Are you losing visitors and ranking because your website is not loading fast enough? Well, you need the best CDN provider to speed up your website.
We have handpicked the top 10 best CDN service providers for 2024 with price, pros, and cons in this post.
Webpage loading time is one of the top Google ranking factors. If your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, more than 53% of mobile visitors will leave.
Also, you will see a negative ranking issue because of slower loading.
Therefore, CDN can significantly be your most intelligent solution to reduce loading time and accelerate almost any website, no matter where the server is.
How does CDN Speed Up Your Website?
CDN fastens web pages by caching files in servers across the world securely and efficiently. As a result, visitors get content cached from the nearest servers for the fastest possible speeds.
Along with improving content security, performance, and availability, CDN is widely used to gather user analytics and track data on network traffic.
The Content Delivery Network (CDN) services include websites, mobile applications, streaming media, and almost every downloadable object.
In addition, social media platforms and search engine traffic go through CDNs to meet special regional needs.
If you are eager to be that simple and hassle-free, you can start with the most specific services in less than five minutes.
And the cost will seem negligible if you care to choose your plan wisely.
However, if your website’s hosting is not good, even if you have the best CDN provider, your site will still be slow or down. That’s why we recommend using the best web hosting services company.
If you cannot decide which CDN you should use and which one provides the top service, you can check our top 10 best CDN service providers for 2024.
Top 10 Best CDN Providers to Speed Up any Website 2024
No matter what website you are running, a simple blog, to even an expanding site for a big business, we are here to pick out some of the best services to date to help you in the right direction.
Give it a go if you find anything interesting and compatible with what you have.
Also, you can explore many CDNs for free without submitting payment details or signing up for any contract.
1. Cloudflare
Cloudflare is the best CDN provider that is offering content delivery network services over millions of websites.
It is a widely popular American content delivery provider for bloggers, small businesses, and professionals.
Cloudflare combines fresher-friendly facilities with expert-level features and functionality.
It has over 180 data centers around the world. It proves to be helpful to improve the performance, speed, and security of your website from any corner of the world.
You can easily set it up, and there’s no need to edit code.
Update your DNS nameservers for using Cloudflare, and the service becomes active automatically to cache content and serve it to visitors from their nearest area.
There’s much more. Cloudflare’s “Web Filtering” can block bots, limit content spam, safeguard you from hackers or detect and mitigate DDoS attacks.
In addition, its “Smart Image Optimizations” can lessen image file sizes by up to 35%, further improving speeds.
Moreover, there’s comprehensive support for standards like IPv6, HTTP/2, and SPDY.
Its clever page rules help you handle traffic, and the REST API allows developers to take complete control of the service.
Cloudflare’s free plan offers you a look at what the service can do without making you settle any commitments. This plan comes with unlimited bandwidth and no annoying restrictions and is forced to upgrade.
Price:
- Primarily, Cloudflare is Free for everyone.
- However, if you want extra features like image optimization rules, additional configuration, and improved support, you’ll have to upgrade to their premium plan.
- Their plan starts from $20 per month.
Pros:
- Easy setup
- The Control panel makes it easier to monitor the performance
- 180+ data centers worldwide, including North America, South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Australia/New Zealand.
- Developers can take complete control of the service with REST API
Cons:
- The free plan comes with limited features, and your website may not be fully secured from DDoS attacks, malware, and spam.
- No chat or phone support in the free plan
2. Stackpath
StackPath is one of the most committed CDN providers in the market.
It has acquired MaxCDN, one of the largest CDN providers, to strengthen its service to accelerate sites, decreasing the server load.
That’s why we have picked Stackpath as our top 10 best CDN providers list.
It comes with multiple data centers worldwide, mainly focusing on the West with 14 points of presence (PoPs) in North America and nine in Europe.
It comes with features like an intelligent caching system, Gzip compression, 301 redirects, anti-DDoS technology, and Web Application Firewall.
Also, you will get EdgeRules, a powerful tool to customize the CDN behavior at different phases of the CDN request.
Moreover, it offers a private EdgeSSL certificate for free with their plan.
Stackpath can be quite easily set up and allows you to monitor real-time analytics.
Price:
- StackPath offers different bundles, even at discounted rates sometimes.
- However, the baseline plan charges $10 for up to 1TB of bandwidth per month.
Pros:
- Great for the western people with 14 points of presence (PoPs)
- Free private EdgeSSL certificate
- Offers 1 TB per month bandwidth with their basic plan
Cons:
- No free plan
- Comparatively lesser servers outside the US & Europe
3. Fastly
Fastly serves some massive organizations, including Spotify and Reddit. The company has been living up to its name by delivering impressively fast performance.
According to the CDNPerf’s rankings, it stands as the second-fastest CDN for the UK. Its worldwide speeds are mostly good as well.
The most robust zone fastly has the highly configurable service it offers. In addition, it has diverse support for different formats of video caching.
Besides, it has tons of controls for people who want to get stuck into manipulating HTTP headers.
You can also enjoy logging in to multiple customer accounts with a single set of credentials.
It has an easy-to-use UI with developer-friendly tools like underlying VCL, a robust API, and a utility to ensure vast scalability.
Small and fresh developer teams can get on board quickly and set some of the most common options easily.
At the same time, developers and system admins can dive deep into the configuration ocean and apply far more complex routings to unlock even more value from this service.
Price:
- Fastly offers a pay-as-you-go plan with a minimum charge of $50 per month.
- You can test up to $50 of traffic for free.
Pros:
- Very performant and fast, significant sites have drastically reduced load times with Fastly’s edge technology.
- Supports many types of media, including video
- Serves and manipulates images very simply
Cons:
- Setup can be complicated as the service is so robust, providing so many features.
- The minimum spend is $50/month, even if you are not using the service enough.
4. KeyCDN
KeyCDN is a user-friendly and easy-to-use budget CDN to be a good pick for first-time users.
Sign up with your email address, and you are offered an immediate 25GB to have a fresh start. Getting started can’t be any simpler than this.
No payment details are required at the very first.
In addition, a well-designed web dashboard makes you create your first zone with a minimum of clicks.
There are guides so that you can integrate the service with WordPress and other apps.
Moreover, experienced users will appreciate ‘Origin Shield,’ allowing specifying a KeyCDN server to be the source for updates but not the origin to reduce server load.
Users can manipulate headers, cache or strip cookies, or set up a custom robots.txt along with the full IPv6 support.
A capable set of reporting tools can make you watch CDN performance in near real-time.
Price:
- Bandwidth charges start at only $0.04 per GB for the pay-as-you-go plan.
Pros:
- 34 data centers
- Easy to set up on your WordPress site
- “Pay as you go” plans
- Customer support is available 24/7 at no additional cost
Cons:
- It doesn’t offer a free plan
- Limited security features compared to others
5. Akamai
Being one of the oldest and most reputed providers, Akamai has secured the place of a great CDN service company worldwide.
It serves up to 30% of all internet traffic, says the company itself.
Over the years, on the way to becoming one of the oldest providers, Akamai has impressively covered around 275,000 servers in more than 135 countries.
This is developers’ one of the top choices for it provides excellent 24/7 customer support, hugely appreciated and expected in the web developing industry.
Setting up Akamai is likely to be a bit difficult for new tech geeks. Generally, the whole service is more leaned toward advanced users.
But the newbies should gradually adapt to it over time, with the help of tutorials and customer support.
Price:
- In many mentioned places, Akamai costs more than other CDNs.
- You have to contact the company directly to know what plan suits you at what cost.
Pros:
- Safe and secure from almost all external threats and malware.
- With caching functionality, it is swift and ranks in the top eight in almost all rankings.
- Allows flipping of production sites easily
Cons:
- Cost is comparatively higher.
- The setup takes some time and procedures.
- The initial learning curve has become a bit steep.
6. Cachefly
CacheFly is the world’s first TCP Anycast-based CDN, built for performance and speed.
If you’re looking for a consistent partner to help streamline your website’s delivery, you may go with this CDN.
It offers video streaming and podcast streaming without any hassle.
Besides, it comes with a user-friendly interface so that everyone can manage everything easily, including beginners.
It protects your web security with features including DDoS and malware protection.
It supports around 40 PoPs, and so, delivery of massive files becomes easy and hassle-free.
This CDN offers a few convenient and helpful features like an instant purge, origin shield, easy origin pulls, GZIP compression, statistics, analytics in real-time, shared SSL certificates, custom SSL certificates support VoD, etc.
However, it does not feature HTTP/2 Protocol and RTMP streaming. Therefore, it is best for sites with a massive volume of traffic.
Their customer service is excellent through both Email and chat support.
Price:
- The first month is free, but it will cost you $595 per month.
Pros:
- Hosting services
- Reliability, fast, customer support is excellent
Cons:
- Very expensive compared to others.
- Outdated links on Google search.
7. Amazon CloudFront
As the CDN facet of AWS (Amazon Web Services), Amazon CloudFront is undoubtedly part of a heavyweight operation.
As expected, CloudFront offers a bunch of advanced features. You can customize a set of things, including enabling automatic GZip compression for faster speeds.
In addition, the in-depth analytics shows you details of your visitors’ device type, OS type, and other vital information.
You’re also offered the handy ability to set up alerts so that you can be warned once data transfer goes above a certain level.
In terms of performance level, it is relatively average. But you cannot deny the power and configuration Amazon offers to the somewhat more tech-savvy users.
Price:
- Price varies depending on region, but there’s a free tier that gives you 50GB of data per month for one year.
Pros:
- Plenty of advanced features
- Highly configurable
Cons:
- Tech support will cost you extra
8. CDN77
CDN77 is a massive provider in the content delivery industry that serves some heavyweight clients, including the European Space Agency.
It has a growing network with over 35 data centers globally, mainly in Europe and the US.
However, it also facilitates South America, Asia, and Australia with their network technology.
CDN77’s web console interface is very streamlined to keep jargon to the minimum levels.
It is also suitable and user-friendly from novices to experts. You can do some tweaking of various settings, although the amount of options is not huge.
CDN77 delivers a solid performance and is unlikely to disappoint any user. However, it certainly is not the fastest CDN network available.
Price:
- The plan starts at $0.033 per GB for US and European countries, with Asia and Latin America being more expensive.
- There’s a 14-day risk-free trial without any payment details.
Pros:
- Nicely priced
- Free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate
Cons:
- Not many advanced settings
- Performance isn’t up to the mark
9. Google Cloud CDN
If you’re tired of several CDNs who promise the world and fail to deliver, Google Cloud CDN might be appealing.
It’s hard to beat Google for the brand’s name. In addition, it serves giant customers like Twitter, PayPal, Etsy, Sky, etc.
It’s pretty integrated with Google services. But if you want to put an external domain, it will take more setup work than many other CDNs.
The service is vastly configurable with complete control over cache modes, default expiry times, cookie handling, purging content, and more.
It supports HTTP/2, QUIC, TLS 1.3, and the intelligent congestion control algorithm TCP BBR.
Price:
- It uses “Pay as you go” pricing plans and offers a free trial to test its service.
Pros:
- 90 data centers
- Affordable pricing plan
- Free SSL certificate
- Offers a $300 free trial credit
Cons:
- Configuration can be complex compared to others
- Lack of proper support, you need to pay to get technical support
10. Rackspace
Rackspace is an admired, managed, and dedicated CDN provider to help boost the performance of eCommerce sites, web applications, and other websites.
It is built on solid cloud transportation, having more than 200 data centers across the globe to boost any WordPress site.
It uses the “pay as you go” pricing system, $0.16 per GB, relatively easy to purchase.
However, a beginner should note that setting up Rackspace CDN is more complex than other CDN providers.
Price:
- Pay as you go, starting from $0.16 per GB
Pros:
- Powered by the speedy Akamai network
- Relatively simple to set up
- $100 free credit when you sign up
Cons:
- Customer service doesn’t have the leverage to get things done.
- Pushing gears that might not be the best for the customers
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Conclusion
The number of people joining digital platforms every day is rapidly increasing.
Users frequently visit numerous websites with heavy traffic for media content for working, attending online classes, watching live streaming, gaming, etc.
The entire digital platform is being exposed to latency and security threats due to the increase in traffic.
Thus, website owners can use the best CDN provider to deliver content fast, secure, and flawless.
Content Delivery Network (CDN) will ensure a consistent and optimized user experience worldwide.
