduce file size for faster delivery Resend from origin, or compress on edge Resend from origin only
tooltip Does not compress on the edge
Origin pull - protocolHTTP only or HTTPS possible too? HTTP and HTTPS HTTP and HTTPS
tooltip Video: only pull over HTTP
Origin pull - Host headerUse client > edge value? Set specific value? Can be different from origin host
tooltip Video: only origin Host
Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP Free.
Waiting RoomDuring peak traffic, route users to a virtual waiting room Virtual Waiting Room
Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin $25/TB
Cache control - CDN caching Origin or CDN controlled
Cache control - client caching Origin or CDN controlled
Serve Stale CDN Guide: Serve StaleCDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble
Purge CDN Guide: PurgeInvalidate or delete cached objects on CDN A few minutes
Purge - capabilities Purge specific files, purge all (not for VideoCDN)
Analytics Cache hit ratio and error rate not yet available
Log files Available on request (support ticket)
API Purge, analytics, configuration
HTTPS & Content Protection Akamai AdvancedHosting
CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net
Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate Let's Encrypt with auto-renewal. CDN handles all.
Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN Can be an EV certificate. Free.
Token authentication Antihotlink protection
Geo blocking VideoCDN only
Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content Set allow and/or block list.
Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content
IP white/blacklisting VideoCDN only

Support

Customer support Akamai AdvancedHosting
Documentation Akamai techdocs API docs and VoD API docs
Humans Ticket system, Skype and email support is free.