In the age of
smartphones and speed, webmasters are forced to score a point when it comes to
website loading speed and that’s where
CDN Services (
Content Delivery Network/Content Distribution Network)
come in. These services provide users with faster loading times for
their web sites and blogs. Webmasters have been dreaming of this for a
long time now. CDNs store all your images and videos on dedicated
servers (nods) around the world, and users load media files from the
nearest server to them. CDN services can greatly improve the loading
time on websites and keep your readers fresh and content.
As far as CDN services go, you have three options when choosing the best one for you:
- Free CDN services, these have the obvious advantage that they are free, but the but do not offer the best performance
- Pay as you go CDN, in which you pay a monthly fee depending on your storage needs and your web site’s traffic
- Pre-paid CDN, this option, in my opinion, is the best option. You pay a 1 year fee and you have all your features available.
The most important aspects you have to think about when choosing a CDN service is the
traffic
on your web site, for example, CDN services are recommended for really
high-traffic web sites, storage for your media files and the number of
server nodes the CDN service offers, you should orient yourself towards a
service that provides nodes on all continents. Here are some CDN
providers you should definitely consider in your search for the best
one:
MaxCDN is one of the best CDN services you could
find out there. It offers users a wide range of services and really
affordable prices. You can get 1TB of traffic for $39.99, it’s easy to
set it up and it offers the possibility to share a package with your
friends if you want to cut back on the price. The results are
impressive, almost 50% improvement off the loading time of your website.
Amazon CloudFront is another very good CDN service
provider that offers users a host of features. There are a few drawbacks
of using this system, though. The first may very well be the price: it
can go up to even $300 for 1TB of traffic and the service does not allow
file storage, but you do have the possibility of storing your files on
other Amazon services such as
Amazon Simple Storage Service or
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud for some reasonable prices, starting at
$0,093 for 1GB monthly. On the other side, Amazon provides
19 edge nodes for it’s users, including 3 in Asia which should make for a somewhat faster response from the servers to all your visitors.
Many of you are already familiar with
VPS.NET from
the cloud storage it offers. Now, VPS.NET can provide CDN services with
many features for its users: user friendly and many access servers
around the world. It has a very flexible payment plan, that allows you
to configure the best package for you, from $34.95 for 1TB up to
$1934.95 for 20 TB. It’s one of the longest standing CDN providers in
the market.
Cachefly is without a doubt, one of the best CDN
services on the market. Its results are staggering and many of its
clients are very pleased with it. So why isn’t it on the top of our
list? The answer is simple: it’s way too expensive. If you are prepared
to pay $99 a month for 256GB traffic, then you will get performance
worth every penny from it, since it has 11 years experience in this
field. Many bloggers that do use Cachefly opt for its custom plan
options in which prices start at $0.03/GB.
Cloud Flare is mainly known for offering free
solutions, as well. If you ask me, that free plan is just to lure
clients in and to keep them loyal forever after that. This CDN service
is seems to be very well crafted, putting on your disposal
13 edge nodes
around the world. The possibility to have CloudFlare’s plan for free is
appealing to many, but for those who want a little extra boost to their
web site, there are other options, such as
$20 per month. An enterprise version will soon be available for medium to high traffic web sites.
Another well known service,
SoftLayer, offers a CDN
service with some moderate prices for its users to enjoy. Although it’s
not the cheapest out there, it is one of the best and it can handle high
traffic web sites. If you are looking to get a CDN service, SoftLayer
CloudLayer CDN is a must on your list.
Google Page Speed CDN
Although this CDN service is not available to everyone, it
still promises some really good results. Knowing Google and its past
products, this would be really good, the only downside so far is that
it’s not available for most of Google’s own products.
Some of these services work better than other and we didn’t test them
all! But, the bottom line is: you have to choose very carefully what
CDN service you want to use, keeping in mind the requirements of your
web site. The speed of a web site is very important, keeping your
readers happy and make them come again and again.
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