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Is your site slowing down? Are you losing traffic because your content is taking too long to load? Then you need a CDN.
Article Overview
- What Is A CDN
- Why CDNs?
- How Does A CDN Work?
- Benefits Of A CDN
- CDN Infographic
- Best CDN Providers
- CDN Terminology
What Is A CDN?
CDN stands for Content Delivery Network.
They help by decreasing the load speed of your website to each and every visitor. It makes the wait time shorter by loading the static content quicker to your website like images and videos.
Why CDNs?
A CDN will not only speed up your websites (helping your search rankings), it also provides security (block malicious bots and users), thereby saving bandwidth and reducing your hosting costs.
How Does A CDN Work?
CDN providers use multiple servers around the world to get sites to visitors in a more efficient manner. If you are geographically closer to a server you are requesting content from, the site will load faster and you will have faster page views, so you won’t grow tired of waiting and leave.
Are you feeling a little overwhelmed? Check out this video to learn the benefits of a CDN, how it works and why it is important to consider.
We also reference quite a bit of terminology so check out our reference section at the end for definitions and help understanding the jargon.
Benefits Of A CDN
There are three major benefits of having a CDN layer between your website and your visitors:
- Speed – If a site takes more than 3 seconds to load, 57% of online consumers will leave that site. 80% of those consumers will never return to that site. So, the top CDN providers can make your site faster, resulting in more traffic! Google loves fast websites because if the site is faster, customers will stay on the website longer and visit more often, resulting in higher traffic. This means a higher ranking, which means more consumers will see your site listed higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). In turn, this translates to even higher traffic…as you can see it’s an endless, wonderful circle.
- Security – CDN’s can provide a security layer that will prevent malicious bots and hackers from getting to your server. On a shared server this is particularly significant as one site owner’s lack of a CDN could impact other websites.
- Cost Savings – CDN’s can host large media files, thereby reducing the load on your server. This parallel loading of files not only reduces bandwidth (offering a performance benefit), but it can significantly reduce your hosting bill as well since you’ll be charged for using fewer resources.
CDN Infographic
Here’s an infographic we created that better visualizes what CDN’s are and how they work.
To share this infographic on your site, simply copy and paste the code below:
Who Are The Best CDN Providers?
Below we’ve reviewed the best CDN providers in the marketplace today and given you our recommendations. Hopefully, this will help you find a good fit for your growing website traffic needs.
StackPath Review
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StackPath, previously known as MaxCDN, has a great reputation and integrates well with many content management systems (CMS’s – think WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.). StackPath offers all the features you want in your CDN provider, and it works great for large as well as small traffic sites.
Pros | Cons |
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Price
- $10/month for 1TB CDN
You can also bundle your CDN with StackPath’s Web Application Firewall (WAF) and Domain Name System (DNS).
- $20/month for 1TB CDN, 5M WAF, 2M DNS
- $200/month for 10TB CDN, 10M WAF, 5M DNS
- $2,000/month for 100TB CDN, 50M WAF, 10M DNS
Rackspace Cloud Files Review
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Rackspace is becoming a one-stop-shop with all of its products. A CDN is just one on the long list. Rackspace offers comparable services to other CDNs and at a reasonable price.
The only downsides we found is that they don’t offer a free trial and they’re a bit expensive. However, they integrate fairly well with CMS’s such as WordPress, and support is excellent. If you’re already a Rackspace customer, it will be even easier.
Pros | Cons |
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Price
- $0.10/GB per month for the first 1TB
- $0.09/GB per month for next 40TB
- $0.07/GB per month for next 150TB
- $0.045/GB per month for next 300TB
- $0.035/GB per month for next 524TB
- $0.025/GB per month for next 4PB
- $0.02/GB per month for 5PB+
Pricing is for North America and based on monthly usage
Request Fees
- HTTP – $0.0075
- HTTPS – $0.01
Note: Request fee pricing is per 10,000 requests to the edge for North America
CacheFly Review
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CacheFly is used by big-name companies like LG, Adobe, and Microsoft, which indicates they have the scale to support very large websites. With an easy 10 minute setup, you’ll get real-time reporting and access to 24/7 customer support.
The downside is CacheFly’s pricing is more expensive than other CDNs.
Pros | Cons |
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Price
- Standard (8TB transfer): Starting at $246 per month
- Pro 16 (16TB transfer): Starting at $496 per month
- Pro 32 (32TB transfer): Starting at $746 per month
- Pro 64 (64TB transfer): Starting at $1,246 per month
More pricing available if you visit CacheFly’s website.
Other CDN Reviews
Akamai | AWS | Azure | CDN77 | CloudFlare | EdgeCast | Fastly | Incapsula | jsDelivr | Linode | Parse | Photon by Jetpack | TinyCDN
Akamai Review
Akamai is a huge name in the CDN world. However, while researching this company, we found their site to be a bit confusing. Akamai doesn’t offer a free trial or an uptime guarantee which is something you’ll definitely want in a CDN.
Their pricing isn’t listed either, however, they must be doing something right because this company has tons of customers and continues to grow rapidly.
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Price
Pricing is not listed online for Akamai.
AWS Review
Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides two of the most common CDNs available and has numerous distribution centers. Enterprise level businesses would gain the most benefit from Amazon because of the size and price. Amazon CloudFront tends to be more expensive than Amazon S3, but both are very reliable CDNs.
Amazon CloudFront is a CDN that takes its data from Amazon S3. It replicates the S3 data in different locations, so when users request an object, they are routed to the nearest edge location for the highest performance. If your users are all over the world, you’ll want to go with CloudFront. CloudFront also allows you the option of setting different domain aliases.
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Price
Amazon CloudFront pricing is based on location. Below are the prices for the United States.
- First 10TB: $0.085/GB
- Next 40TB/month: $0.080/GB
- Next 100TB/month: $0.060/GB
- Next 350TB/month: $0.040/GB
- Next 524TB/month: $0.030/GB
- Next 4PB/month: $0.025/GB
- Over 5PB/month: $0.020/GB
- Free plan available with limited features and services
Amazon S3 pricing is below for standard storage. Go to Amazon Web Service’s webpage to see reduced redundancy storage and glacier storage prices.
- First 1TB/month: $0.0300/GB
- Next 49TB/month: $0.0295/GB
- Next 450TB/month: $0.0290/GB
- Next 500TB/month: $0.0285/GB
- Next 4000TB/month: $0.0280/GB
- Over 5000TB/month: $0.0275/GB
- Free plan available with limited features and services
Azure Review
Azure is another big name when it comes to CDN’s. Azure is a Microsoft product and has a big reputation to hold up to. With a name like Microsoft behind the product, you expect big things, and Azure holds up to the name well.
Paying for tech support and not offering SSL kept them from making our top 3.
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Price
Standard CDN Outbound Data Transfers
| Zone 1: North America and Europe | Zone 2: Asia Pacific (including Japan) | Zone 3: South America | Zone 4: Australia | Zone 5: India | |
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| First 10 TB per Month | $0.087 per GB | $0.138 per GB | $0.25 per GB | $0.14 per GB | $0.17 per GB |
| 10-50 TB per Month | $0.08 per GB | $0.13 per GB | $0.20 per GB | $0.135 per GB | $0.13 per GB |
| 50-150 TB per Month | $0.06 per GB | $0.12 per GB | $0.18 per GB | $0.12 per GB | $0.11 per GB |
| 150-500 TB per Month | $0.04 per GB | $0.10 per GB | $0.16 per GB | $0.10 per GB | $0.10 per GB |
| 500-1,024 TB per Month | $0.03 per GB | $0.08 per GB | $0.14 per GB | $0.095 per GB | Contact Azure |
| 1,024-5,120 TB per Month | $0.025 per GB | $0.07 per GB | $0.13 per GB | $0.09 per GB | Contact Azure |
| Over 5,120 TB per Month | Contact Azure | Contact Azure | Contact Azure | Contact Azure | Contact Azure |
Premium CDN Outbound Data Transfers
| Zone 1: North America and Europe | Zone 2: Asia Pacific (including Japan) | Zone 3: South America | Zone 4: Australia | Zone 5: India | |
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| First 10 TB per Month | $0.17 per GB | $0.25 per GB | $0.50 per GB | $0.28 per GB | $0.34 per GB |
| 10-50 TB per Month | $0.15 per GB | $0.22 per GB | $0.425 per GB | $0.24 per GB | $0.29 per GB |
| 50-150 TB per Month | $0.13 per GB | $0.19 per GB | $0.36 per GB | $0.20 per GB | $0.245 per GB |
| 150-500 TB per Month | $0.11 per GB | $0.16 per GB | $0.30 per GB | $0.17 per GB | $0.21 per GB |
| 500-1,024 TB per Month | $0.10 per GB | $0.14 per GB | $0.26 per GB | $0.145 per GB | Contact Azure |
| 1,024-5,120 TB per Month | $0.09 per GB | $0.12 per GB | $0.225 per GB | $0.125 per GB | Contact Azure |
| Over 5,120 TB per Month | Contact Azure | Contact Azure | Contact Azure | Contact Azure | Contact Azure |
CDN77 Review
If your website is heavy in sharing HD video content, you may have found your CDN here. Although it is one of the newest CDNs, it is starting on the right foot. Fast, high-quality video streaming and the simplicity of integration with CMS’s are among the top reasons it appeals to users.
Pros | Cons |
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Price
Pricing for CDN77 is based on location. Below is the Pay As You Go pricing for USA and Europe based on traffic.
- Under 30TB: $49/TB per month
- 31TB – 100TB: $45/TB per month
- 101TB – 500TB: $35/TB per month
- over 501TB: contact for pricing
High Volume Plan pricing is as follows for USA and Europe.
- Activate up to 6 data centers
- 500TB Traffic – $5,975/month
- 1PB Traffic – $10,875/month
- 2PB Traffic – $17,984/month
- Full access to over 17 data centers
- 500TB Traffic – $7,985/month
- 1PB Traffic – $14,776/month
- 2PB Traffic – $25,885/month
Storage
Storage pricing for CDN77 is based on location as well and is charged monthly. Below is the pricing for Central Europe, US East Coast, US West Coast, and Asia-Singapore.
- 50GB Free
- 150GB $20/month
- 500GB $60/month
- 1TB $99/month
- 2TB $190/month
- 5TB $425/month
CloudFlare Review
CloudFlare has a great reputation and has been around for more than 15 years. It offers free as well as commercial cloud-based services, which helps make your website faster and more secure.
When using CloudFlare, performance is increased while spam and other attacks are decreased.
Pros | Cons |
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Price
CloudFlare does its pricing differently. It doesn’t charge you based on bandwidth. Instead, you are charged by the number of websites the service covers.
- CloudFlare Pro $20/month and $5 per additional website
- CloudFlare Business $200/month
- CloudFlare Enterprise starts at $3,000/month
- Free plan available
Verizon EdgeCast Review
Verizon recently bought EdgeCast so some items may change but, here’s what we know about them from the past. EdgeCast does a great job for any size company but truly excels with larger sites.
Because of its great reputation, it is clear why EdgeCast is used by big-name tech companies like Bitdefender and Mozilla. EdgeCast has many great features including security, edge optimizer and caching.
Pros | Cons |
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Price
Pricing for EdgeCast is not available on the site. You must contact them directly.
Fastly Review
Fastly offers the basics when it comes to a CDN. Nothing really stands out to us. More specifically, they only offer email support which deters us a bit since email isn’t the quickest form of support. So if something happened to your website you’d probably have a longer wait until you got someone to get your site back up.
Pros | Cons |
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Price
Fastly bills a minimum of $50/month based on your bandwidth and usage
We bill our customers a minimum of $50 per month based on the combined total of your bandwidth and request usage.
| Per GB Rate | North America | Europe | Australia & New Zealand | Asia-Pacific | Brazil | Other Areas |
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| First 10 TB | $0.12 | $0.12 | $0.19 | $0.19 | $0.280 | Contact sales@fastly.com |
| Beyond 10 TB | $0.08 | $0.08 | $0.14 | $0.14 | $0.240 | Contact sales@fastly.com |
TLS/SSL Secure Connections
- Shared Domain Service: Free
- Shared Certificate Service: $500 initial setup, $500 add/change/remove domain, $100/month for 1 domain
- Shared Wildcard Certificate Service: $500 initial setup, $500 add/change/remove domain, $275/month for 1 wildcard
- Customer Certificate Hosting Service: $2,000 initial setup, $1,200 add/change/remove domain, $1,500/month for 1 certificate
Incapsula Review
Incapsula offers website security, DDoS protection, and a web application firewall. The simple setup is one of the many reasons users love it. Freelance web developers and agencies are also heavy users of this service. There is even a free plan available if you wish to test the waters.
Pros | Cons |
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Price
- Free Plan
- Pro Plan: $59/month per site
- Business Plan: $299/month per site
- Enterprise Plan available, contact Incapsula
jsDelivr Review
jsDelivr is a completely free CDN provider open to anyone. MaxCDN and CDN.net have combined their powers and are now jsDelivr’s CDN providers. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of information that could be found about jsDelivr, which makes it seem like it isn’t highly used.
Pros | Cons |
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Price
- Free
Linode Review
Linode displays it features in an easy to read way on its website. They clearly state what they offer, which is refreshing.
They don’t offer anything unique to make them stand out which is why they are not in our top 3.
Pros | Cons |
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Price
Linode bundles CPU, transfer, storage and RAM into one price. Below are the different plans available.
| Plan Name | Linode 1GB | Linode 2GB | Linode 4GB | Linode 8GB | Linode 16GB | Linode 32GB | Linode 48GB | Linode 64GB | Linode 96GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $10/month | $20/month | $40/month | $80/month | $160/month | $320/month | $480/month | $640/month | $960/month |
| RAM | 1GB | 2GB | 4GB | 8GB | 16GB | 32GB | 48GB | 64GB | 96GB |
| CPU Core | 1 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 12 | 16 | 20 | 20 |
| SSD Storage | 24GB | 48GB | 96GB | 192GB | 384GB | 768GB | 1152GB | 1536GB | 1920GB |
| Transfer | 2TB | 3TB | 4TB | 8TB | 16TB | 20TB | 20TB | 20TB | 20TB |
| Network In | 40 Gbps | 40 Gbps | 40 Gbps | 40 Gbps | 40 Gbps | 40 Gbps | 40 Gbps | 40 Gbps | 40 Gbps |
| Network Out | 125 Mbps | 250 Mbps | 500 Mbps | 1,000 Mbps | 2,000 Mbps | 4,000 Mbps | 6,000 Mbps | 8,000 Mbps | 10,000 Mbps |
If you go over your network transfer quota, you are charged $0.02/GB. Inbound traffic is free and does not count against your quota.
Parse Review
Parse is unique in that it’s mostly for developers and their apps. For this article, we decided not to post pros and cons.
Photon By Jetpack Review
Photon is a WordPress-only image caching service and is great at what it does. Most WordPress users rely on Jetpack for site statistics and the many other great features it has to offer.
If sharing pictures is what you mainly do, Photon is a good choice for you. However, there are many features it is missing, so if you’re looking for a more robust solution, you may want to look elsewhere.
Pros | Cons |
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Price
- Free
TinyCDN Review
TinyCDN is a very affordable CDN. It has a fast setup and is easy to implement on your site. You can rely on TinyCDN to speed up your sites. However, they do not have many of the features that you expect in a CDN provider so you may want to look at other options.
Pros | Cons |
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Price
- Starter Kit is $9.95/month and offers 500MB storage and 10GB transfer
- Tiny is $29.95/month and offers 10GB storage and 100GB transfer
- Small is $59.95/month and offers 50GB storage and 200GB transfer
- Medium is $299.95/month and offers 250GB storage and 1TB transfer
- Free Plan offers 100 MB storage and 1GB transfer
Terms & Definitions
Below are some terms you may want to know the meaning of when dealing with CDNs.
- Bandwidth – the amount of data that can be carried from one point to another in a period of time. The higher the bandwidth the better performance achieved.
- CMS (Content Management System) – a computer program that allows you to publish, edit, and modify content from a central interface. Examples: WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, etc.
- Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) – an attack causing denial of service for users of the targeted system. The large amount of incoming messages to the target system forces it to shut down, which denies service to actual users.
- SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) – protocol that is commonly used for managing the security on the Internet for message transmissions.
- Web Application Firewall (WAF) – this controls the input, output, and access to, from, or by an application or service. The WAF monitors the system service call and blocks the ones that don’t meet the configured policy of the firewall.
How To Choose The Best CDN Provider For You
When choosing a CDN provider, you need to consider a few things: speed, bandwidth, real-time monitoring, price, etc. It’s going to be different for each person and company. Some CDN providers do best with enterprise size sites while others do great with smaller ones.
Why are you considering adding a CDN to your web development setup?
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Hi, I work at CloudFlare, I just wanted to respond to the cons on this post:
– Must pay extra for features like 24/7 support, 100% uptime guarantee and customization
We don’t charge on the basis of bandwidth, we charge on the basis of features. 24/7 there is always someone looking at our free queue, but we do address tickets with priority to our Enterprise/Business customers. We are flat rate on bandwidth, we believe that if your site comes under attack or goes viral, you should not have to pay a penny extra; we therefore make our money on the basis of upselling premium features; this is one of the things which makes us different. Customization features are available on our $20 a month Pro plans.
– No contracts
Our team are more than happy to help you negotiate a bespoke agreement with us.
– Can get expensive depending on the number of sites or level of CloudFlare
If you have a large amount of sites coming onto our network, our Enterprise team or Partners team can help here, we can even negotiate a good partnership agreement with you.
Above this; we offer support for HTTP/2 Server Push, Web Sockets. For Business and Enterprise customers we are able to deliver. Moreover, our security functionality is second-to-none, we have kept sites online despite record breaking DDOS attacks.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks
Thanks for the information, we will look over this and make any updates we see needed.
Very surprised not to see KeyCDN in this list as they were one of the first to launch HTTP/2 support and Let’s Encrypt integration. I recommend checking them out.
I’m the IT Manager of a law firm and have been trying to convince the powers that be that we need a CDN for our sites but to no avail. Going to share this article in hopes it will help convince them otherwise. Plus, we already use Verizon for our wireless and phone systems so I wonder if they can bundle it into one package so we can save a little too?