Fastly is a provider of cloud computing services that was founded in 2011 by Swedish-American entrepreneur Artur Bergman.
The company describes its content delivery network (CDN) as an edge cloud platform that enables developers to extend their cloud infrastructure closer to users.
A leading CDN and cloud services provider known for its global network and security solutions. Akamai competes with Fastly in the CDN and cloud security space.
Akamai offers a comprehensive CDN and cloud security platform, directly competing with Fastly in segments like CDN services and web security, targeting enterprises seeking fast and secure content delivery.
Both compete in the CDN and cloud security market, providing CDN services and security solutions, with Akamai’s focus on its vast network and security expertise.
Akamai’s extensive global network and security offerings.
Cloudflare
A CDN and web security company known for its global network and performance-enhancing solutions. Cloudflare competes with Fastly in the CDN and DDoS protection space.
Cloudflare provides CDN services and DDoS protection, directly competing with Fastly in segments like CDN acceleration and security, targeting businesses looking for performance optimization and security.
Both compete in the CDN and DDoS protection market, offering CDN acceleration and security services, with Cloudflare’s focus on its global network and performance enhancements.
Cloudflare’s performance-enhancing features and security capabilities.
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
A leading cloud computing and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider offering CDN and edge services through Amazon CloudFront. AWS competes with Fastly in the cloud CDN and edge computing sector.
AWS provides cloud CDN and edge computing services through Amazon CloudFront, directly competing with Fastly in segments like edge delivery and cloud computing, targeting enterprises seeking scalable and reliable cloud solutions.
Both compete in the cloud CDN and edge computing market, offering edge delivery and cloud services, with AWS’s focus on its extensive cloud infrastructure and services portfolio.
AWS’s comprehensive cloud infrastructure and service offerings.
Limelight Networks
A CDN and edge services provider known for its global content delivery and video streaming solutions. Limelight Networks competes with Fastly in the CDN and video delivery space.
Limelight Networks offers CDN and video delivery services, directly competing with Fastly in segments like video streaming and content delivery, targeting media and entertainment companies seeking high-quality video delivery.
Both compete in the CDN and video delivery market, providing video streaming and content delivery solutions, with Limelight Networks’ focus on video delivery optimizations.
Limelight Networks’ expertise in video streaming and content delivery.
Verizon Digital Media Services (Edgecast)
A CDN and digital media delivery platform offering content delivery and streaming solutions. Verizon Digital Media Services, through Edgecast, competes with Fastly in the CDN and media delivery sector.
Verizon Digital Media Services provides CDN and media delivery services, directly competing with Fastly in segments like media streaming and content acceleration, targeting enterprises looking for reliable media delivery solutions.
Both compete in the CDN and media delivery market, offering media streaming and content acceleration, with Verizon’s focus on media delivery optimizations and its global network.
Verizon’s global network and media delivery capabilities.
StackPath
A CDN and edge computing provider known for its security and edge services. StackPath competes with Fastly in the CDN and edge computing space.
StackPath offers CDN and edge computing services, directly competing with Fastly in segments like edge delivery and security, targeting businesses seeking edge computing and security solutions.
Both compete in the CDN and edge computing market, providing edge delivery and security services, with StackPath’s focus on security features and its edge computing capabilities.
StackPath’s security and edge computing services.
CDNetworks
A global CDN and cloud security provider offering content delivery and DDoS protection services. CDNetworks competes with Fastly in the CDN and web security sector.
CDNetworks provides CDN and web security services, directly competing with Fastly in segments like content delivery and security, targeting enterprises seeking global content delivery and security solutions.
Both compete in the CDN and web security market, offering content delivery and security services, with CDNetworks’ focus on global content delivery and DDoS protection.
CDNetworks’ global content delivery and DDoS protection capabilities.
Imperva
A cybersecurity and web application security company known for its CDN and DDoS mitigation services. Imperva competes with Fastly in the CDN and web application security space.
Imperva offers CDN and web application security services, directly competing with Fastly in segments like CDN acceleration and web application security, targeting businesses looking to protect their web applications and optimize content delivery.
Both compete in the CDN and web application security market, providing CDN acceleration and security solutions, with Imperva’s focus on web application protection and DDoS mitigation.
Imperva’s web application security and DDoS mitigation expertise.
Akamai
Founded in 1998, Akamai has an extensive network of data centers and servers around the world.
These are hired out to online enterprises and eCommerce companies who desire faster, smoother load times and content distribution.
Features include API acceleration, real-time load testing, performance monitoring, intelligent load balancing, and an image and video manager that optimizes content on any device.
Notable clients include NBC, Lufthansa, Fox, The Washington Post, Honda, and Domino’s.
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront is a CDN network with low latency and high transfer speeds. Some of the platform’s features include:
Reduced latency via more than 310 global Points of Presence (PoPs) with intelligent routing and automated network mapping.
Increased security thanks to traffic encryption and access controls.
DDoS attack protection with AWS Shield Standard.
Customizable code with serverless compute features that allow companies to better balance performance and security with cost.
Amazon is also a significant CDN player with clients such as Reuters, Slack, King, and Hulu.
Cloudflare CDN
According to the company website, Cloudflare is the world’s fastest content delivery network with ultra-fast dynamic and static content delivery.
The network is API-first, which means customers can automate workflows with precision and control.
They can also reduce their bandwidth costs and utilize Cloudflare’s unmetered DDoS protection.
In 2021, Cloudflare CDN was recognized by Gartner Peer Insights with the Customers’ Choice award. Some of these customers include Mars, Garmin, IBM, Shopify, and Zendesk.
Microsoft Azure CDN
Microsoft’s Azure platform consists of more than 200 products and cloud services to help businesses manage applications either on-premise or at the edge.
Security on Azure is first class and is trusted by enterprises, start-ups, and governments, while the open-source nature of the platform allows clients to customize their products to suit any language or framework.
Netlify is a relatively young cloud computing company that was founded in 2014 by Mathias Biilmann and Christian Bach.
The company’s platform, dubbed Netlify Edge, is fast, secure, resilient, and reliable, with clients such as Smashing Magazine receiving a 1000% boost in site performance from its automated prerendering.
Netlify Edge is distributed like a CDN but with advanced functionality for publishing applications and entire sites.
Maintenance windows, stale content, and broken deploys are negated since every global deploy is an instant update of the application.
With worldwide caches invalidated instantly, Edge has a traditional CDN covered in terms of its ability to support richer applications.
Key takeaways:
Fastly is a provider of cloud computing services that was founded in 2011 by Swedish-American entrepreneur Artur Bergman.
Akamai is a major Fastly competitor with billions in annual revenue and an established client base. Amazon CloudFront and Microsoft Azure are also worthy competitors because of their heritage in cloud computing and respected brand names.
Other competitors include Cloudflare, with the world’s fastest content delivery network, and Netlify, a relative newcomer that enables clients to put their entire site on a CDN with and optimize the serving of their assets.
Fastly: Key Competitors in CDN Providers
Founding and Focus: Fastly, founded in 2011 by Artur Bergman, offers cloud computing services, specifically a content delivery network (CDN) that extends cloud infrastructure closer to users, ensuring fast, secure, and scalable experiences.
Revenue and Usage: Fastly reported Q1 2022 revenue of $102.4 million, handling billions of daily requests through its platform.
Main Competitors:
Akamai: Established in 1998, Akamai boasts a global network of data centers and servers. It offers features like API acceleration, load testing, performance monitoring, intelligent load balancing, and content optimization.
Amazon CloudFront: Part of Amazon Web Services (AWS), CloudFront offers low-latency and high-speed CDN with global Points of Presence (PoPs), security features, DDoS protection, and serverless compute capabilities.
Cloudflare CDN: Known for its speed and API-first approach, Cloudflare offers dynamic and static content delivery, automated workflows, bandwidth cost reduction, and unmetered DDoS protection.
Microsoft Azure CDN: Part of Microsoft’s Azure platform, it provides over 200 products and cloud services for application management, security, customization, and enterprise trust.
Netlify: A younger player, Netlify was founded in 2014, offering Netlify Edge with features like site performance enhancement, instant global deploys, and advanced functionality for publishing applications and sites.
Competitive Landscape:
Akamai is a major player with extensive data centers, serving enterprises and eCommerce companies globally.
Amazon CloudFront leverages AWS infrastructure, offering speed, security, and customization.
Cloudflare boasts being the fastest CDN and emphasizes automated workflows and DDoS protection.
Microsoft Azure CDN provides comprehensive cloud services and customization options.
Netlify stands out for its young age and advanced features in site performance and application deployment.
Innovation and Impact:
These competitors drive innovation in the CDN space, enhancing website and application performance, security, and user experience.
The variety of options cater to different customer needs, from enterprises to startups, offering a range of features and capabilities.
Clientele and Use Cases:
Competitors serve a diverse range of clients, including well-known brands across various industries, further contributing to the evolution and adoption of CDN services.
Fastly In Numbers
Fastly generated $505.99 million in revenue in 2023, compared to $432.72 million in 2022, $354.33 million in 2021, and $290.87 million in 2020. Fastly is not profitable, as it reported a net loss of $133.08 million in 2023, compared to $190.77 million in 2022, and $222.69 million in 2021. Fastly had 532 $100,000 ARR Customers in 2023, which contributed to most of its revenue, compared to 493 in 2022, and 378 in 2021.
Zoominfo is an American software-as-a-service (SaaS) company founded by Henry Schuck and Kirk Brown in 2007. The company sells access to the most comprehensive B2B database in the world to help sales and marketing teams better communicate with prospects. Zoominfo held an IPO in June 2020 raising $935 million. Like similar software companies that are valuable to remote teams, demand for the Zoominfo platform increased because of the coronavirus pandemic. It is now used by over 20,000 businesses, with clients including T-Mobile, Zoom, Amazon, and Google.
Spotify is the world’s largest music streaming platform with over 381 million users across 184 markets around the world. The company was founded by Martin Lorentzon and Daniel Ek in 2008 in response to the shutdown of peer-to-peer music service Napster. Spotify became a success because it was the first company to determine how to distribute music legally and compensate the music industry at the same time. The platform now offers various curated music discovery services, music stations, audio customization, and private listening. In recent times, it has also ventured into the streaming of audiobooks, podcasts, comedy, poetry, and short stories.
Poshmark is a social commerce marketplace where users can buy and sell new or used clothing. The company was founded in 2011 by Manish Chandra, Tracy Sun, Gautam Golwala, and Chetan Pungaliya. Poshmark is one of many companies looking to profit from the explosive growth in the second-hand clothing and resale industry, which is expected to be worth around $51 billion by 2023. Scores of women, in particular, are opting to sell their unwanted fashion items online instead of donating them to charity or thrift stores.
Afterpay is an Australian fintech company operating in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the United States. Founded in 2014 by Nick Molnar and Anthony Eisen, the company enjoyed a first-mover advantage in the buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) space. Less than seven years later, the company reached 13.1 million active customers with gross sales amounting to $10.1 billion. Despite its success, some suggest the company has lost its edge in the buy-now-pay-later space with the emergence of several high-profile competitors exerting their influence and giving merchants more choice.
Carvana is an online used car retailer with vending machines located around the United States. The company was founded in 2012 by Ryan Keeton, Ben Huston, and Ernest Garcia III. The company is the fastest growing online used car retailer in North America and was recently one of the youngest companies to be added to the Fortune 500 list. While Carvana is currently the only American company selling cars in vending machines, its growth and success have not gone unnoticed by other players. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the company’s major competitors.
Carvana is an online used car retailer with vending machines located around the United States. The company was founded in 2012 by Ryan Keeton, Ben Huston, and Ernest Garcia III. The company is the fastest growing online used car retailer in North America and was recently one of the youngest companies to be added to the Fortune 500 list. While Carvana is currently the only American company selling cars in vending machines, its growth and success have not gone unnoticed by other players. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the company’s major competitors.
GoodRx is an American healthcare company known for its telemedicine platform and a website and mobile app that track prescription drug prices. As part of this service, the company makes drug coupons available for free to consumers. GoodRx was created by Trevor Bezdek, Doug Hirsch, and Scott Marlette. Hirsch, an early employee at both Yahoo and Facebook, got the idea for the company after picking up a prescription with private health insurance and still having to pay $450. Given the high variability in prices between different pharmacies, Hirsh went on a mission to make prescription drug prices more transparent and affordable for ordinary Americans. Revenue in the second quarter of 2021 amounted to $177 million with over 7.5 million app customers using the GoodRx app. While the company was the first to provide a comprehensive list of pharmacy drug prices, new players have entered the market. The rest of this article will be devoted to looking at the main GoodRx competitors.
DoorDash is an online food ordering and delivery platform founded by Tony Xu, Stanley Tang, Andy Fang, and Evan Moore in 2013. Together with its subsidiaries, DoorDash has a 56% market share in food delivery and a further 60% in the convenience delivery sector.
In 1965, PepsiCo acquired Frito-Lay in what the chairmen of both companies called a “marriage made in heaven”. The resultant company transformed PepsiCo from a soft drink organization and set it on a path to becoming one of the world’s leading food and beverage companies. Today, PepsiCo claims to operate in more than 200 countries and territories around the world with seven distinct divisions and many successful brands.
The Coca-Cola Company has 21 different billion-dollar brands or brands that generate more than $1 billion or more in revenue each year. The company also sells its products in nearly every country in the world, with Cuba and North Korea the only two countries where it is not sold officially. What’s more, the Coca-Cola brand is worth $87.6 billion, making it one of the most valuable among all companies. Though these figures allow Coca-Cola to enjoy market dominance in many countries, the company is nevertheless subject to intense competition.
Headquartered in Burbank, California, Disney has global reach and influence with its universally popular resorts, movies, streaming services, video games, and merchandise. But as one of the largest media conglomerates in the world with a diverse range of products in multiple marketplaces, Disney is no stranger to competition.
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is an American multinational technology company. It was founded in New York as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in 1911 by Charles Ranlett Flint. IBM is a diverse company with a similarly diverse portfolio of products and services. It produces and sells hardware, middleware, and software. It also offers hosting and consultancy services in nanotechnology and mainframe computers. What’s more, IBM has a strong culture in research and development, filing the most U.S. patents of any business for the past 28 years.
Starbucks is a multinational coffee chain headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It was founded by Jerry Baldwin, Zev Siegl, and Gordon Bowker in 1971. From a single and very humble bean roasting store in Pike Place Market, the company is now a global giant operating almost 33,000 stores around the world. This large global footprint obviously increases the competition for Starbucks in many different markets. The coffee industry itself is also highly competitive, with established players including McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts.
Boeing is best known for designing and manufacturing commercial aircraft, but the company also produces helicopters, rockets, satellites, spacecraft, missiles, and telecommunications infrastructure. Founded in 1916 by William Boeing in Seattle, Washington, the company is one of the largest aerospace manufacturers and defense contractors in the world.
While Google (now Alphabet) has been born as a search engine, it is now a diversified company, even though its core business remains search, as most of its revenues still come from Google, the search engine, and YouTube, the “video engine.” However, as a tech giant, which business is primarily based on advertising, the company does compete with Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft (with Bing), and Amazon (with e-commerce search and its advertising machine).
Peloton is a media and exercise equipment company primarily making money making money via its fitness products. The idea for the company came from John Foley, who argued that technology could help time-poor individuals get a full workout at home. The company competes with other players like Bowflex, NordicTrack, Life Fitness, MYX Fitness.
IKEA was founded in 1943 by Swedish businessman Ingvar Kamprad as a mail-order catalog business. The company is best known for selling affordable flat-pack furniture, but it also sells home accessories and kitchen appliances. Today, IKEA offers approximately 9,500 products across 445 stores in 52 countries. With such broad reach, IKEA is not immune to competition.
The Airbnb story began in 2008 when two friends shared their accommodation with three travelers looking for a place to stay. Just over a decade later, it is estimated that the company now accounts for over 20% of the vacation rental industry. As a travel platform, Airbnb competes with other brands like Booking.com, VRBO, FlipKey, and given its massive amount of traffic from Google. Also, platforms like Google Travel can be considered potential competitors able to cannibalize part of Airbnb’s market.
Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) provider, allowing businesses to build meaningful and sustained relationships with their customers. With robust, customizable software that integrates with social media, Gmail, and Microsoft Outlook, the Salesforce CRM platform is rated highly among businesses of all shapes and sizes. Recent data has shown that the company has captured 19.5% of the global CRM market.
In just fifteen short years, Shopify has grown from humble beginnings to become one of the fastest-growing eCommerce platforms online. The Shopify eCommerce solution is perhaps best suited to users who desire an easy, flexible and affordable starter solution for their online store. The provider now has upwards of 820,000 stores accounting for 20% of the total market share. However, the continued success of any company in the dynamic digital market is never guaranteed.
Netflix is the largest streaming video subscription service in the world. Created by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in 1997, the company has revolutionized the video content subscriptionmodel with over 139 million subscribers in 190 countries. The success of Netflix is due to two factors. The first is a recommendation system that gives suggestions on what customers should watch based on their viewing history. The second is the vast catalog of content on offer – produced by third parties and by Netflix itself. These factors have resulted in Netflix competing against influential TV networks and film producers for viewership.
YouTube is the most popular online video platform, a hybrid between a video search engine and a social media platform with a continuous feed prompted by social interactions and engagement. In fact, the platform is so popular that YouTube.com is the second most visited website on the internet. After being acquired by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion, the platform now boasts over 2 billion registered users. Collectively, these users upload 500 hours of video every minute. The platform competes with other video engines like Vimeo, Dailymotion, and social platforms like IGTV, TikTok, and Twitch.
Zoom is a video platform, which enabled remote working. As such it competes with other large tech players like Google and Microsoft for the productivity space, and other startups like Slack and Go-To-Meetings.
As an electric automaker and builder of sports cars and now trucks, Tesla’s competitors comprise companies like Ford, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Lamborghini, Audi, Rivian Lucid Motors, Toyota, and more. At the same time, Tesla is an electric energy production and storage company (SolarCity); it competes with Sunrun, SunPower, and Vivint Solar. And as an autonomous driving company, it competes with companies like Zoox, Waymo, and Baidu with the self-driving software.
Amazon is a consumer e-commerce platform with a diversified business model spanning across e-commerce, cloud, advertising, streaming, and more. Over the years, Amazon acquired several companies. As it operates across several industries, Amazon has a wide range of competitors across each of those industries. For instance, Amazon E-commerce competes with Shopify, Wix, Google, Etsy, eBay, BigCommerce.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
