INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
A content delivery network (CDN) works to accelerate almost any website by caching its files in servers around the world
Whether your visitors come from Europe, North America, Asia or anywhere else, content is automatically served from the nearest location for
the fastest possible speeds.If you're new to the technology then it might seem intimidating, and there's no doubt that prices can be high,
but don't let that put you off
A CDN is not just for massive corporations
You can set up the simplest services in less than five minutes, and if you choose your plan wisely, it might not cost you anything at
all.Whatever your website, from a simple blog to a sprawling site for a big business, we've picked out some of the best services around to
help point you in the right direction
If you find anything that looks interesting, give it a try & you can explore many of these CDNs for free, without handing over payment
details or signing up for any contract.We&ve also rounded up the best VPN services of 2018Cloudflare is a hugely popular American content
delivery service which combines novice-friendly ease of use with expert-level features and functionality.Setup is simple, with no need to
Just update your DNS nameservers to use Cloudflare and the service kicks in automatically, caching content and serving it to visitors from
their nearest location.But there's much, much more
Web filtering can block bots, limit content spam, keep you safe from hackers or detect and mitigate DDoS attacks
Smart image optimizations can reduce image file sizes by up to 35%, further improving speeds
There's wide support for standards like IPv6, HTTP/2 and SPDY, clever page rules to help you manipulate traffic, and a REST API allows
developers to take full control of what the service is doing.Read our review of CloudflareCloudflare's free plan allows you to see what
the service can do, without making any commitments
It's very usable, with unlimited bandwidth and no annoying restrictions to try and force you to upgrade.Upgrading to the Pro plan costs a
reasonable $20 (£16) a month, and adds the image optimization rules, extra configurability and improved support.Whatever you choose,
Cloudflare delivers great performance
As we write, the benchmarking site CDNPerf ranks Cloudflare at eight place for worldwide HTTP request response times out of a field of 20
top CDNs.You can sign up for Cloudflare hereFastly provides CDN tricks for some really big organizations, including the likes of Spotify and
Reddit, and the firm lives up to its name, delivering impressively fast performance levels
Going by the rough guideline of CDNPerf rankings, it the second fastest CDN for the UK, and worldwide speeds are mostly good, too.Perhaps
Fastly strongest point, however, is just how configurable the service is
For example, there diverse support for different types of video caching, and tons of low-level controls for those who want to get stuck into
the likes of manipulating HTTP headers to customize how content is served.Read our review of FastlyOf course, some know-how is required to
set up everything, and novices to the CDN world will doubtless be confused by all the options on offer
But for those who need this level of flexibility and configurability, it priceless to have.Speaking of the price, Fastly operates a
pay-as-you-go model with a minimum charge of $50 (£37) per month.You can sign up for Fastly hereKeyCDN is an easy-to-use budget CDN that
might be a good pick for first-time users.Getting started couldn't be much simpler
Sign up with your email address and you get an immediate 25GB to play with, no payment details required
A well-designed web dashboard enables creating your first zone with the minimum of clicks, and there are guides to help you integrate the
service with WordPress and other apps.More experienced users will appreciate options like Origin Shield & this allows you to specify a
KeyCDN server to be the source for updates rather than the origin, reducing your server load
You're able to manipulate headers, cache or strip cookies, or set up a custom robots.txt
Once the service is running, a capable set of reporting tools enable watching CDN performance in near real-time.Read our review of
KeyCDNKeyCDN's standout feature has to be its low prices
Bandwidth charges start at $0.04 (£0.032) per GB, less than half the price you'll pay with some of the high-end competition
The minimum charge is a tiny $49 (£39) a year
(Yes, really & a year.) The company doesn't even try to cash in on the extras, for example offering shared SSL and custom Let's encrypt
SSL certificates for free.Perhaps unsurprisingly, these low prices don't get you leading-edge performance, but there's still plenty of
power here and you do get a lot for your money.You can sign up for KeyCDN hereMetaCDN is an Australian company which combines the CDNs of
Amazon Cloudfront, Fastly and Verizon's EdgeCast into a single speedy service.Why It's all about performance
When a visitor accesses your site, MetaCDN has three networks and more than 120 locations to choose from & way more than anyone else
In other words, there a much greater chance any visitor will have a server near them.This matters because every CDN delivers its best
performance in different areas
EdgeCast scores highly in North America, for instance, but Fastly is quicker in the UK
MetaCDN automatically chooses the best network for every visitor's location, giving you the best of all worlds.Read our review of
MetaCDNThis approach does have a catch
When you sign up with a single CDN, you can get access to all its individual settings and options, but combining three means you only get
settings which apply to all of them (for obvious reasons)
Which essentially means MetaCDN has barely any configuration options at all
(Check the Support site to get a rough feel for how the system works.)Still, MetaCDN is nicely user-friendly and it could be a good pick if
speed is your top priority
Pricing is complicated (although not bad for access to enterprise-level CDNs) and there are three plans, Basic, Lite and Pro
The most popular one, Lite, is $50 on a monthly basis (you can also choose a yearly rate, for a $39 a month).You can sign up for MetaCDN
hereThis CDN provider focuses mainly on the West, with 13 points of presence (PoPs) in North America, and nine in Europe
There are only five PoPs in Asia, and two in Australia and South America (Brazil).StackPath is user-friendly, complete with a
straightforward web console to manage your settings, and if you do get stuck, there extremely efficient technical support available via
either live chat or phone.Performance seems good in the US and UK, and indeed Europe, but further afield you may see things tail off a bit,
which is hardly a surprise given StackPath aforementioned focus on Western nations.Read our review of StackPathAnother strength here comes
on the security front, with this CDN giving users free shared SSL (or the option to use your own SSL certificate, if you prefer)
There also anti-DDoS technology and a capable Web Application Firewall.All in all, this is a tempting offering with a baseline plan that
charges $10 (£7.6) for up to 1TB of bandwidth per month
The first month is also free.You can sign up for StackPath hereUpdate: The service has been now integrated with StackPath - "Everything you
love about MaxCDN is being integrated into the new StackPath CDN service."MaxCDN is actually owned by StackPath now (the previously
mentioned CDN), but provides a standalone service of its own which is well-suited for novices
You get 24/7 tech support with speedy responses promised (and indeed these claims stood up to our testing), and it easy enough to set up,
and indeed use going forward.You don''t get as many settings to play with as some of the more advanced services, but that hardly surprising
when trying to keep things more user-friendly.Read our review of MaxCDNAnother definite benefit is a range of useful reports, and a solid
MaxCDN offers eight edge locations in the US, five in Europe & and you can add additional locations in Asia (and Australia), but you have to
pay extra for those.Overall, though, pricing is a strong point, starting from $9 (£6.75) a month for a 100GB account, with a clean pricing
structure which isn''t confusing in the slightest (often not the case with CDN offerings)
Performance is, generally speaking, solid enough, and this CDN does pretty well for speeds in the UK and US.You can sign up for MaxCDN
hereAmazon CloudFront is the CDN facet of AWS (Amazon Web Services), so it certainly part of a heavyweight operation
And indeed CloudFront offers a raft of advanced features as you might expect, and you can customize all manner of things such as enabling
automatic GZip compression for better speeds.Another strength here is the in-depth analytics on tap, showing you details of your visitors&
device type, OS and so forth
There also the handy ability to set up alerts, meaning you can be warned when data transfer usage goes above a certain level.Read our review
of Amazon CloudFrontThe downside to all the options on offer is that relative novices to the CDN world may find CloudFront control panel a
little intimidating, at least initially.The other slight sticking points are that calculating pricing can be a rather tricky matter, and if
you aren''t an experienced user familiar with CDN basics, tech support isn''t free & if you need help, you&ll have to fork out for it
Prices vary depending on region, but the good news is there a free tier (which gives you 50GB of data per month for one year).Performance
levels are fairly average, too, but there no denying the power and configurability that Amazon offers to the slightly more tech-savvy
user.You can sign up for Amazon CloudFront hereAs you&re doubtless aware, Microsoft Azure is a big old stack of integrated cloud tools for
building and managing applications and services, with a wide range of coverage including a CDN offering, which is what we&re focusing on
Note that this doesn''t use Microsoft own edge servers, but rather three plans that use other CDN networks: Standard Akamai, Standard
Verizon, and Premium Verizon.We fully discuss these various plans in our review of Microsoft CDN service, linked below, but suffice it to
say that in terms of pricing & which can be somewhat confusing to work out & this isn''t the cheapest offering around
Still, those who want integration with other Microsoft technologies and services may well find the price worth paying.Read our review of
Microsoft Azure CDNYou get a web dashboard which is absolutely crammed with features, although as ever, this means it not particularly easy
to use for beginners (and the setup process is pretty involved, too)
Performance levels are impressive, and at the time of writing, according to CDNPerf, Azure CDN is the fifth fastest content delivery network
worldwide, and seventh in the US.This has to be a tempting prospect if you&re using other Azure services, or if you&re a developer who will
appreciate the likes of .NET or PowerShell management features.You can sign up for Microsoft Azure CDN hereCDN77 is a big-name player in the
content delivery game, with some heavyweight clients signed up including the European Space Agency
It has an expansive CDN network with 32 data centers across the globe, with many of those in Europe and the US, but there are also locations
in South America, Asia and one in Australia.The web console interface is very streamlined and keeps any jargon to a minimum, making it
suitably user-friendly for novices to the CDN world
The flipside of this is that there aren''t a huge amount of options, although you can do some tweaking of various settings.Read our review
of CDN77In terms of performance, CDN77 is solid enough, and it ranks as a lower-to-mid pack player that unlikely to disappoint, but
certainly isn''t the fastest CDN network we found when reviewing these various services.You get a free Let's Encrypt SSL certificate, and
CDN77 is pretty good value for money overall in terms of its per-GB pricing, although it not the cheapest outfit we&ve highlighted here
Pricing starts at $0.049 per GB of data for US and European locations, with Asia and Latin America being more expensive
If you want to test the waters, there a 14-day risk-free trial, and you don''t need to supply any payment details for this.You can sign up
for CDN77 hereIf you need a powerful CDN, look no further than Leaseweb, an enterprise-level operation which is still suitable for regular
business users & just about, although we should say upfront that it isn''t cheap, as you might imagine.Pricing starts at $60 (£43, €49)
per month for an entry-level plan with a 2TB data allowance, the good news being that even with this ‘basic& subscription, you get all the
same security and CDN features as the heavyweight enterprise plans.That includes a smartly designed console for overseeing your CDN needs,
complete with an extensive raft of potential settings and tweaks, featuring many options you don''t get with your average service (like the
ability to set the cache-control header, or determine how long to cache 404 responses).Read our review of LeasewebThere also an in-depth
statistics section which displays graphs and charts showing many interesting stats, such as visitor and traffic breakdowns, cache
performance and the top file types which are seeing action.The one somewhat bleak spot is Leaseweb performance, which seems somewhat off the
pace going by CDNPerf findings, although it difficult to gauge exactly what results you&ll get in practice
Users who want a powerful range of features in their CDN could give the 30-day trial a go to find out.You can sign up for Leaseweb hereAlso
check out our roundup of the best web hosting servicesf77d1b0b3a2e63a1936d28addef4e7b7.jpg#
