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Akamai versus CacheFly

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

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Company

Company Akamai CacheFly
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. Launched in 2002, CacheFly developed the world's first TCP-anycast based content delivery network. CacheFly has a focus on optimizing the CDN for throughput and has steadily built out the network to now have 50+ POPs on 6 continents. CacheFly provides a 100% uptime SLA and takes pride in acting as 'consultants to our customers'.

Products

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Product Akamai CacheFly
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
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 Ultra Low Latency Video Streaming
Video on demandDelivery of on demand video VoD
Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization Image & Video Manager Smart Image Optimization
DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain Edge 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 Fully custom solution
Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers EdgeWorkers Custom solutions available for edge scripting

Network

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

Region Akamai CacheFly
North America ? 17
Latin America ? 18
Europe ? 16
Russia & CIS ? 0
Asia excl. China ? 7
China ? 2
Oceania ? 3
Middle East ? 5
Africa ? 1

Pricing

Pricing & contract duration Akamai CacheFly
Minimum contract term 12 months 1 month
Minimum monthly costs Unknown $0 (5 TB/m)
Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests Unknown No
Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred Unknown No
NA/EU traffic (low volume) Unknown $0.03 per GB
APAC traffic (low volume) Unknown $0.03 per GB
LATAM traffic (low volume) Unknown $0.03 per GB

Features

Yes
Sort of/partially
No
Extra costs
Unknown
Web acceleration Akamai CacheFly
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? 5 - 180s depending on the change
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 Must purchase dedicated IP
tooltip Or use DNS provider that can do CNAME flattening
HTTP/2
HTTP/3 HTTP/3 announcement
WebSockets WebSockets docs
IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? Custom enablement
Compression CDN Guide: CompressionReduce file size for faster delivery Resend from origin, or compress on edge Resend from origin
Origin pull - protocolHTTP only or HTTPS possible too? HTTP and HTTPS HTTP and HTTPS
tooltip Match client to edge request protocol is possible
Origin pull - Host headerUse client > edge value? Set specific value? Set specific Host header value or forward value from client to edge request. Support for AWS Origin Secret Key Header
Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP
Waiting RoomDuring peak traffic, route users to a virtual waiting room Virtual Waiting Room
Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin FTP or Cloud Storage can be enabled
Cache control - CDN caching Origin headers are honored. Can config caching overrides
Cache control - client caching Origin headers are forwarded to client. Can config overrides
Serve Stale CDN Guide: Serve StaleCDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble CacheFly support team can activate this edge behaviour
Purge CDN Guide: PurgeInvalidate or delete cached objects on CDN Purge Speed
Purge - capabilities Purge all and by directory, not by tag or header
Analytics Near real-time, lots of metrics
Log files Pull via FTP or have pushed with Log Streaming to customer endpoint
tooltip Logs are 5 minutes delayed
API Purge, analytics, configuration
HTTPS & Content Protection Akamai CacheFly
CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net Free
Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate
Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN Upload your own Certificate or Include Automatic Certificate
Token authentication Self-service activation/configuration
Geo blocking Self-service activation/configuration. Predefined and custom rules
Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content
Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content Available in a Custom/Private CDN scenario
IP white/blacklisting Custom rules can be scripted (by support team at no extra charge)

Support

Customer support Akamai CacheFly
Documentation Akamai techdocs Yes, public
Humans All customers get 24/7 email and phone support and a dedicated implementation/solutions engineer. Extra support ('Elite managed') available at a fee with SLA for support response time