10 Best Content Delivery Network (CDN) Providers

Do you want to improve your website load times? Reduce bandwidth costs? Increase content availability and redundancy? Improve your website’s security?

All of that and more is offered by the Content Delivery Network or CDN providers that we will cover in this article.

1. Cloudflare

The Cloudflare CDN is a content delivery network with enterprise-grade speed and reliability that offers the fastest response time, unparalleled redundancy, and advanced security with built-in DDoS mitigation. Cloudflare allows anyone with a website to sign up for free and use the Cloudflare CDN.

Included for free with ALL application service plans:

– Ultra-fast static and dynamic content delivery.

– Improve performance, reduce load times, & lower costs.

– A 2022 Gartner Peer Insights “Customer’s Choice” for Global CDN2.

Using Cloudflare CDN you’ll havev faster load times, and better performance:

– Improve Website & App Performance

Faster load times result a better experience for web and mobile users, with a global edge network.

– Massive network scale

A global network that spans over 275 cities & 100 countries. Operating within 50 milliseconds of 95% of the Internet-connected population globally.

– Modern Static & Dynamic Caching

Utilize static & dynamic content delivery reducing response times & speeding up dynamic webpages.

– Reduced bandwidth costs

Lower your hosting fees, with reduced requests to your origin server, minimizing bandwidth usage.

Cloudflare CDN advanced features are:

– Granular visibility into your cache

Get actionable insights into the caching of your website for a better cache-hit ratio and further drive down your bandwidth costs.

– Support for BYOIP

BYOIP (Bring your own IPs) feature allows customers to have their IPs announced by Cloudflare and attached to the Cloudflare services of their choice. This way the internet sees the customer IP addresses and not Cloudflares.

– Support for HTTP/3

HTTP/3 is the latest generation of the protocol that powers the web. Instead of using TCP as the transport layer, HTTP/3 uses QUIC, a new Internet transport protocol which is encrypted by default and helps accelerate delivery of traffic. Cloudflare’s support for HTTP/3 enables faster, more reliable, and more secure connections to websites and APIs.

– Predictable flat-rate pricing for usage based products.

– Advanced Cache controls

– Bot management

– Access to raw logs

– Firewall analytics

– Role based access

– Network prioritization

2. Google

Google CDN is a content delivery network that accelerates your web and video content delivery by using Google’s global edge network to bring content as close to your users as possible. As a result latency, cost, and load on your backend servers is reduced, making it easier to scale to millions of users.

The benefits of Google Cloud CDN:

– Global distribution with anycast IP

With edge caches peered with nearly every major end-user ISP globally. With anycast architecture, your site gets a single global IP address, providing consistent performance worldwide with easy management.

– Supports hybrid and multicloud architecture

Cloud CDN enables customers to deliver content hosted on-premises or in another cloud over Google’s high-performance distributed edge caching infrastructure.

– Optimized for last mile performance

Cloud CDN supports modern protocols originally developed at Google, like HTTP/2 and QUIC, to improve site performance for mobile users and/or users in emerging markets.

The key features of Google Cloud CDN:

– Origin and backend support

Pull content from any HTTP-capable origin, including Compute Engine, Cloud Storage and Google Kubernetes Engine backends and origins outside of Google Cloud, such as storage buckets in other clouds.

– Caching

Configure caching behavior by origin that allows you to have fine-grained control over cache keys, TTLs, and other caching features based on the content type being served. Use dynamic compression to reduce data size by over 60% and improve page performance.

– Route matching and origin selection

Cloud CDN uses Cloud Load Balancing to provide comprehensive routing and configuration capabilities at each edge location.

– Modern protocols

Protocols such as TLS version 1.3, QUIC, Global Anycast directly benefit the user experience by delivering render-blocking web content more quickly and reducing playback start time and rebuffering when serving video.

– Logging and metrics

Understand how traffic is being served by Cloud CDN with Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring.

– Security

Applications can use Managed SSL (TLS) certifications, customizable SSL policies, and Audit logging. Signed requests let you serve responses from Google Cloud’s globally distributed caches, even when you need requests to be authorized. Cloud CDN’s integration with Cloud Armor enables web-application firewall (WAF) and DDoS mitigation service that defends your web apps and services at Google scale.

3. Fastly

Fastly‘s edge cloud platform helps companies deliver fast, secure, and scalable online experiences. Think of Fastly as an extension of your infrastructure.

Are you moving applications to the cloud, digitally transforming your organization, scaling your development practices, or just needing to deliver content and applications faster via mobile and web? Fastly offers everything you need from a modern CDN, from effortless scale and built-in security to programmable control and full visibility.

It’s time your CDN did more. If reliability, speed, and the freedom to customize delivery is critical for you, then Fastly’s CDN with real-time observability, programmatic control and baked-in security helps you deliver the dynamic experiences today’s users demand.

Real-time visibility, real-time logs, streamed from the edge, give near-instant visibility into traffic trends, performance, potential problems, and threats.

– Insights you can use

Logs provide an important resource for troubleshooting connectivity problems, pinpointing configuration areas that could use performance tuning, and identifying the causes of service disruptions.

– Logging provider integrations

Instantly stream your log files to a logging provider of your choosing, and dig into any aspect of a request or response to diagnose problems and understand how your customers are engaging with your app.

– Support for agile DevOps

The days of agile development efforts getting stuck in release queues are over. With a real-time visibility and control that integrates into your existing workflows so you can deploy new software or feature enhancements weekly, daily, or even multiple times a day.

– Rapid content changes

Fastly’s fully configurable CDN gives customers fine-grained control over how their content is cached.

– API-friendly

A full-featured API makes it easy to change configuration settings – customers can instantly purge stale content, reset time-to-live, clear cache or turn on new features all through an API call.They can create custom caching rules, upload them to POPs and activate/deactivate them on the fly all without having to engage with Professional Services.

– Stress-free rollbacks

Versions of services already activated are locked making rollbacks hassle-free and facilitating easier version control.

– Better performance

Dynamic site acceleration (DSA) features come standard for speedy content delivery that makes a positive impact on conversion and retention rates, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and ad revenue.

4. Gcore

Gcore CDN is a well-optimized solution that consists of more than 140 CDN POPs and 15 Cloud locations, a network of caching servers around the world accelerates the web assets delivery to a global audience.

Speed up your websites, applications and downloads with Gcore :

– Low latency

The CDN servers are located close to your users, and all their requests will be served faster

– Smart routing

With a large number of peering partners and intelligent routing, this CDN ensures a low latency all around the world

– Lower file size

Brotli, Gzip and WebP compressions significantly reduce the transferred files size

Gcore CDN is a well-optimized solution for Video-on-Demand (VOD) and Live streaming. Delivering stutter-free playback even for 4K video, reducing the time to first byte and improving user experience, and protecting the origin server from overloading during peak users activity.

With website acceleration as a service, benefit from faster webpage loading and shorter initial server response time with this CDN.

– Lower Bounce Rate

20% reduction in page load time leads to 9% decrease in bounce rate.

– Increased Session Duration

55% page load time improvement (LCP metric) delivers 23% better session duration.

– Improved Conversion Rate

A 0.1-second page load time improvement increases mobile conversion rate by 8-10%.

– Better SEO

Fast websites deliver better user experience and get promoted by search engines.

Gcore leverages its own top-notch hardware in data centers around the globe. This gives us full control over network performance at both hardware and software levels.

Configure network resources according to customer needs and improve performance in each specific region, expanding network connectivity.

– Rapidly growing global infrastructure

– Profound engineering expertise

– Premium data center hardware

– Robust connectivity worldwide

5. Amazon

Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) service that helps you distribute your static and dynamic content quickly and reliably with high speed. Amazon CloudFront service built for high performance, security, and developer convenience.

Amazon CloudFront is a web service that speeds up distribution of your static and dynamic web content, such as .html, .css, .js, and image files, to your users. CloudFront delivers your content through a worldwide network of data centers called edge locations. When a user requests content that you’re serving with CloudFront, the request is routed to the edge location that provides the lowest latency (time delay), so that content is delivered with the best possible performance.

– If the content is already in the edge location with the lowest latency, CloudFront delivers it immediately.

– If the content is not in that edge location, CloudFront retrieves it from an origin that you’ve defined—such as an Amazon S3 bucket, a MediaPackage channel, or an HTTP server (for example, a web server) that you have identified as the source for the definitive version of your content.

CloudFront speeds up the distribution of your content by routing each user request through the AWS backbone network to the edge location that can best serve your content. Typically, this is a CloudFront edge server that provides the fastest delivery to the viewer. Using the AWS network dramatically reduces the number of networks that your users’ requests must pass through, which improves performance. Users get lower latency—the time it takes to load the first byte of the file—and higher data transfer rates.

You also get increased reliability and availability because copies of your files (also known as objects) are now held (or cached) in multiple edge locations around the world.

You create a CloudFront distribution to tell CloudFront where you want content to be delivered from, and the details about how to track and manage content delivery. Then CloudFront uses computers—edge servers—that are close to your viewers to deliver that content quickly when someone wants to see it or use it.

Different use cases:

– Deliver fast, secure websites

Reach viewers across the globe in milliseconds with built-in data compression, edge compute capabilities, and field-level encryption.

– Accelerate dynamic content delivery and APIs

Optimize dynamic web content delivery with the purpose-built and feature-rich AWS global network infrastructure supporting edge termination and WebSockets.

– Stream live and on-demand video

Start streams quickly, play them with consistency, and deliver high-quality video to any device with AWS Media Service and AWS Elemental integration.

– Distribute patches and updates

Scale automatically to deliver software, game patches, and IoT over-the-air (OTA) updates at scale with high transfer rates.

6. 5centsCDN

5centsCDN a game-changing content delivery network that provides advanced solutions including web acceleration, live streaming, and cloud storage. 5centsCDN offers a state-of-the-art content delivery network with affordable plans and unlimited useful features comprising modern server infrastructure utilized in data centers across the globe.

Providing a budget-friendly platform for content delivery that is uninterrupted, swift, and secure.

Build your own CDN or Geolocation Load Balancing with a highly accurate geolocation service that makes the decisions on the reallocation of the visitor using Traffic Director. Tested and fully compatible with services like OpenDNS and Google Public DNS.

5centsCDN provides a large number of professional features and tools for Primary, Secondary, and Reverse DNS. All types of DNS records are supported and settings you need. Additionally, it provides E-mail Forwarding, Web Forwarding, Dynamic DNS, Domain parking, HTTP REST API, DNS statistics, zone sharing, and much more.

Offers A-grade services at a simple and transparent pricing structure. A state-of-the-art, modern, and advanced content delivery network platform is one of its kind with no setup fee, and the packages starting from as low as 5 cents per GB. It doesn’t rip you off with the hidden charges or overage usage once your subscription is expired. 5centsCDN’s monthly plan is a real game-changer.

Secured, adaptive, and optimized content delivery experience, redefined content delivery network with a multitude of products built to deliver your content across the globe:

– Live Streaming

Stream your live event or schedule files to play as a live stream on this platform with ease and so much more.

– Video Streaming

Stream your video to play on this platform with ease and so much more.

– Delivery Acceleration

Supercharge your website loading speed by accelerating static and dynamic assets and let your audience experience the fastest browsing.

– Delivery Acceleration

Content delivery with maximum security, adaptive performance, and real-time optimization for every user across different device types and network conditions, however, they choose to connect with little or NO CODE change.

Take complete control of your video optimization and end-user experience. 5centsCDN enhances and provides complete control of your video content to deliver  with the correct bit-rates, resolutions, and formats based on the user’s device:

– Live Transcoding

5centsCDN Live Transcoding allows you to deliver a live stream in multiple bitrates to match the viewer’s connection speed for high-quality content.

– Video Encoding

The encoding service allows you to convert your media files to MP4 format in high resolution to broadcast across multiple platforms and devices.

7. StackPath

Stackpath CDN has comprehensive built-in capabilities to solve your most pressing delivery challenges, including content protection and asset optimization. Meanwhile, robust customization tools and features let you fine-tune your delivery’s smallest details and even create unique functionality and flows.

End-users have you stuck between the cloud and a hard place. The assets that you need to deliver get larger, more dynamic and more diverse every day. Yet end-users expect them faster, more flawless, and more frequently than ever before. Put StackPath in between you and your end-users’ highest demands.

Use Cases of StackPath:

– Website Acceleration

Accelerate page loads, video and audio streams, API interactions and more to retain users, improve SEO scores, and reduce performance overhead that has kept you from creating richer end-user experience.

– Large File Delivery

Give end-users around the world fast and reliable downloads of large files like software and game installers, HD and 4K video and more, with advanced features including segmented file downloading and unlimited file sizes.

– Content Customization

Tailor content and the way it is delivered to individual users for highly personalized and highly optimized end-user experiences and exceptional performance, security, and control over how and where assets are delivered.

High-speed performance and worldwide edge locations, redundant Tier-1 carrier connections, global Anycast, a private network backbone between all locations, and exceptional cache depth deliver your content to your end-users with an exceptionally low time to first byte (TTFB).

Increased security and content protection features, delivery control, DDoS attack mitigation, SSL, a private network backbone and other platform-wide security measures enable you to better protect content and operations, reducing the cost of business lost to downtime, theft and other malicious activity.

Full visibility and built-in analytics and reporting, comprehensive standard policies that can be directly managed through the customer portal, a RESTful API, and customization options, including Serverless Scripting, give you full control and exceptional customization of the finest details.

Lower total costs, this platform and products can help you reduce total bandwidth consumption, reduce downtime, and increase accessibility, leading to lower operational costs and optimizing your assets’ monetization.

8. Sucuri

Sucuri CDN’s built-in network is responsible for caching your website automatically, no configuration required. Website security should never degrade the user experience. The Sucuri CDN caches your website content automatically and improves website speeds by an average of 70%.

– Website Speed Optimization

Improve website speed by 70% on average with the caching options and global content delivery network.

– Multiple Caching Options

Multiple caching options available for every type of website. Protection and speed optimization combined.

– Reliable Website Uptime

Have your website up and running 24 hours a day. Reliable website uptime and improved website load speed.

– High Availability

High availability and redundancy prevent network interruptions. The CDN runs on a globally distributed Anycast network.

Steps to activate Website Hack Protection and DDoS Attack Prevention:

1- Add Site to the Sucuri WAF

If your site is under a DDoS attack, select “I am currently under attack”. Next, restrict Admin access to whitelisted IP addresses.

2- Protect Data in Transit

Sucuri automatically creates SSL certificates for your firewall server. Professional or Business plans can upload custom SSL certificates.

3- Activate Website Protection

Enable the firewall by changing your DNS records. When activated, the firewall intercepts and inspects all incoming packets, only allowing safe requests.

4- Choose Caching Option

Now that your website is protected, power up your speed. Choose between the high-performance caching options for maximum site optimization.

Sucuri features are the following:

– Faster Website Performance

Your clients enjoy faster page speeds. You pay less for bandwidth.

– Dedicated Support

Customized onboarding, education, and a dedicated account specialist are offered.

– Easy Set Up, No installation

You can add, remove, or replace sites to meet your needs.

– Website Scanning & Malware Detection

Scan your websites for malware, hacks, and blocklist status. Receive automated, website-specific alerts from the website malware scanner.

– Block DDoS Attacks

Avoid downtime with the global Anycast network and web application firewall (WAF). Patch vulnerabilities and block threats with the WAF’s intrusion prevention system.

9. KeyCDN

KeyCDN is a high performance content delivery network (CDN). A global network that will deliver any digital content, such as a website, software, or game. It can meet the demands faced today and is ready for what the future holds.

Get access to all the features no matter the account size:

– Fast

The primary focus is on speed, improving performance by a millisecond at a time.

– Scalable

A network that can handle all levels of traffic, from a small blog to a top 10 website.

– Reliable

Resilient infrastructure and 24/7 customer support assures high reliability.

Digital threats increase every day as the total number of people regularly accessing the internet grows, and the importance of a perfect uptime and rock solid security, many measures are implemented to prevent attacks and unauthorized actions.

Every application typically has a large list of necessary requirements. And adding a CDN service to a stack may become overwhelming, so this platform can be easily configured to meet almost any specification.

This platform is an affordable way to deliver high resolution videos without delay, engineered as a high performance video CDN. Whether you are wanting to deliver videos on demand or HTTP live streams, it ensures a lag free user experience. A network that is highly scalable and performance is never sacrificed, no matter the number of users.

Precisely manage who is accessing your videos. With the Secure Token feature makes it possible to limit access only for designated users. Hotlink protection makes the video exclusively available for the defined referrers.

All leading video and audio formats are supported including FLV (Flash), MP4 (HTML5 videos), MOV (QuickTime), WMV (Windows Media), MP3, and WAV. It can accelerate any type of video content.

The video CDN has also been optimized for video players. It supports features like video seeking and partial downloads. These features are automatically enabled to get the most out of your videos.

The video CDN requires no additional origin server configurations and is automatically available to all accounts.

Content delivery is a breeze with a user-friendly dashboard:

– Flexible

Wide range of settings make sure content is delivered in the exact way needed.

– Accurate

Detailed reports give a deep understanding of how content is being delivered.

– Programmatic

RESTful API allows complete account control from any application in any language.

10. CacheFly

CacheFly provides reliable CDN solutions, fully tailored to your business. CacheFly is the only CDN built for throughput, delivering rich-media content up to 10x faster than traditional delivery methods and 30% faster than other major CDNs.

A leader in CDN technology since 2002, CacheFly has held a track record for high-performing, ultra-reliable content delivery for two decades, longer than nearly every other CDN. Pioneered the use of TCP Anycast, an innovation that CDNs continue to build upon. With more than 3,500 clients in over 80 countries, organizations consistently choose CacheFly for scalability, reliability, and unrivaled performance.

Expectations have changed, and customers expect a faultless experience when engaging with content on any device, any time, anywhere in the world.

But most CDNs are generic and oversubscribed, creating disastrous content delivery situations during big live events, latest software releases, and launches of new games.

With CacheFly, you’ll get dedicated storage so you can prioritize and protect your content from noisy neighbors.

An industry-leading on throughput and provide fast and reliable routing and traffic management using anycast. This makes this CDN extremely redundant across the entire network, as anycast doesn’t rely on just us making the decisions. Its self-healing and always provides the fastest possible route for your traffic to travel.

A Storage Optimization System (S.O.S) solution shields your origin by guaranteeing a 100% cache hit ratio. With no cache misses redirected to your origin, you’ll pay less for data egress with origins like AWS’s S3, Azure Storage, and Google Cloud Storage.

Viewers don’t hang around for videos that buffer; shoppers abandon carts on e-commerce sites that are slow, and gamers leave bad reviews when the latency is high.

QoE is the single most critical metric when serving content simultaneously to a large and distributed audience on a global scale – and your delivery stack can be your secret weapon.

Switching to this CDN Provider, you’ll get:

– Custom Designed Solutions

This CDN experts will work with you to design a custom set of solutions to fit your technical and budgetary requirements. Simply tell us the traffic performance and terms you need.

– Billing On Your Terms,

Not Ours

Never pay for service overlap again with flexible, month-to-month billing for as long as you need it and discounts for fixed terms once you’re happy. Design your own contract when you switch to CacheFly.

– Risk-Free Switch

You’ll love this CDN service more than competitors, it won’t tie you down with lengthy, restrictive contractual obligations. No tricks, no sales tactics, just great service.

Conclusion

Global expectations for fast loading content is at an all-time high. Users expect content to be delivered at near instant speeds.

Every website should meet the high user demands and have a high availability by using a CDN.

We added to this list the best CDNs in the market to help you in choosing the best one fitting your website.