Employing content delivery network (CDN) is a good choice to speed up your WordPress website. But when it comes to choosing a CDN that suits your needs, you will have to search a lot as there are many choices and read a lot of reviews. Therefore, in this article, you will find a list of 5 best WordPress CDN services.
What is a Content Delivery Network (CDN)?
For those who don’t know, CDN services are a network of servers which are optimized for distributing static files. Static files here means images, videos, scripts and all other files in your website.
A normal webhost will place all the files in one server, located at one place, whereas a CDN provider will have servers across the world so as to distribute the content in a much speedier and better way. The content is distributed across all those servers, and then served from the location which is the most closer to that visitor browsing your website. For example, if a visitor from U.S. visits your website, then he will be served the website from the U.S. CDN server; and if there’s no CDN server there, then he will be served the content from another location which is most closer to the visitor (like Canada, for example).
However, you should note that you will still need a webhost to store your WordPress website, as well as database. Both, your webhost and CDN service work together to speed up your WordPress website.
Advantage of using a CDN for your WordPress site
The main advantage of using a CDN service is that it speeds up your WordPress website. A fast loading website has several advantages, such as:
– Good user experience: No one likes a slow loading website. In fact, a slow website is a reason for visitors to close that website. A normal user will spend 2 seconds or maximum 3 seconds, and if the website is still not loaded, then they will close it.
– Reduce bounce rate: Bounce rate means singe page views of your site. Let’s say a visitor comes to your site from Google, they will read the content but then leave your site without doing anything else. Therefore a fast loading site is something that visitors will love to browse and it will also reduce the bounce rate.
– Increase conversion: A fast loading site means more clicks, more interaction and ultimately more conversion.
– Google (SEO) advantage: Google uses site speed as a ranking factor. So if your site loads fast, then you will get the SEO advantage of ranking it high in search results.
Best WordPress CDN Services
Here’s a list of 5 best CDN services for WordPress users. Most of them integrate very easily with WordPress with the help of a plugin. Choose one depending on the feature set you are looking for, pricing and ease of use.
MaxCDN
MaxCDN is the first name that comes to the mind when it comes to content delivery network. They are one of the most popular and well known names and we have used their service personally in the past and found it to be very good.
They have got SSD servers and have presence across US, South America, Europe, Asia and Pacific. So if your site have got global audience, then their servers across the world will help you very much in speeding up your site.
The customer dashboard is also very user friendly and it has options for realtime reports and analytics, purge content, content caching settings and more.
Two of the most notable names in the WordPress industry, Joost de Valk and Syed Balkhi vouch for the services of MaxCDN. You cannot go wrong with them, and just in case you stumble upon a problem, then their 24/7 support is there to help you.
MaxCDN also offers 30 days of trial so you can test out their service. Also there’s a 30 days money back guarantee so you’ve got nothing to lose to try them out.
MaxCDN features:
- Multiple Edge locations
- User friendly and feature rich control panel
- Real-time reporting and analytics
- Security options
- Custom/shared SSL options
- 24/7 help desk support
- Free test account
- 30 day money back guarantee
Pricing: Starts from $9 per month (for 100GB bandwidth).
KeyCDN
KeyCDN is a CDN with a different type of pricing structure. It charges one-flat rate for access to entire content delivery network. Their data centers are in America, Europe and Asia.
KeyCDN claims to offer the lowest price CDN service with prices starting from $0.04 / GB for first 10TB. Shared and custom SSL is offered for free with SSD optimized edge servers and real time display of CDN stats.
If you want to try out KeyCDN, then it offers 25GB of traffic to get started in a 30 days trial. Also they claim to offer 24/7 support, and will assist you in integrating and troubleshooting any problem.
KeyCDN features:
- CDN offered from multiple locations
- Instant purge
- RESTful API
- Real time usage reporting
- CDN stats in real time
- Image optimization service
- Fre SSL integration
- 30 day free trial
Pricing: $0.04/first 10TB
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon is a big name when it comes to cloud storage service, and Amazon’s CloudFront is no different as it is also a part of Amazon’s web services. It also integrates nicely with Amazon S3 cloud hosting service.
Amazon offers very competitive pricing, with pay as you go plans. You need to only pay for the content that you deliver through the network, without any up-front fees. The good news is that if you are just signing-up, then you can get 50 GB of data transfer each month, valid for a full year.
Some may find configuring Amazon CloudFront as a bit hard compared to other options, but don’t worry as we have a tutorial on how to configure Amazon CloudFront CDN on WordPress.
Amazon CloudFront features:
- Free 50 GB data transfer, per month for a year
- Pay as you go pricing
- Online support
- Spread across large number of locations
- CDN support over HTTPS
- Support for cookies
- Detailed reporting
- Developer tools and SDKs
Pricing: Free 50GB plan valid for a year, and then pay as you go pricing.
CDN77
CDN77 offers a very attractive set of features. It offers both, pay-as-you-go and high volume pricing plans, which means it will attract small website owners and also high traffic website owners.
CDN77 also makes use of brand new compression algorithm named as Brotli, introduced by Google in 2015. It offers better compression compared to its predecessor Zopfli.
This CDN can be easily configured using popular caching plugins like W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache. Therefore if you are using any of these plugins, then setting up CDN77 would be a breeze.
CDN77 features:
- Free SSL with your CNAME
- Good CDN coverage in America, Europe, and Asia
- HTTP/2 protocol support
- Hotlink protection
- 32 data centers across 5 continents and 26 countries
- Analyse traffic using real-time reports
- Brotli compression method
- 24/7 support (claimed)
- Very easy to configure
Pricing: 14 day free trial and then $35/TB.
CloudFlare
CloudFlare is a name that comes to the mind when we think about free CDN for WordPress. It has 79 total data centers around the world, and it also protects your website against online threats with its website application firewall (WAF) and DDoS protection.
Talking about pricing, then CloudFlare offers a free entry level plan, and its paid plans start from $20 per month. There’s also an official CloudFlare plugin which means it’s very quick to configure and implement on your site. It basically focuses on two important things; CDN and security of your site. With a free plan out there, you can test out this CDN and see how it works for you.
CloudFlare features:
- Global presence
- Firewall and DDoS protection
- Flat fee pricing, not charged by bandwidth usage
- Easy integration with WordPress
- Attractive entry level plan
Pricing: Free entry level plan, and paid plans starting from $20 per month.
So go ahead and choose a CDN provider that suits your needs. Let us know your thoughts on which CDN is best for your WordPress website in the comments section below.