Best CDN Hosting Providers: Most website owners aim to increase their website’s speed and performance. You may take various approaches, like optimizing your images, using cache plugins, and selecting a reliable hosting provider.
However, using a content delivery network (CDN) is one of the most excellent methods to increase your website’s performance and security.
Furthermore, Statista’s Data volume of global content delivery network internet traffic research reveals a consistent growth in CDN traffic utilization from 2017 to 2022 – from 54 EB to 252 EB.
So, what exactly is a CDN, and how can it help you speed up your website? And more importantly, which are the best CDN hosting providers perfect for your website?
Continue reading to find out:
- What is a CDN
- The Advantages of Using a CDN
- The top 5 best CDN hosting providers
What is a CDN
A CDN (content delivery network), also known as a content distribution network, is a network of geographically distributed and interconnected servers. They offer cached internet material from a network point nearest to the user.
A CDN’s primary purpose is to enhance web speed by lowering the time to deliver information and rich media to consumers.
In addition, CDN architecture is intended to decrease network delay caused by hauling traffic over long distances and several networks. As more dynamic information, video, and software as a service are given to an expanding number of mobile devices, eliminating latency is critical.
Cached material is stored in either CDN providers’ network points of presence (POPs) or third-party data centers. When a user requests content from a website, if the content is cached on a CDN, the request is redirected to the server closest to the user, and the cached content is delivered from its location at the network edge. The user is unaware of this procedure.
Many businesses utilize CDNs to cache website information to improve performance and security. Demand for CDN services is growing as websites provide more streaming video, e-commerce, and cloud applications, requiring good performance. Few CDNs have POPs in all countries. As a result, enterprises must use several CDN providers to ensure that they satisfy the demands of their customers and users, no matter where they are.
Aside from content caching and web delivery, CDN providers provide services that increase their core functionality and capitalize on their network edge presence. Security services for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) prevention, web application firewalls (WAFs), and bot relief.
Web and application performance and acceleration services, streaming video and broadcast media optimization, and digital rights management for video are also available. Some CDN providers make their application programming interfaces available to enterprises to satisfy their specific requirements.
The Advantages of Using a CDN
The advantages of using a CDN will vary depending on the demands and size of online business, including all URLs, internal IP addresses, and matching domain names, such as registrations and applications. However, the key advantages that consumers may enjoy are as follows:
Improved Website Loading Times
Using a nearby CDN server allows website content to be distributed closer to website users, resulting in quicker page loading times. As a result, CDN servers can lower bounce rates by removing the barrier of slow-loading site pages. Load times can be reduced by using a CDN service in the following ways:
- A content delivery network allows users to connect to a data center that is geographically closer to them rather than the location of a website’s origin server. The less distance traveled, the less time spent loading, and the less stress on the originating server.
- Load balancing and solid-state drives are two examples of hardware and software innovations that help data reach the consumer faster.
- By lowering file sizes through minification or file compression procedures, a CDN will minimize data transferring.
- CDNs can speed up sites that need TLS or SSL certificates by minimizing connection reuse and allowing TLS false start.
Lower Bandwidth Costs:
One of the highest costs for a website is bandwidth use. CDNs, for example, can lower the quantity of data that an origin server must deliver through caching, which eventually reduces the cost of hosting for website owners.
Increased availability and redundancy of content:
A high traffic volume or a hardware breakdown might cause a website to stop working perfectly. Because CDN servers are spread, any CDN design should be able to manage more traffic and hardware failure better than an origin server.
Enhanced website security:
A CDN server can boost security against DDoS attacks by providing DDoS relief and security certificate upgrades. This is because they are designed to evaluate and absorb anomalous traffic spikes. These increases may be tracked down and recognized as malicious IP addresses on denial or blocklist.
A web application firewall (WAF) is included with many CDNs to give additional security for your website. A web application firewall safeguards content owners by filtering, monitoring, and preventing harmful HTTP/S traffic to an online application.
The Top 5 Best CDN Hosting Providers
#1 – Cloudflare
Cloudflare is a web performance and security startup that offers internet services to safe and speeds up websites.
Its online platforms include Cloudflare CDN, which distributes content worldwide to speed up websites, and Cloudflare optimizer, which allows web pages with ad servers and third-party widgets.
To download Snappy software on mobiles and computers, CloudFlare security protects websites from various online threats such as spam, SQL injection, and DDOS; Cloudflare analytics provides insight into website traffic such as threats and threats searches engine crawlers; and Keyless.
#2 – StackPath CDN
Stackpath is another best CDN hosting providers, with servers strategically located in 90 countries.
SSD-loaded servers are optimized to provide excellent image acceleration and page loading speed, which improves a website’s overall performance.
The built-in SSL function protects your site in real-time, while protected permits and two-step authentication assist in locking down your content and defending your account. The control panel allows you to modify the rules that control how your content is cached at each location.
Stackpath is compatible with all popular content management systems such as Magento, WordPress, and Drupal. The ‘REST API’ allows you to integrate users, zones, and other resources into your applications.
#3 – Cachefly
Cachefly provides a wide selection of CDN services and good performance with low error rates, and this places it among the most popular CDN providers. It has 40 points of presence worldwide, and each one is entirely trustworthy in providing rich media material closer to its viewers.
It speeds up the delivery of static items by up to 10 times and includes gzip compression for quicker access without leaving a footprint.
Using the md5-shared remote system, you may implement various security measures for your website, including timestamps, IP addresses, and return URLs.
Other features include two-factor authentication, Paessler, CloudHarmony, and Cedexis real-time reporting and analytics, on-demand bandwidth with no risk of performance deterioration or timeouts, etc.
#4 – Akamai
Akamai is a cloud-based optimization platform with robust architecture for increasing the performance of websites, networks, and connections.
Akamai’s intelligent technology has several capabilities that significantly increase site performance. For example, Dynamic Site Delivery immediately increases website delivery internationally, even during high demand.
The real-time display gives technical insights into worldwide locations weak to online attack traffic and aids in identifying cities with the slowest web connections or the most significant traffic density.
Though Akamai is the most dependable CDN, it uses DNS-based lookups, making it significantly slower than Anycast.
It is more prevalent inside larger businesses with substantial revenue and market capitalization.
#5 – Amazon Cloudfront
Amazon CloudFront is an Amazon Web Services content delivery network (CDN). CloudFront has servers in Europe (the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Spain), Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, and India), Australia, South America, and numerous major US cities. The service is available from over 100 edge sites across five continents. CloudFront is a pay-as-you-go service.
We hope this article helped you to find the Best CDN Hosting Providers. You may also want to check out our guide on the Best VPS Hosting Providers.
