11 Best CDN Providers for 2024

CDNetworks uses QUIC (HTTP2/3), GZIP, and Brotli compression and its own custom technologies to accelerate all kinds of content, from simple static downloads to dynamic traffic, video streaming, and more. Their solution also excels in providing cloud and account security— built-in security systems that serve as a first line of defense against attacks.

User-Friendliness

CDNetworks' console is straightforward with powerful onboarding functionality. The dashboard’s sidebar is divided into the main features and further subdivided into controls and statistics. 

That said, the configuration for this CDN is not for beginners. Luckily, you can ask customer service to help you set up.

Features

CDNetworks offers comprehensive services for large businesses and public sector organizations. The solution specializes in web performance, media delivery, cloud and zero trust security, and colocation services.

CDNetworks has standard content and dynamic web accelerations and Cloud DNS+ to speed up websites. With its network of 2,800 PoPs, it has good coverage is good for North America and Europe, especially for Asia. 

The solution shines most on media delivery. It has Media Acceleration Live Broadcast for better media processing, real-time streaming, and user-interactive viewing experiences. CDNetworks also features Cloud Live and VoD, cloud-based solutions for ingesting, managing, processing, and delivering streams and media content.

Additionally, CDNetworks doubles down on security. It already has a 15 Tbps scrubbing capacity with more than  20 scrubbing centers that protect against malicious traffic and DDoS attacks. However, it improves its cloud security even further using several shields, a Zero Trust Access (ESA), and a Media Acceleration VoD for encryption.

Performance

CDNetworks is fast, especially in Asia. End users can receive static and dynamic content efficiently because it boasts vast global networks and resources. 

One of the larger CDN providers, the solution has over 200,000 servers (close to Akamai’s numbers). Its robust infrastructure also has 2,800+ CDN PoPs, 400+ edge computing PoPs, 1,000+ Petabyte storage capacity, and 200+ ISP partners.

Customer Support

You can contact CDNetwork’s 24/7/365 global support team via phone, email, and chat anytime. The contact page on the website lists main office locations worldwide, allowing you to find and call a local office quickly.

Additionally, CDNetwork provides onboarding assistance, dedicated services, security expert support, and major/ live event support for clients.

Pricing

CDNetworks offers flexible payment plans: pay-by-bandwidth and pay-by-traffic. The cost depends on the type and volume of content being delivered and the level of security and protection required. Before that, you can get a 30-day Free Trial to test.

If you’re serious about speeding up your website, then StackPath’s affordable CDN is your best pick. You will get 45 point-of-presence (POP) locations globally, unlimited page rules support, real-time content routing, and more. 

The setup process is a bit complex. But worry not! There’s a very detailed resource base on the official website. And in case you get stuck, support is always ready to provide assistance. Once activated, the caching for your website is instantaneous.

With this service, you get a free SSL that offers end-to-end encryption between your site and visitors. There’s also a network and application filter that protects you from bad traffic, spam, and DDoS attacks. 

When it comes to delivery, content propagation occurs across 45 data centers worldwide. Half of them are located in the United States. You also have the option of using Brotli/Gzip compression up to level 9. These features enable you to reduce the size of scripts and images by up to 75%. That way, your audience will experience lightning-fast page loading times even on slow connections. And as we all know, speed is essential. Stats show that the bounce rate increases by 123% if page loading time becomes more than 1 second.

StackPath’s performance ranks it among the best CDN service providers. When testing the service, I managed to get page load times of 700ms – that’s less than a second. 

As for the pricing, plans start at $10 a month. It offers a simple CDN service with 1TB of bandwidth and caching in all global POPs. On top of that, you get DDoS protection, and detailed analytics to track traffic and resource usage. 

Overall, StackPath is a reliable solution that provides rich features at a low cost. It’s the right choice for individuals and businesses that need to make their websites faster. On the downside, they don’t offer a free version. However, there’s a 30-day trial period to let you test the waters. 

G-Core Labs is one of the newest kids on the block. Despite its short existence, it has jaw-dropping achievements that others envy. In 2014, it set the Guinness World record for sustaining 1,114,000 gamers on a single server.

So allow me to give it more attention than other CDN providers on this list.

Network Infrastructure

G-Core’s network includes 120 POPs and 6000 peer-to-peer partners. It has a strong presence in Europe and CIS countries with 58+ nodes. The geographical breakdown of other regions is as follows: 

• Europe – 20
• CIS - 38
• North America – 14
• Latin America – 11
• Africa – 8
• Asia – 16
• Middle East – 11
• Australia – 2

The coverage is tremendous given it launched the CDN services back in 2016. Sadly, it doesn’t have any POPs in China’s mainland. Hong Kong and Taipei are the nearest you can get that has a single data center. 

Other than that, it has an impressive network capacity of 75 terabytes per second (Tbps). That’s almost on the same level with Stackpath’s 65 Tbps. But it lags behind Sucuri, Akamai, and Cloudflare that have 250, 120, and 90 Tbps, respectively. 

But make no mistakes about it.

According to Citrix, a UK-based independent CDN performance monitoring system, G-Core Labs' content delivery network is ranked among the top 3 global networks in terms of time of response, with a global average ping of 30 ms. Its fastest query speed of all regions is in Europe with 22 ms. 

Configuration

G-Core Las has an eye-catching and easy-to-navigate web console. Despite that, it lacks a walkthrough configuration process like Cloudflare. So it takes some time to know how the setup works. But you can always refer to the vendor’s knowledge base that has hundreds of guides. 

The process is pretty straightforward once you learn the ropes. You can start with a simple CDN option - creating a pull zone. It’s also possible to assign a custom CNAME, SSL, and network port.

The exciting part is G-Core offers you a 1 TB/month free plan. It comes with access to 28 POPs worldwide. While that sounds good, you’re required to provide payment details. Furthermore, the vendor will bill you for use of extra resources. 

Features

G-Core Labs is among those popular CDNs that offer an origin shield. The technology provides real-time caching of your website’s resources. As a result, it lowers the number of queries that your server handles.

You can bring content closer to your visitors using prefetching. The feature allows you to cache the most demanded files on your site. That way, information is readily available before users request it.

Enhancing service availability is super simple using origin groups. You can hook multiple sources of data for backup. Should one fail, the network will pull assets from the others. Best of all, it’s available on the paid and free CDN hosting plans. 

And there’s more: 

Gzip and brotli boost performance by compressing files by up to 90%. As a result, your website will be fast and responsive. Likewise, you’ll enjoy lower bandwidth costs from both G-Core Labs and your web host.  

The vendor provides load balancing for the rapid scaling of services. You can deploy more servers in regions where you have traffic spikes. So, your users will have a butter-smooth experience browsing your website.

And it gets better. 

G-Core’s object storage positions it amongst the best video CDN services. The feature ensures a seamless delivery of media content to your visitors globally. It’s ideal for serving images and files for download as well.

The vendor additionally has anycast routing for speedy access to your site. To do this, it utilizes over 60 DNS hosting nodes worldwide. These provide a lightning-fast network response time of 20 ms. 

You can also integrate it with other G-Core Labs services, including its streaming platform. In addition, it works swimmingly with WordPress.

Security Tools

As one of the best CDN provider options, G-Core doesn’t compromise on security. It provides Let’s Encrypt SSL for end-to-end encryption at no extra cost. You can also add third-party certificates without breaking a sweat.

DDoS protection levels 3, 4, and 7 shields you from malicious attacks on the web. And one way of doing it is through the use of anycast DNS. It distributes suspicious traffic through different servers for filtering. On the downside, the feature costs from €35/month above the regular plans. 

You do get a website application firewall (WAF) as a bonus, however. It adds an extra layer of protection against malware, viruses, and bad bots. Furthermore, it seals any vulnerabilities that hackers may use to attack you.   

Customer Support

The support team is available 24/7 via phone, email, and chat. Supported languages include English, German, Chinese, Russian.

Sometimes, some agents have to double-check on issues before responding. Despite the wait, they will fix any challenges that you face with their CDN services. 

Pricing

When it comes to pricing, there’s a free tier for a start. As earlier mentioned, it offers 1TB/month and access to 28 nodes. It will cost you €0.0025/GB extra once you exceed the allocated resources. 

The premium plans are a better option if you need broader coverage. Traffic allocation ranges from 1.5TB to 10TB monthly. You’ll also use the network’s 120 POPs for faster content delivery. As for the prices, it costs from €35 to €150/month. Additional bandwidth will cost you €0.023/GB on the lower side. 

Verdict

G-Core Labs, without a doubt, ranks highly on the list of popular CDNs. Its cutting-edge technologies make it a top choice for serving multimedia content.

Cloudflare ranks among the most popular CDN providers in the market. This service offers both free-tier and paid plans for speeding up websites. You benefit from the use of 150 data centers, firewall control tools, custom page rules, and so on. 

The setup process for this service is straightforward. The best thing – this CDN will auto-generate all the relevant DNS records. This is something that beginners will surely appreciate.  

But that’s just the start. 

You will find an intuitive overview that displays relevant activities including total visitors, traffic requests, and blocked attacks to your site. There’s also a quick action option that allows you to enable DDoS mode. You’ll be able to filter traffic by utilizing a JavaScript challenge. That way, you get to block bad bots and intruders. 

The Web Application Firewall (WAF) is also a plus. As a security measure, it allows you to restrict access to sensitive areas on your website. You have the choice of using IP or geo-restriction. 

This popular CDN saves bandwidth by acting as a shield between your server and website. Such an approach reduces the traffic flow on your webhost, translating to lower monthly bills. 

HTTP2/3 accelerators are also present. When combined with Brotli compression, they slightly reduce the webpage load time. During my tests, my sample website managed to load in around 1.5 seconds. But that’s not surprising. Just keep in mind that some users on the free plan did complain about sites slowing down. 

Apart from the free tier, upgrades start at $20 a month. This comes with email support, DDoS mitigation, and email support, to mention a few.

You won’t regret choosing Cloudflare. It has wonderful features and affordable pricing with guaranteed uptime at all times.

Sucuri positions itself among CDN vendors that put the security of your website first. You get round the clock protection against DDoS attacks, bot traffic, and malicious codes capable of corrupting your website. 

The setup process is easy. The user interface is simple and easy to navigate. Should you get stuck, live support is available throughout the day.

This solution comes with an intrusion detection system that checks for any JavaScript, SQL, and malware injections. If it detects such, Sucuri will notify you via email. Their tech team will also help you clean up your website.

There’s also a load balancer for platforms that use multiple servers. You can include several failover IP addresses. Apart from handling traffic spikes at ease, this configuration warrants you 24/7 uptime for your site/app.

In case of any incidents, you’ll find an audit trail of all the events that unfolded. So, you’ll know about all the vulnerabilities that were used by hackers. Sucuri’s support can help you make sure it never happens again. 

When it comes to speed, this service easily tops the majority of CDN hosting providers. During my experiment, the page load times averaged around 300ms!

Despite all the goodies, there are no monthly plans. Instead, pricing starts at $199.99/yr. You get at least 10 global POPs, DNS manager, brute force protection, etc, so it’s worth it.

All things considered, Sucuri is a top-notch content delivery network that keeps your website secure day and all night. That way, you can sleep peacefully at night and not worry about your business.

If you need a robust solution to manage a high-traffic website/application, get Akamai. This service ranks among the best CDN solutions in the enterprise market. It offers over 250,000 POPs globally, cloud DDoS protection, fast media encoding, and more. Some of the companies that trust Akamai include Facebook, Airbnb, and Best Buy. 

Unlike the aforementioned solutions, getting started with Akamai is quite difficult, especially for beginners. The dashboard is cluttered with most of the features hidden under menus and submenus. The good news is that the support team is available round the clock to guide you. 

Don’t let the setup process scare you. Akamai has some great tools. A good example is the local caching. This CDN technology makes your website accessible from the data center that is closest to your visitor. 

There’s also a security manager that gives you live updates of the status for your sites. If need be, you can activate the enterprise threat protector. This way, Akamai will raise the bar for defense by preventing DNS tunneling, phishing, malware, and ransomware attacks from taking place.

If you have files that can be downloaded, you can select NetStorage to improve the delivery of digital objects to large audiences. This way, your visitors will enjoy instant access to images, videos, documents, and more.

During tests, I managed to get load times of around 200ms. Now that’s freaking fast! 

As for pricing, things get a little bit sketchy. There’s no clear information on their website. In fact, support informed that they deal directly with corporations and don’t reveal the prices to individuals. 

Altogether, this solution is the best content delivery network for global sites that experience significant traffic. Besides the technicalities of use, you can try it by signing up for a 30-day free trial.

Cachefly ranks among the best CDN providers that have a vast infrastructure across all continents globally. The benefits include a network of 50+ POPs, super-fast edge libraries, and fallback mitigation. On the list of companies that trust this product, you’ll find the Bank of America, Microsoft, and the NFL. 

So, what’s under the hood? 

First and foremost, the user interface is simple and eye-catching. Just as Cloudflare, the configuration process is easy. There’s also a guide with all the steps of what to do tucked under the main menu. 

The setup part is just the beginning. With Cachefly, delivering media content such as live streams and videos is a bliss. That’s entirely because of the ultra-low latency encoder that provides a buffer-free experience. 

This simple CDN also comes with a smart optimizer that reduces the overall size of photos and scripts. Such an approach speeds up the performance of your site and mobile applications. 

But it gets better!

You’ll find a secure environment for developing applications. This allows you to test new configurations, update assets, and optimize HTTP requests before pushing live updates. You’ll minimize rollbacks as a result of releasing half-baked features. 

This service supports storage optimization, which is a CDN technology that lowers web-hosting costs. It works by caching your resources across all data centers. In doing so, this reduces the load from the origin server resulting in a boost in performance. 

During tests, I managed to get a page loading time of around 200ms. That’s in the league of Akamai.  

Since the pricing starts at $595/month, it’s wise that you take advantage of the free trial to ascertain the usefulness of this solution. 

CDN service that has data centers across all continents globally. This vendor offers 40+ POPs, a wide array of security enhancements, IPv4/IPv6 support, еtc. Some of the companies that use this solution include Etoro, Global Bank, and Paymetric.

Despite being built for professionals, the configuration process is simple. Imperva has an intuitive user interface, with all the features that you need within reach. Also, support is available via email to assist you if you have questions.  

As for the features, security is where this product shines. Imperva boasts of using machine learning to process over 65 billion Packets-Per-Second (PPS). A real-time threat scanner is in place to keep your website and applications safe.

Imperva also has an advanced bot protection system. This allows you to detect and block suspicious automated scripts that are programmed to launch attacks. It stops fraud attempts and the stealing of credential information.  

The top CDN providers that come with a capable IPv6 gateway sure are something. Imperva doesn’t disappoint here either. The IPv6 traffic from your server is efficiently routed across all POPs on the network. This results in the swift delivery of services. 

An application delivery system with a 7-layer load balancing protocol is available to boost performance. The best part is – it saves bandwidth by up to 60%, which speeds the distribution of static cache resources. 

During tests, I managed to get page response times of around 500ms. Not bad at all. 

The major downside to this solution is that they lock users in long term contracts. Also, like Akamai, they don’t offer a definitive pricing plan. The good thing is, you get a free demo account to see if the solution is right for you.

KeyCDN is a low-cost CDN that offers a wide variety of options to improve the performance of your website. Some of the tools include unlimited SSL certificates, low latency, and aggressive Gzip compression. The best part – you pay for the resources that you intend to use. 

When it comes to setup, the process is straightforward. There’s a web console, which has all the options in one place. Apart from that, KeyCDN offers dedicated plugins for popular content management systems such as WordPress and Joomla. By using them, you can deploy the service a few minutes. 

On the features side, you get a traffic limiter that blocks other people from stealing your bandwidth through hotlinking. This option also allows you to set expiry dates on downloadable content. You can prevent the abuse of the available resources under your subscription plan.

KeyCDN provides one of the fastest CDN services by deploying a shield. It reduces the workload on the origin server by distributing your website’s content to 25 countries across 34 data centers.

If you publish videos, you will also find the HTTP live streaming (HLS) protocol handy. You’ll be able to stream live content at low latency, which guarantees you’ll keep your audience glued at all times.

Another critical integration is the Gzip compression tool that reduces the overall size of webpages. This translates to faster page loading times. As a matter of fact, during tests, I managed to get speeds of around 500ms. That’s on par with Imperva Incapsula. 

As for the prices, KeyCDN utilizes a volume-based pricing model with the lowest tier option being $0.04/GB. It ensures that you pay based on your traffic requirements. Best of all, you get 25GB free to test this product. 

Losing customers due to a sluggish website is terrible. Say goodbye to this issue with Rackspace. When it comes to the delivery of e-commerce content, this solution tops the list of CDN providers. It offers over 200 edge locations globally, volume-based pricing, and rigorous DDoS protection.

Unlike the clunky interface of Akamai, this service has an easy-to-use dashboard. However, the configuration isn’t forthright. You need to be an advanced user to set it up. The good thing is the technical team is available 24/7 to offer assistance. 

This product offers numerous online shopping integrations. Some of them include Oracle Commerce and SAP Hybris hosting. You’ll be grateful for them and be sure that your shoppers will appreciate them, too.

Rackspace also focuses on boosting performance. For instance, you can route visitor traffic to the nearest data center. There’s also dynamic caching that makes the most requested pages readily available. 

During traffic spikes, dynamic routing will distribute the load across multiple POPs, resulting in low latency. This feature also speeds the delivery of media content, such as images and video streams. 

Rackspace is among the fewer content delivery network providers that include other solutions such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. With them, you can sit back and let them create a favorable environment for your services. 

If you prefer to rely on several platforms, they will create a hybrid solution that combines their servers and a select number of web host providers. Such an approach increases the agility of your platforms by incorporating multiple fallback servers. 

As for the speed test, I managed to get a maximum of 200ms webpage loading time. That’s swift. 

All-in-all, the pricing starts at $0.16/GB – and if you wish to try the product, you get $100 free credit for use within 60 days.   

CDN77 is a fully-featured product with unrivaled performance at a low cost. This solution offers CDN services such as Brotli compression, push/purge cache, and an advanced data center optimizer. Bests of all, your website/apps are accelerated using network infrastructure backed up by over 30 POPs worldwide. 

The first thing that you will notice is the dazzling user interface. It’s clean, intuitive, and everything you can ask for. This eases the process of configuring your site. As if that’s not enough, there's a detailed knowledge base for guidance. 

Featurewise, there’s a content delivery network manager that allows you to set servers based on preferred locations. You can also blacklist or whitelist traffic coming from specific geographical regions.

DDoS protection is included to protect you from hackers. CDN77 also has an advanced Web Application Firewall (WAF) that outsmarts most top CDN providers. It helps to shield your webpages against SQL injections, remote file intrusion, PHP injections, and more. 

An advanced analytics dashboard is available for tracking bandwidth, server requests, and visitors. A cost and billing feature is provided, which generates the usage bills for you on time. You can check the resources that you’ve used to make payments promptly.

If you prefer to automate operations, a powerful REST API has got you covered. The feature enables you to create custom applications for managing tasks such as invoicing, purge/prefetch requests, logs retrieval/reporting, and so forth. 

On the flipside, purge cache takes time before propagating on all POPs. Also, the pay-as-you-go tiers are slightly costlier than the monthly plans. It’s also unfortunate that any unused credits that you’ve purchased expire after a year.  

Other than that, the CDN pricing starts at $0.045/GB. You also get 50GB free of storage with every subscription. You can request a 14-day free trial.