With the introduction of Google Panda, a website’s speed is slightly more important. The reason why they say it is slightly more important is because content is still king. Anyway, based on a study done by Amazon, if a website takes too long to load a page, more often than not the readers will close the tab or simply search again.
Continue ➤ 10 Dedicated WordPress Optimized Web Hosting Server For Speed and Performance
MaxCDN vs EdgeCast vs Amazon Cloudfront vs Cloudflare
At the time of writing, I have accounts with Cloudflare Free, MaxCDN, MediaTemple’s EdgeCast and Amazon Cloudfront. I do not have Cloudflare Pro, Akamai or CacheFly, thus I can’t comment on my experience. Here are my takes on their services, performance and user speed. I am not paid to write any of these comments, and they are all based on my own real experience subscribing and using these services.
Cloudflare Free ★☆☆☆☆
There is a saying – Cheap things are not good, good things are not cheap. The free version is by far the worst CDN I’ve ever used. Occasionally it will display a full page 404 error message saying your server/hosting is down, which I believe is not true. Not only it is slow, the way they ‘hijack’ the frontpage by displaying the server down message is morally wrong.
MaxCDN ★★★☆☆
MaxCDN is affordable for beginners, it is reasonably priced and comes loaded with many features such as preventing others from hotlinking your images, robots.txt, cache, compression and more. The only drawback is the limited number of peer/pop servers, it cost money to add a peer/pop server for Asia.
EdgeCast ★★☆☆☆
EdgeCast is way faster than MaxCDN, just like Amazon Cloudfront, it comes with basic features. No robots.txt or ways to prevent people from hotlinking your images. The problem with EdgeCast is the price. My monthly bill is USD200, for the same amount of bandwidth on Amazon Cloudfront, it is only USD80. You do the math.
Amazon Cloudfront ★★★★★
Super Fast, yes, not only Cloudfront is very fast, it is the cheapest among all when you count the number of peer/pop servers they have. At the time of writing, they are still adding more servers. In short, it comes with twice the speed, and half the price. The only drawback is the lack of features. No way of stopping people from hot-linking your images.
Features Comparison
Below is a simple table, they are correct at the time of writing, but they may be different now because the internet is a fast moving industry. Do check the official website for more details.
MaxCDN / NetDNA | Cloudflare Pro | Amazon CloudFront | EdgeCast / Mediatemple | CacheFly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $39.95/month for 1TB | $20/month | $0.120 - 0.250 / GB for 10TB | $20/month for 200GB | $99/month for 256 GB |
| AMERICA - Seattle - San Jose - Los Angeles - Chicago - New York - Atlanta - Miami - Dallas | AMERICA - San Jose - Los Angeles - Chicago - Ashburn - Newark - Miami - Dallas | AMERICA - Sao Paulo - Ashburn(2) - Dallas/Fort Worth - Jacksonville - Los Angeles (2) - Miami - New York (2) - Newark - Palo Alto - San Jose - Seattle - South Bend - St. Louis | AMERICA - Atlanta - Chicago - Dallas - Los Angeles - Miami - New York - San Jose - Seattle - Washington DC | AMERICA - Toronto - Washington DC - San Jose - Atlanta - Chicago - Dallas - Los Angeles - Miami - New York |
| EUROPE - Amsterdam | EUROPE - London - Amsterdam - Frankfurt - Paris | EUROPE - Paris - Frankfurt - London - Milan - Amsterdam - Dublin - Stockholm | EUROPE - Amsterdam - Frankfurt - London - Madrid - Paris | EUROPE - London - Amsterdam - Frankfurt - Paris - Stockholm |
| ASIA - Hong Kong | ASIA - Hong Kong - Tokyo - Singapore | ASIA - Hong Kong - Osaka - Tokyo - Singapore (2) | ASIA - Hong Kong - Osaka - Singapore - Tokyo - Sydney | ASIA - Hong Kong - Singapore - Tokyo - Sydney |
CloudHarmony ( now Gartner) has a complete list of all CDN compared for their latency ( Global and Asia ). According to them, these CDN network performance metrics are based on testing they perform using the RIPE Atlas Internet measurement network. RIPE Atlas is a global network consisting of approximately 12581 public test probes capable of measuring connectivity to Internet endpoints on demand (view network map).
Most RIPE Atlas probes are located on the Internet last mile, thus providing analysis that is more user-centric compared to testing from data centers. Users hosting RIPE Atlas probes receive credit to take measurements from other probes. They host 4 probes and use credits to measure latency and recursive DNS performance for cloud services. Below are the results. The fastest CDN is the one with the smaller numerical.
- #01 – Akamai CDN 10ms ( fastest )
- #02 – CloudFlare 15ms
- #03 – Google Cloud CDN 16ms
- #04 – Verizon DELIVER 22ms
- #05 – Microsoft Azure CDN 22ms
- #06 – SoftLayer CDN 23ms
- #07 – Verizon DELIVERsmall 23ms
- #08 – CacheFly CDN 24ms
- #09 – Azure CDN from Akamai 24ms
- #10 – Fastly CDN 26ms
- #11 – Amazon CloudFront 26ms
- #12 – Rackspace Cloud CDN 28ms
- #13 – MaxCDN 29ms
- #14 – Limelight CDN 30ms
- #15 – QUANTIL 35ms
- #16 – Alibaba Cloud CDN 50 ms ( Slowest )
Conclusion
Amazon Cloudfront is the best CDN for your WordPress site, they have more servers around the world than their competitors, and bandwidth is half of what they charge. The best part is, they have quite a number of servers in Asia, where the growth of internet users is increasing multifold.
The combined internet users for both India and China will dwarf the rest of the world; however, the purchasing power of these users remains weak for the foreseeable near future. Amazon Cloudfront is a must have service for all bloggers using WordPress.
thanks for this comparison between different CDN Providers services and performances to help to find best CDN provider
This Free CDN service is much more than your typical Content Delivery Network.
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Thank you for your info, though it has passed a lot of time since the article was published. But nowadays CDN is even more worth to use than previously.
Personally i’d definitely recommend Edgecast CDN services for serious websites. This network is one of the leaders of the industry and even such a big names like WordPress and Twitter have chosen them. Though for a regular website they are also ready to offer their services and the website undoubtedly will work as fast as possible. And also will be secured and well-optimized. There are a number of their resellers that offer no annual contracts and very affordable prices for those services. Check out Jodihost, for example.
KeyCDN ( https://www.keycdn.com ) is also a great alternative to the other CDNs mentioned in this article.
Ngan, send me an email if you would like to give EdgeCast (Verizon Digital Media Services) another try, I’m sure we will be able to offer you a better price than Amazon CloudFront!
Hi Maykel, I am very happy with Amazon Cloudfront. Thanks for the offer.
I’m also use Cloudflare my experience is very bad
You are right about Cloudflare… I’ve just lost 16 ranking positions because they put a 404 message from their server where they add “seller pitch”… Google algo doesn’t appreciate this kind of questionable attitude against visitors. My website paid for that and worse, I paid a pro plan…
I really do the maximum to give to my visitors the best experience I can offer with quality content an ergonomic / technical friendly experience. My fist preoccupation is visitors, not the algo by itself.
When I asked Cloudflare what happened, they answered that I accepted that they can add this kind of information!! Since the beginning (2 months) I have problem with this company: not real support at all…
Now, I search a cdn company who is Panda friendly, I mean who don’t put ads to “grab” customers using my website or with files they display as pub, company who understands what is penalized by Panda.
Your post is very instructive. thank you.
I highly recommend Amazon Cloudfront. Glad that you ditch Cloudflare, they are sneaky to insert these 404 pages with their own ‘seller pitch’, the web owner will probably not see this because they probably kept a cookie or whitelist the IP address of the owner.
I discover you’re blog, verry interesting and full of tips I very like it !
Thanks you so much, but I think I will stay with cloudflare, the free ssl is a must have
Cachefly is quite difficult to deal with. I’ve been with them for 3 years and their service had often problems. Also, their billing team as procedures which are barely legal I think. I recommend you look elsewhere.
I also echo your comments on CloudFront. I can’t understand why someone, especially for a small or medium size blog, would choose MaxCDN especially given their monthly cost. CloudFront gives me the best of the best, it’s easy to set up, and the monthly cost is just a few dollars a month.
You are dead wrong about stopping people from hot-linking to your content bypassing CloudFront and accessing your origin directly. Using an OAI policy on your S3 buckets will prevent this if you configure your distribution correctly. You should definitely revise this article as it is very misleading.
I am talking about CloudFront, not S3. I am using CloudFront and there is no possible way to stop hot-linking unless I ‘pay’ for additional service to enables some policy at S3 or etc. The article is not misleading. THERE IS NO WAY TO STOP HOTLINKING IN CLOUDFRONT!!!
Your locations for EdgeCast are incorrect.
Map here: https://www.verizondigitalmedia.com/our-network/network-overview/#network-map
CacheFly is still the fastest, hands-down.
Check Cedexis.
I’ve tried others in my multi-CDN mix, but give 80% of my traffic to CacheFly when performance and reliability matter.