Top 20 Content Delivery Network Providers

By Ghulam Abbas Last updated Jul 26, 2020 0

Content Delivery Network or Content Distribution Network (CDN) is a distributed web service. which’s goal is to provide content to thousands of end-users with high availability and high performance or in other words it improves page load times and increases global availability of the content.

Internet’s layer is called CDNs or in other words, Today Content Delivery Network involved in every portion of the Web included Web Objects (Text, Graphics, and Scripts), Downloadable objects (Media Files, Software, Documents), Application (Portals, e-commerce), Social Networks, Live Streaming Media.

Content Owners such as Media companies, e-commerce vendors, Popular Website owners such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Mashable, Envato and other sites are using CDN. They Pay the CDN Operator to distribute the content to their users. In return of the CDN pays ISPs, Carriers, and network operators for hosting their servers.

A CDN has Point of Presence (POPs) or data centres which are located in different locations around the globe. Inside the POP, thousands of Servers are located which helps to speed up the content. Although all the CDNs are not having the same amount of servers in the POPs depending on their Architecture.

When a Regular user tries to access a site without a Content Delivery Network it will go directly to the Web Host and the Web Host Servers All the Content to the visitors including the Html, scripts such as JavaScript, CSS images, videos, files for downloading. But if you are using a CDN, it pulls the content directly from the web host and then rebroadcast at over edged locations in different places where the POPs or data centres located.

A regular user tries to visit the site, they will be sent to the nearest location of the POPs all the files such as images, videos, and other stuff will load. When you have surge traffic, all that traffic is offloaded from your webserver to the CDN which means increased uptime and increased speed for all your visitors.

2018 Top 20 Content Delivery Network Providers list:

Akamai CDN
Quantil
BitGravity
Cloudflare
Level3
CDNSun
CDNetworks
EdgeCast Verizon
Limelight
Swarmify
Cachefly
Azure CDN
CDN77
Amazon CloudFront
Fastly CDN
Incapsula
KeyCDN
MaxCDN
OVH CDN
jsDeliver

Note: This article is based upon the Number of POPs of Every Company.

Top 20 Content Delivery Networks to Boost Website Speed

1. Quantil, Content Delivery Network

POPs: 700
Price: Contact the Company

Quantil is a Content Delivery Network provider Company with 700 POPs in different locations. It has Partnership with ChinaNetCenter. This company has the Most number of POPs and in 2019 they are going to increase it up to 2000 POPs worldwide. By which 10 of their POPs are available in North America, 16 in Asia, 5 in Africa, 7 in Europe, 4 in the Middle East, 3 in Oceania.

Quantil Products Are Video-Demands streaming, downloading, live streaming, website acceleration and more. Their Bandwidth is 35 Tbps with 1-second stream latency. Some of their features are HTTP/2, HTTPS, IPv4 and IPv6, Origin Pull, Caching Control for CDN and Clients, Purge Caching, Token Certification, Geo-Blocking, Hotlink Protection, IP white/blacklisting.

There are also other features but you need to configure them manually such as Changing propagation delay, Origin shield, Serve stale, API and log files. If you want to use the Custom Domain HTTPS or cert HTTPS, you have to pay extra. Unfortunately, there is no information about the Price, you need to contact the company manually.

2. BitGravity

POPs: 400
Price: Contact the Company

BitGraviry which was found in 2006 is a perfect choice for small business, which focus mostly Video Streaming, and which is owned by TATA Communication. It has features such as Origin Pull, Secure Token, Shared SSL, Custom SSL, DDoS Protection, Geo-blocking, Gzip and more.

Since this company is owned by TATA Communications before involving into the Content Delivery Network World, this company has already 400 POPs in 5 continents. By which 6 points of Presence are in American, 5 are in India and 3 of them are in Australia.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find information about the other Points of Presence, if you know Please tell us in the comment or visit the Technig Forum. All the features above which I said, it has the Real-Time Reporting, Traffic Information, Raw log within 24 hours. Since it comes for small Businesses it provides Static Object Delivery, Software Distribution, and Publishing Games.

If your site is HTTP, then it provides for you a free SSL so that your visitors visit your site with secure strength. Unfortunately, BitGravity has not provided any information about the Prices of the Content Delivery Network. If you want to know about the Price, then you have to contact the Company.

3. Cloudflare

POPs: 100
Price: Pro ($20 month per domain), Business ($200 per month per domain) and free for Personal Blogs.
Data Centers are located more than 117 countries worldwide.

Cloudflare which was founded in 2009 is currently the most used Content Delivery Network among other CDN providers. It is integrated with tons of Platforms included content management systems, control panels, cloud providers, eCommerce. Cloudflare can be used for WordPress, Magneto 2, Acquia, Rackspace, Microsoft Azure and more. It has a Plugin for WordPress which helps to accelerate the speed of the Site, Improving SEO, Protects against the DDoS attacks.

If you have just created an account it will scan your site for DNS Records which allows you to route your good visitors to the fast link and bad users to bad link, and set your server on CloudFlare, just visit the Cpanel of your Hosting and Add the Server location which they will give you at Scanning the site. When it comes to security it uses SSL, WAF, DDoS, API Protection, Brute Force Protection.

For Performance, it improves SEO and protects against DDoS attacks and WordPress-specific vulnerabilities for getting traffic to your site. When you visit the Cloudflare site without CDN it has Web Optimization, Load Balancing, Argo Smart Routing. I don’t it is right or no, but they have said that they have emerged all these features with CDN for Perfect Speed for a Site.

Setting a Content Delivery Network is so easy on the Cloudflare. So, easily we can say is that it is a global designed to optimize security, performance, and reliability.

4. Level3

POPs: 99
Price: Contact the Company

Level 3 is another company which Provides Content Delivery Network services for their clients. Level 3 has CDN POPs on all the continents and their Services mostly focuses on the Video and Large Content Delivery. Some of their features Are Small File Delivery, large File Delivery, Live Video, Video on Demand, Anti DDoS, Origin Pull, HTTP and HTTPS Support, CDN Caching, Purge Caching, Analytics, logs.

Customer Domain HTTPS and cert HTTPS, Token Authentication, Geo-Blocking, Origin Shield, are the services which will cost you extra. This company has 99 POPs by which 30 of them located in North America, 38 in Europe, 9 in Latin America, 8 in Asia, 5 in the middle east, 4 in Africa, and 1 in Oceania which is in Sydney. I searched their site but unfortunately, I couldn’t anything about the pricing, so If you want to use their CDN contact them.

5. CDNSun

POPs: 75
Price: Visit its site because It casts Per GB.

CDNSun is another company which was created in 2012. CDNSun has 75 points of Presences in a different part of the world. Although it seems new to the Content Delivery Network world it has the key features included Origin Pull, Origin Push, Instant Purge, Real-time Statistics, API, ALPN, HTTP/2, for security it has the Shared SSL, DDoS Protection, Secure Token with Custom SSL.

The best thing about the Datacenters is having SSD instead of HDD. CDNSun services are website acceleration, software & game delivery, live streaming and on-demand video streaming. When it comes to pricing it does not cast monthly or yearly, instead, it cost per GB as you spend with a set of the features which you want to use. Remember if you want to use the additional different set of the features then you have to pay for them individually.

6. CDNetworks

POPs: 62
Price: Available upon your Request

CDNetworks which was founded in 2000 is multinational Company in China, Russia, Asia with cloud-based features over 191 cities. In order to get files fast to the users, it uses the Cloud DNS and Storage, Load Balancing with real-time intelligence. CDNetworks is reliable for web performance such as mobile sites, responsive design, mobile App and finally Dynamic Servicing.

The way CDNetworks works is, that it combines or emerges markets such as China, Russia, and Asia with Global POPs to accelerate and secures websites and web Application. It also supports gaming networks with Video acceleration. When it comes to pricing it is available according to your demand, such you are using it for it a small business or large scale business worldwide. Completely, it has 62 POPs or Data Centers by which 30 of them located in Europe, 2 in the US, 5 in South American and places.

7. EdgeCast (Verizon)

POPs: 48
Price: Available on your Request

EdgeCast is known as the Innovation for speed, security, and scalability. Edgecast uses different types of technologies taking from DNS services, Load Balancing, Failover, Advanced Caching and more which helps to accelerate the Performance.

Also, EdgeCast uses a service called EdgeDirector which helps to manage to the DNS Services, Load Balancing, Failover, GeoIP, GeoDNS, GSlb, DNS service Outsource and more. Edgecast manages the network by increasing servers (Upgrading software and hardware) and area control for their customers as needed. Talking of security, it uses Web Application Firewall (WAF), Anti-DDoS protection, TLS encryption, Bot mitigation to protect your site at every level as possible. WAF is easy to set up, with Real-time monitoring on the WAF it allows you to filter your specific needs.

While in the second site the Anti-DDoS protection will automatically detect the threat for malicious activity, it also has an emergency team. With the HTTP Rate Limiting, it will protect your site from HTTP attacks.

8. Limelight

POPs: 48
Price: Prices are Depending on Your Traffic

Limelight Content Delivery network is known as the largest Private CDNs in the World which optimize delivery for Different HTTP and Streaming Protocols. It has a verity of Solutions such as File Distribution, Web Content Delivery network, Live Video and finally videos on Demand.

The Limelight has 4000 servers at 54 different places in the world by which 18 Content Delivery located in American. The Limelight Has Worked with different companies such as Amazon Unbox, Xbox, the Dallas Cowboys, MSNBC and more.

LimeLight Uses a service or a technology called LimelightDELIVER. LimelightDELIVER will optimize and deliver the content efficiently to the different device including desktop, smartphones, game consoles and more. Another service which they use is called LimelightSTREAM which provides a solid way to delivery streamed content to the uses in a perfect manner.

The final service which they use is called LimelightEXCHANGE. without those services, you are able to check the real-time data, Content requests, Perspective on time, location, and frequency for every content. If you want to use it CDN you have to request for CDN.

9. Swarmify

POPs: 42
Price: Starter ($19 /month), Premium ($49 Per Month), Pro ($99 Per Month)

Swarmify which was founded in 2013 which is based on the Bandwidth especially for Videos. Since this company is all about videos, it also offers you to install a SmartVideo Script on any website or as on many websites as you want.

The Video features are really powerful which is a Continuous streaming optimization which means that while playback it automatically switches between the delivery networks for every user. Other Features with SmartVideo are: it is able to view on any device, Maximum bitrate for users, Smart video tags.

Talking about he set up an account you have to create a SmartVideo account, then you have to insert the smart video script which they will provide for you. SmartVideo is Netflix streaming mode which is a professional technology. Other features of Swaremify are Predictive loading, Hive Caching, communication encrypted. And finally, it can be used for any Content Delivery Network or hosting solution.

10. Cachefly

POPs: 41
Price: $99 per month to $409 per month
It uses a Different type of CDN or Different type of Solution.
It is POPs Have Located over 80 Countries.

The Cachefly which was founded in 2002 was the first company to offer CDN service which was based on TCP anycast for routing, instead of DNS. Cachefly uses a dynamic content acceleration which is so good for performance especially if you are in small business.

The Cachefly has tons of customers including companies such as Adobe, Bank of America, LG, Virgin Gaming, Microsoft, Toyota and Cartoon Network and more. The other thing which makes this company different from others that it has Content Delivery Network types such as Multi CDN, Private/Hybrid CDN and it also uses custom CDN.

There are reasons that it attracted these companies using their CDN such as adding Perks, Seamless video streaming, object delivery for software distribution and updates and most important that big companies such as Microsoft, Adobe are using the Multi Content Delivery Network for their site. So Cachefly has unbeatable scalability, reliability, and performance.

11. Azure CDN

POPs: 36
Price: Visit its site because Prices are different according to location

Microsoft which was founded in 1975, tell now they have published many products and services. One of there is called Azure CDN. The Azure Content Delivery Network is different than other companies, it uses the other Networks CDN such as Akamai, Verizon (EdgeCast). Azure CDN’s infrastructure is similar to Amazon Web Services.

The Azure has 36 Point of Presences (POPs) in 36 different locations. As I said, since Azure uses other CDN Networks, their services are divided into 3 categories of Standard from Akamai, Standard from Verizon and Premium from Verizon. Although there are some services which Microsoft Casts Extra.

Some of their Content Delivery Network features are Fast purge caching, Uses IPv4/IPv6, HTTP/2 Support, Custom Domain SSL, Geo Filtering, DDoS Protection, Real-Time States, Dynamic Site Acceleration, Global Server Load Balancing (GSLB), Origin Pull, API, Gzip, Shared SSL and more. Prices for Azure CDN’s are different regarding the Service standard or Premium, not only that, but prices are also different according to the locations. Although they have named them Zones. Currently, they have 5 zones in different locations.

1: North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa
2: Asia Pacific (including Japan)
Zone 3: South America
4: Australia
Zone 5: India

12. CDN77

POPs: 32
Price: Contact the site because Prices are different upon the GB up to TB.

CDN77 which was founded in 2011 is pretty Good For desired people because everything is able to customized except for DNS Changes. The API is really powerful which has the ability to view the store logs, manage your Content Delivery Network with Analytics and data.

With Real-Time Security Protection, share your content Privately and Protect them with Encrypted data from External threats. Since it has the ability to use the HTTP/2 certification it also offers its customers a Free SSL certificate with All Content Delivery Network Resources.

Talking about other technologies It uses (Transport Layer Security) TLS 1.3, Brotli, DoDs Protection, Custom SSL Certificate, Secure Token URL, Geoblocking, Hotlinking Protection, Backup & Server Redundancy and more. Don’t Forget it also supports the CMS such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Opencart, Magneto and more.

13. Amazon CloudFront

POPs: 32
Price: 50 GB free for Year, after a year it is based on the storage.

One of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Is called the Amazon CloudFront, which is used to deliver or distribute the content such as HTML, CSS, PHP, images, videos, files, and more for better performance of the site.

Amazon Cloudflare can be used to deliver contents over HTTP or HTTPS. For streaming your content Amazon are using a feature called RTMP, although it is on-demand. Amazon CloudFront Uses Multi-Tried approach by which the content will be held for 11 regional caches.

There are some cases such as if the content is not cached it will check the closest edge location. With no cast, you can easily transfer your Data between the CloudFront and AWS Services and other services such as Amazon S3.

Another thing which Amazon uses is called certificate Manager which will create and deploy an SSL Certificate as many as you need. Talking about the Security it uses a Web Application Firewall, DDoS Protection and more. According to an investigation in July 2017, CloudFront took number 10 out of 24 CDN sites with the speed of 57ms.

Although it is better than other sites such as MaxCDN, CDN77, KeyCDN and more. When it comes to pricing, Amazon is very loyal to you. After Signing up it will give 50 GB Storage for your files for free for one year, with 200000 HTTP and HTTPS requests every month. So, in a year you can completely check out the Amazon CloudFront. When your Tier finished there is an Estimate Bill with no minimum fee.

14. Fastly

POPs: 29
Price: $50 per month

Fastly is another Content Delivery Platform which was launched in 2011 is similar to Cloudflare. It has many features including Streaming Media, Real-Time Caching, Delivery Accelerator, Origin Shield, Private Content Delivery Network, API, ALPN, Gzip, HTTP/2, Shared SSL, Raw Logs, DDoS Protection, Custom SSL and much more. With the Real-time caching and the delivery accelerator, speed and delivering contents are being confirmed to your site.

Since 2011, Fastly has worked with a variety of customers and the popular are Github, Buzzfeed, Dollar Shave Club, Wired, and Imgur. Talking of its network, it has 29 points of presence worldwide. With its 29 points of presence worldwide its presences are confirmed in the US, Australia & New Zealand, and Asia with no doubt. Fastly Pricing is divided into 2 different categories of Bandwidth and HTTP requests (per 10,000). Both Bandwidth and HTTP Request pricing depends on the location and visitors request.

However, the minimum price is $50 per month for less data transfer and it has a big amount of data transfer it will cost you more than $50 per month.

15. Incapsula

POPs: 29
Price: Pro ($59 per site, per month), Business ($299 per site, per month), For Enterprise contact the site.
Caching: Uses Dynamic caching technology with Intelligent Caching.

Incapsula which was also Founder in 2009 is cloud-based Application for delivering Platforms which uses Web Application Security, DDoS, Content caching, load balancing and more. When it comes to caching files it can cache the dynamically generated files with the Intelligent caching which has the custom cache Control.

Dynamic technology is pretty good which significantly improves cache utilization and it also can reduce the Bandwidth consumption. It also supports API and Rapid Content Switching. For Optimizing your site, it uses a full range of Content and variety of Networking Techniques such as file minification, automated compression, session reuse and TCP connection pre-pooling and more.

For Application Delivery, it rewrites forward requests with your network edge with providing different assets. It also supports the HTTP/2 Protocol. HTTP/2 which is called HTTP 2.0 is used World Wide Web but currently, the latest technology they are called HTTPS Port which usually called Secure Socket Layer).

Other companies such as Cloudflare and MaxCDN don’t have the ability to use the older technology, they only use SSL or HTTPS Port. Talking about the IP, without the IP Address Version 4 it also uses IP version 6, so simply it supports both IPs. Don’t forget about the Analytics it has the ability to view them. Talking about the security it uses Web Application Firewall, DDoS Protection, also you can use the custom security roles and two-factor authentication.

16. KeyCDN

POPs: 25
Price: According to your Traffic it will cast.

KeyCDN is another CDN company which was founded in 2012. It is the only company with the lowest price in the world of the CDN with other companies.

It has 25 POPs in Asia and Oceania, America and Europe. By which 20 of them are located in America and Europe and 6 of them are located in Asia and Oceania. It has tons of features including API, ALPN, Byte-Range Requests, Gzip, HTTP/2, Shared SSL, DDoS Protection, Real-Time Requests, Origin Pull and Origin Push.

The Origin features have the ability to upload content to the FTP account. Pricing is divided according to Traffic per month. if you visit its site you will notice under the Pricing Cost Calculator. You just need to enter the Traffic Per Month for your site and see the cost per month on the right side. So, if your business is a small business or a large business then KeyCDN is best for your Site. It has so many customers but some of them are MeteorJS, Ahrefs, Uploadcare, Sony Vaio.

17. MaxCDN

OPs: 19
Price: Entrepreneur($9/month), Professional ($299/month)
SSD Loaded Servers.
Its Servers are over 100 countries.

MaxCDN which was founded in 2009, is a truly Global CDN with SSD loaded Server over 100 countries worldwide. Currently, this company has 19 Global POPs with the best Routing.

MaxCDN is Almost available for every Platform included WordPress, Drupal, Magento with Plugins for every platform. With the custom control panel, you have complete access to the Real-Time Analytics, Instant Purging, Fully Documented API (Integrate users, zones with other stuff on an Applications).

When it comes to security you can manage the domains with built-in SSL (Secure Socket Layer), Transport Layer Security (TLS), IP Whitelisting or Spam Filters, Web application firewall (WAF), Distributed DoS attack (DDoS). For caching files, it uses Nginx Caching which is so good for static content on a server.

18. OVH CDN

This Company has 19 POPs.
Price: Starts with the €9.99 ex. VAT/month

OVH which was founded in 1999 is a French Company which offers Cloud-Computing, VPS, Dedicated Servers and many more web services. This company has 19 Point of Presence (POPs) in Asia, Europe, and America. BY which 7 of them located in Europe, 11 are located in North America, 1 in Japan.

It has many services such as Registering Domains, Web Hosting, Email Solutions, Office 365 and Finally SSL with CDN. When you sign up for OVH, by default it will manage and Deploy and it will renew the Security Updates. They are using 3 types of SSL Gateways, a free version, Advanced SSL and Enterprise SSL.

It uses load Balancing but it is not free for Free SSL. Some other features of this company are Anti-DDos level, attacked are blocked by a variety of Tools such as ICMP Echo Request Flood, IP Packet Fragment Attack, SMURF, IGMP Flood and more, Uses Caching but it can be customized manually. It can be managed by WebAPP or with a custom Control Panel.

19. jsDelivr

Price: Free
4 PoPs Worldwide.

jsDelivr which was founded in 2012 is a unique company than others, such as it is an Open Source, combines the power CDN companies such as MaxCDN and Cloudflare and the traffic is being load balanced on availability and performance for every user with Cedexis.

The Cedexis is a company which Provides predictive, and cost-optimal routing for your applications, videos, Data Center and content across CDNs with Cloud networks. The reason why jsDelivr is using CDN is easy to imagine such as If NetDNA Servers, all the Files will be stored on the NetDNA and if you want to access them you have to use the whitelisted IP addresses.

NetDNA is a growing CDN with 130% annual growth with new customers and 13000 companies worldwide. Talking about the jsDelvr Servers, it has 42 PoPs or Datacenter with DDoS Protection, 2FA Worldwide by which 24 of them are the primary DNS Provider and 22 of them are the secondary DNS Provider. And Finally, it mirrors with npm, GitHub, WordPress plugins, and custom endpoints for several other projects with special requirements.

20. Akamai

Note: According to me, Akamai is the best choice, because IT has worked with Different big Companies. Since Its POPS are not mentioned that’s in this it is in last.

POPs: Not Mentioned
Price: Contact the company for Prices.
Controls 30% of Web Traffic.
Its POPs are located in 130 Countries.

The Akamai which is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) & Cloud Computing Services which was founded in 1998 is an Interesting company which goes beyond the CDN services with the Improved Website Performance.

The Akamai has over 240,000 Servers in 130 Countries and more than 1600 networks worldwide. It has more than 7000 customers some the customers are the big companies such as Adobe, Apple, Audi, BMW Japan, FedEx, Fujitsu, IBM Corporation MySpace, Nintendo, Sony Ericsson and more.

For Business companies, Akamai is the Best Company because it uses EdgeControl which is a web-based client Portal that delivers the Tools for an online Business. that’s the reason why companies such as Adobe, Audi and other companies use this Company’s CDN.

Another reason is that Akamai delivers 15 to 30% of All Web-Traffic. or in other words, we can say that it delivers nearly 3 trillion Internet interactions per day. Talking about the price it is available according to your Demand.

Conclusion:

I hope this article was helpful to You. If you have any idea or suggestion Please comment under the article or visit the Forum.