10 Best CDN Services to Speed Up & Secure your Website
As we all must be aware, a content delivery network helps minimize delays in loading a webpage content. It does so by reducing the physical distance between the server and the user.
This helps people around the world to witness high-quality content loading quickly. This enhances the user experience and also builds website credibility and performance.
How does a CDN work?
A content delivery network gives out more than 50% of the internet’s traffic. It reduces latency by reducing the physical distance of the request sent to the web page.
An excellent example to make things more transparent would be a visitor sitting in the US, trying to open a UK origin webpage.
Now, suppose the request needs to travel across the Atlantic; it will take a considerable amount of time to load the page.
However, with CDN, there is a cached version of the web content in various geographical locations.
These locations are known as the points of presence and contain their own caching servers to deliver that particular content in the user’s area.
This means, through CDN, the person sitting in the US trying to open a UK-based website will now be able to load the web page within seconds.
CDNs can deliver a wide variety of content. These contents include 4K and HD quality video, audio streams, software downloads, data records, and so much more.
Having a CDN is essential for fast, secure, efficient, and effective content worldwide.
Most businesses have now come online, especially after the pandemic. Every business has an online presence and is focusing on making it better. The interne3t enables people to connect, shop, sell, share, and a lot more.
With an increased number of visitors on the website, it becomes tough for content/product providers to maintain different content delivery, adjust it according to devices, and secure the data and user’s online presence.
You’ll save web hosting bandwidth and rescue the overall visitor hit. If you’re regularly hitting the limit of your hosting plan, and paying overage charges, try using one of the Proxy/WAF CDNs below.
You’ll end up eliminating the extra bot and spam traffic reducing your hosting overage charges. It will secure your website and reduce the threats of DDoS attacks and fresh SSL certificates.
A good CDN help businesses overcome these challenges of media delivery.
Traditional CDN V/S Proxy/WAF CDN
Content delivery networks can be categorized into two parts.
- Traditional CDN: These CDNs cache a copy of all of your content and media first. They then utilize a subdomain or a random URL to serve the assets from this random website. When someone visits your site, the request is first made from the client to the hosting provider, and then to the CDN in order to fetch all the assets.
- Proxy/WAF CDN: This is slightly different than the traditional CDN. It still acts like a CDN, however, it intercepts all incoming requests as an intermediary server between the client and the website host. Unlike a traditional CDN, it does not require the use of a subdomain or a random URL.
Here is a list of the best Content Delivery Networks for 2021
1. KeyCDN
KeyCDN is one of the highest performing content delivery networks. It promises to start delivering content to the users within a few minutes itself. With a cache hit ratio of 98%, they prove that they convert total content requests.
Serving in 6 continents, you can quickly start and unlock their entire network in a few steps.
- CREATE: Add your domain.
- CONFIGURE: Make advanced customizations of a custom subdomain.
- INTEGRATE: Add to any CMS framework easily or any other custom application.
Key features:
- Optimized hardware
- Powerful features
- Global network
- Seed up, transform and optimize images in real-time.
- Easy development
Pricing:
They offer a free day trial, upon which you can subscribe to their paid plans according to the region you belong to. Their plans are set according to per GB rates; check here.
Their image processing costs $0.40 per 1,000 operations.
Additional benefits:
- No request charges, keeping costs low and affordable
- Low minimum usage of $4 per month
- 24/7 custom support
KeyCDN is a traditional CDN.
2. BunnyCDN
Bunny.net helps you supercharge your website, downloads, videos, and a lot more. They offer a 0.7 seconds website loading time, more than 3 times faster than the traditional time taken.
They ensure to minimize latency and maximize performance by their feature-packed services!
Bunny.net can be reached in less than 30 milliseconds worldwide and operates a finetuned global network. All the servers provided by BunnyCDN are powered by SSD technology, reducing latencies.
Key features:
- Free SSL certificate with the simple Let’s Encrypt integration.
- HTTP/2 and Bottle ready, ensuring performance and security
- Manipulate and optimize images easily
- Next-generation real-time monitoring
- Custom rules to control delivery, routing, and authentication
- Content protection by blocking/redirecting Ips to cheaper regions
Pricing:
They offer a free trial period of 14 days. The price then varies from region to region, ranging from $0.01 to $0.06, as the standard network. The volume network pack starts at $0.0025GB from 2PB+ and can also be taken for $0.005/GB for the first 500 TB.
Additional benefits:
- 24/7 proactive customer support
- Extensive knowledge base for integration, troubleshooting, advancements, etc.
- Trusted by 10,000+ valuable customers
BunnyCDN is a traditional CDN.
3. Fastly
Fastly delivers powerful websites and applications on its secure and easily programmable edge cloud platform.
They have a network capacity of 100Tbps and serve 19T monthly requests. Their mean global deploy time is less than 13 seconds.
It helps you and your business strengthen teams and technology by moving data and applications closer to your user.
It helps your websites and apps perform better, faster, safer, and global.
Key features:
- Gives you more visibility and control over your content
- Ensures flawless delivery of dynamic content worldwide
- High-quality video streaming
- Highly secure and trustworthy
- Works equally efficiently during holidays, festivals, and the busiest times around the years
Pricing:
Fastly allows you to test up to $50 worth of traffic for free, without any commitment. Their pricing is diverse depending on the region, size of the network, and the number of requests.
Additional benefits:
- Highly customizable computing language
- Tailored content and real-time traffic insights
- Seamless implementation through increased automation
Fastly is a proxy/WAF CDN.
4. StackPath
Trusted by reputable names, such as Bootstrap, Sectigo, JS Foundation, etc., StackPath builds your apps, sites, and services with 60% less latency.
They provide your sites with serious business advantages, high performance, and operational excellence.
Their CDN has an 80% cache hit ratio and zero warmup time. Present in 50+ edge locations, one-click makes the entire world your availability zone.
The developers build this network for the developers.
Key features:
- Built-in security, including DDoS mitigation and SSL
- A private network between edge locations
- One world pricing, resulting in reduced costs
- Pay as you go computing
- 65+ total throughput
- Built-in monitoring
Pricing:
The ‘virtual machine’ pack pricing starts at $0.049/hours, up to 32 GB RAM with a free static IP address and unmetered ingress.
The container pack starts at $0.046/hour & the serverless scripting pack costs $10/month.
They have more delivery packs, ranging from different sizes and functionality, catering to every consumer’s needs, available here.
Additional benefits:
- Easy to use control panel
- Fully documented APIs
- Automated solutions
- CLI tools to manage services directly from CI/CD systems
- 24×7 customer support through chat, phone, and ticket
StackPath is a proxy/WAF CDN.
5. CacheFly
CacheFly makes your content infinitely scalable, with less than 1-second latency in delivering videos. Based in Chicago, Illinois, it is one of the internet’s major peering points since 2014.
They promise to deliver services ten times faster than traditional methods and service provides, being 30% faster than other major CDNs.
With a cache hit ratio of 98%, they have 50+ PoPs and 100% availability in the last year, serving 6 continents.
Key features:
- Lighting fast gaming
- Mobile content optimization
- Multi CDN solving redundancy and failover issues
- White glove integration
- Dedicated account manager
- Shared slack channel
Pricing:
Their 1 PB plan costs $2999/month but is running on an offer right now, priced at $1999/month.
However, their elite and global programs do not have a quote online and require the client to contact the staff for the same personally.
Additional benefits:
- Complete priority customer support
- Storage optimization system raising cache hit ratio to 100%
- Fully managed CDN solutions.
CacheFly is a proxy/WAF CDN.
6. Cloudflare
Titled as the ‘Customer’s Choice’ in 2020 in the Gartner Peer Insights survey, Cloudflare accelerates your traffic with Argo smart routing.
Faster loading times, increased reliability, reduced hosting costs, and real-time monitoring are some of the facets Cloudflare promises.
Routing over 10 trillion global requests per month detects real-time congestion and route wen traffic in the fastest network paths. Web assets perform 30% faster with Cloudflare on average.
Key features:
- Faster loading times
- Increased reliability
- Increased uptime
- Integrated securities through end-to-end encryption
- Reduced costs with less latency, server load, and bandwidth usage
Pricing:
Cloudflare has 4 subscription plans. The free plan provides the client with a basic plan with basic features.
However, every plan offers free SSL certificates and easy-to-use DNS. DDoS attack mitigation is also included.
The pro plan costs $20/month, while the business plan is priced at $200 per month.
For the enterprise plan (the most elite plan), you need to ask them for a quote by contacting the representatives.
Additional benefits:
- Measurable global performance improvements
- Comparative traffic response tracker
- Dynamic content delivery
- The encrypted tunnel between Cloudflare data center and web server’s origin
Cloudflare is a proxy/WAF CDN.
7. Rocket CDN
Rocket CDN promises reduced latency and a fall in the round trip time and saves bandwidth costs with the customized network.
It makes your website faster, with a comprehensive and reliable global network present in 45+ edge locations globally.
You can easily set up your content delivery network through Rocket CDN in 3 simple steps.
- Visit the CDN tab in your WP Rocket admin panel.
- Activate the RocketCDN subscription
- Enjoy the services!
Key features:
- Provides best automatic configuration with one click
- Boosts speed and performance grades
- Easy integration
- Powered by StackPath and its high performing CDN
Pricing:
The single subscription pack starts at $49 per year. The plus pack is priced at $99 per year, and the infinite package costs $249 for the entire year.
Additional benefits:
- Cost friendly
- 92% happiness score with constant customer support
- CDN files automatically served over HTTPS
- Unlimited bandwidth
RocketCDN is a traditional Pull CDN.
8. Microsoft Azure CDN
Azure offers an impeccable user experience, reducing load times and saving bandwidth and speed responsiveness.
Microsoft Azure CDN supports an individual in developing websites, mobile apps, encoding and distributing streaming media, gaming software, firmware updates to IoT endpoints.
It is one of the most promising players in the market. The Microsoft Azure CDN setup is effortless and involves no commitment, i.e., pay as you go.
Key features:
- Global coverage
- Massive scalability
- Strong integrations
- Developer-friendly
- Reliable and secure
- Optimized features
- Multiple integrated providers
- Real-time granular and advanced analytics
Pricing:
They do not involve any upfront cost and no termination fees. To know more about their plan prices, request a quote here.
Additional benefits:
- Fast and cost-efficient content acceleration
- Stream any media, anywhere, at any time
- Instant content distribution
Microsoft Azure is a proxy/WAF CDN.
9. Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront is a fast CDN securely delivering data, videos, applications, and APIs worldwide to customers. They have low latency and high transfer speeds, with an extensively developer-friendly environment.
It has one of the most advanced security systems, involving field-level encryption and HTTPS support.
It is integrated with AWS Shield, AWS Web Application Firewall, and Route 53. This protects you and your site against all attacks.
Key features:
- AWS backbone
- Globally scaled
- Most secure, performant, and high-availability network providers
- Easy customizations
- Secure and programmable edge computing feature AWS [email protected]
Pricing:
Amazon CloudFront is a free tier pack, including 50 GB of data transfer out. The paid versions are charged based on traffic, data transfer, and HTTP/ HTTPS requests. To know more, visit here.
Additional benefits:
- Security at the edge
- Highly programmable
- Secure edge computing
- Deep integrations
- Cost-effective
Amazon CloudFront is a proxy/WAF CDN.
10. Google Cloud CDN
Google Cloud CDN is low latency and low-cost CDN that ensures fast, secure, and reliable web and video content delivery across the globe within the minimum time.
It provides privacy and data security to its users, ensuring a consistent web and video experience.
Google Cloud CDN activates with a single click, not involving any complicated commencing steps.
Key features:
- Global distribution
- Anycast single global IP address
- Optimized performance
- Integrated with Google Cloud
- Reputable existing clients
Pricing:
They offer a free trial version but also have paid options. The prices depend on several factors, but the basic ones start from 0.02$ per GB and can go up to $0.2 per GB. Calculate your total cost with Google Cloud CDN here.
Additional benefits:
- No auto charges after the free trial ends
- Receive $300 credit for free
- Access to all cloud platform products, including Firebase and Google Maps API
Google Cloud CDN is a proxy/WAF CDN.
11. Sucuri
Sucuri promises the best speed optimization for your websites.
Their live chat feature makes it easier for the customer to understand and clear all content delivery-related queries.
Sucuri uses multiple techniques to make the website run fast and have a prime focus on website security. On average, they speed up your website by 70%.
Key features:
- Multiple caching options
- Website speed optimization
- Reliable website uptime
- High availability and redundancy
- Works on a globally distributed Anycast network
Pricing:
Sucuri’s basic plan starts at $199.99 per year, going up to $499.99 per year in their most elite business plan. Their most popular plan, however, is the pro plan priced at $299.99 per year.
Additional benefits:
- High-performance servers
- Fast response times
- Fast HTTP/2 support
- Smart caching options
- Highly optimized configuration
- High-end security
Sucuri is a WAF CDN.
EndNote:
It is undeniable that a CDN is essential for the speedy loading of web pages and mobile applications.
In their absence, you can lose out on potential customers and also deteriorates the website performance.
Choose any one of the CDNs we’ve mentioned. Depending on your requirements, take the free trial and then decide which one you’re going to keep using.