If you have ever used one then I am sure you are excited about their great results. CDN is also known as Pu Network. The acronym CDN simply means Content Delivery Network. In technologically advanced parts of the world, the average internet speed is more than 10 Mbs, and as a result, people prefer using CDN. The CDNs help users to boost things up and celebrate a remarkable speed of up to 1 Gps. It is also a noble idea to have your site powered by CDN because it makes your site to become super fast and also rank higher in search engines.

Why a CDN

More often new websites have only one source of origin. This is not a big issue when you still starting and do not have many visitors on your site. It is very important to note that as traffic increases on your website, the time taken to load your website will also increase. It is a very bad experience waiting for a website to load and thus people don’t like such websites with slow speeds. And this is the main reason for using CDN, it helps in speeding up your website content delivery by transmitting the content from the server that is closest to your visitor. This will, in turn, reduce your loading time, hence great results are achieved.

Best CDN Service Providers

The results accrued from using CDN are very fascinating, but the problem comes when you see their price tags. Some of them are quite expensive but great thanks to some Free CDN service providers who let us use their network free of charge.

Here is a list of 15 best and free CDN service providers;

1. Incapsula

Official Website for Incapsula

Incapsula is one of the most used CDN providers since their entry to CDN business in the year 2009. It supports application delivery from the cloud; website security, DDoS protection, Global CDN, Load balancing among other numerous benefits. It takes about 5 minutes to activate this service and they offer both premium and free plans for your websites.

Pros of Using Incapsula

  1. It helps in accelerating outgoing traffic, through their globally powered CDN.
  2. It provides users with the actual analysis of incoming traffic while blocking multi-Gigabit and DDoS attacks.
  3. It has a free plan, therefore, users can enjoy some of these benefits free of charge.
  4. It routes the user’s website traffic through their globally distributed network and high-speed servers.
  5. It also supports WordPress plugin which provides you with accurate IP Address information for all the comments posted on your site.

Cons of Using Incapsula

  1. It is not compatible with Cloudflare. You can use both of them at the same time.
  2. The premium version which has advanced features is very expensive.

2. Cloudflare

Cloudflare Official Website

Cloudflare is one of the 15 best CDN service providers that is well known by WordPress users. Cloudflare has been one of the dominant companies in the CDN industry since 2009.

There are several hosting companies like SiteGround, which provide Cloudflare CDN optimized server set up at zero cost.

Pros of Using Cloudflare

  1. It has a lifetime free plan that provides protection and boosts the performance of your website.
  2. It’s powerful 115 datacentres, ensures it delivers high speed, efficiency, and protection against DDoS attacks.
  3. Its WordPress plugins are used in more than 10,000 active websites.

Cons of Using Cloudflare

  1. The premium plans ( Pro, Business, and Enterprise) options that have all the advanced features are expensive.

3. jsDelivr

Official Website for jsDelivr

jsDelivr is a completely free public CDN where web developers can upload and host their files. It is unique since it hosts java scripts files that use the popular WordPress Plugin.

Pros of Using jsDelivr

  1. It can be used to host libraries that are not hosted by Google.
  2. jsDelivr is completely free.
  3. It has WordPress plugins which are very beneficial to WordPress users.

Cons of Using jsDelivr

  1. It does not have current CDN developments since it has not been updated for a couple of years.

4. Bootstrap CDN

Official Website for Bootstrap CDN

Bootstrap CDN is among the 15 best CDN service providers. Bootstrap CDN is a widely used framework to power millions of websites across the world. StackPath hosts Bootstrap CDN libraries.

Pros of Using Bootstrap CDN

  1. It supports Javascript plugin which helps in dismissing any inline alerts.
  2. It is an open-source toolkit for developing CSS, HTML, and JS.
  3. The premium version has extra themes toolkit with new components and plugins.

Cons of Using Bootstrap CDN

  1. The premium version which has advanced features is expensive.

5. Photon by Jetpack

Official Website for Jetpack

A good percentage of WordPress users are familiar with Jetpack. Their recent upgrade which incorporated a free CDN service called Photon has made it make it in the list of 15 best CDN providers.

Photon serves users site’s images through their highly powered WordPress grid. It easy to start using Photon, all you need is to download Jetpack and activate its Photon option.

Pros of Using Photon

  1. It is always on security.
  2. High level of performance.
  3. Code-free customization.
  4. It has downtime monitoring and automated spam filtering.

Cons of using Photon

  1. Despite having a free version, the more advanced features which are very essential are in the premium plans.

6. AWS Cloudfront

Official Website for ASW CloudFront

Amazon CloudFront is among 15 best content delivery network services that securely transmit data, applications, videos and APIs to customers across the world with low tenancy, super fast speed all under user-friendly environment. Amazon CloudFront is widely used by the likes of Slack and Spotify.

Amazon CloudFront has a free plan that allows users to use it for a year at zero cost. It is easy to kick start, all you need is WP Offload S3 lite plugin which accommodates the integration of Amazon S3 storage, and Amazon CloudFront with users WordPress.

Pros of Using Amazon CloudFront

  1. It has a free tier that users can use without paying.
  2. It works seamlessly with other supplementary services such as AWS Shield for DDoS mitigation.
  3. No upfront fee required for long term contracts
  4. It is highly programmable.
  5. Fast and global.

Cons of Using Amazon CloudFront

  1. Users are limited to 50GB outbound transfer over the trial period.

7. Swarmify

Swarmify Official Website

Swarmify was sometime back known as Swarm CDN. This CDN service provider is a peer to peer network that offers up to 10GB bandwidth in their free tier, although it has premium versions that have better options. Swarmify is unique it works quite differently as compared to other CDNs available.

Pros of Using Swarmify

  1. It supports automatic youtube conversions.
  2. It is buffer-free.
  3. It very simple to install.
  4. Provides optimized encoding for all devices.

Cons of Using Swarmify

  1. The video CDN is only available for the premium tiers.

8. Google Cloud CDN

Official Google Cloud CDN

Google Cloud CDN is among 15 best CDN service providers due to its unique features that reduce network latency, offloading origins, and it also reduces serving cost. Just like AWS, Google Cloud CDN also offers $ 300 credits for a period of one year.

Pros of Using Google Cloud CDN

  1. It has global reach since it catches over 90 sites worldwide.
  2. It is seamlessly integrated; Cloud CDN is integrated with Google Cloud.
  3. It supports media up to 5TB.
  4. It gives you, your personal SSL/TLS certificate to secure your content.

Cons of Using Google Cloud CDN

  1. It is quite expensive.

9. Microsoft Azure CDN

Official Microsoft Azure CDN

Microsoft Azure CDN is also very handy when it comes to computing services like; storage, server, networking, and cloud. Azure is affordable, flexible and reliable. It allows a 30 day trial period with $ 200 worth of credit. Azure is available in multiple data centers across the world.

Pros for Using Microsoft Azure CDN

  1. It offers a high level of security to its users.
  2. It has a commendable global scale.
  3. Increased productivity
  4. The bandwidth of up to 15GB.

Cons of Using Microsoft Azure CDN

  1. The cost of using it is expensive.
  2. Its bandwidth is limited to 15GB only.

10. Imgur

Official Imgur Website

Imgur is popularly known for image hosting. Imgur is fast and reliable. If you kick starting and you need a simple way to save your server bandwidth while supplementing with other popular image sharing sites like Flickr then Imgur is the best option for you.

Pros for Using Imgur

  1. High global scale.
  2. It is fast and reliable.
  3. It’s free of charge to use.
  4. Easy to use as compared with other CDNs.

Cons of Using Imgur

  1. It does not accept media above 1GB.
  2. Each account is limited to 50 photos upload per hour.

11. Google Hosted Libraries

Official Website for Google Hosted Libraries

Google Hosted Libraries is a stable, high-speed, reliable and globally available content distribution network for most popular Javascript libraries.  Google Hosted Libraries is a very handy tool for WordPress developers since they can use their themes and plugins.

Pros for Using Google Hosted Libraries

  1. It is a free hosting CDN service provider.
  2. Google instantly updates the current technological advancements of the libraries.
  3. It allows parallel downloads
  4. Chances of cache-hit are increased

Cons for Using Google Hosted Libraries

  1. CDNs do crash.
  2. Hosting files in an extra domain requires an additional DNS to resolve it.

12. Cdnjs

Official Cdnjs Website

Cdnjs is among the 15 best CDN service providers. Cdnjs is among the free open source CDN service providers built to make life more easier for developers. Cdnjs is sponsored by UserApp, CloudFlare, and Angolia. It hosts over 100 libraries and it is used by over 320,000 websites.

Pros of Using Cdnjs

  1. Fast delivery of content.
  2. It accommodates more simultaneous users.
  3. It has a free tier that allows users to enjoy the benefits at zero cost.
  4. It provides enhanced security.

Cons of Using Cdnjs

  1. The more advanced features are in premium tiers hence limiting users who can not afford the premiums.

13. MaxCDN

Official Website for MaxCDN

MaxCDN is also very popular among CDN users. Their reliability and good results are so impressive. I have seen very big popular websites using MaxCDN so they are top on the list when it comes to CDN service provision.

Pros of Using MaxCDN

  1. It is user-friendly hence easy to use.
  2. It speeds up your website.
  3. It gives good results in WordPress when integrated with W3 total cache.
  4. Highly suitable for online business.
  5. If you choose the annual plan you get two months free as a reward.

Cons for Using MaxCND

  1. It has no free plan option.
  2. It has some restrictions when it comes to bandwidth and storage.
  3. You have to pay to get the basic features.

14. KeyCDN

Official Website for KeyCDN

KeyCDN is among the 15 best CDN service providers. KeyCDN is a high-performance content delivery network. It is very affordable and you can alternatively start with the free trial option.

Pros of Using KeyCDN

  1. It has a large global network.
  2. It has powerful features like HTTP/2, TLS 1.3, Brotli and many others.
  3. Optimized hardware crafted with an advanced 100% SSD coverage, TCP stack among many other ideal features.
  4. It is simple and easy to use.

Cons of Using KeyCDN

  1. It is a bit expensive since users have to pay for them to enjoy the service

15. RackSpace

Official Website for RackSpace

RackSpace is a common name because of remarkable performance. It is unique since it offers a variety of services, from developing a website server for a content management system, hosting of email servers, or creating a system backup.

Pros of Using RackSpace

  1. It offers enhanced security for your website since it reduces the risks of cyberattacks.
  2. It has affordable and flexible pricing plans.
  3. It has consistent and reliable uptime.
  4. Excellent customer support

Cons of Using RackSpace

  1. The elastic IP in its setup is not working.

Conclusion

Content delivery networks are currently very popular and they have benefited many websites. Funny enough even websites like Google and Facebook use the CDNs so that they can speed up their websites.

Our list above is comprised of both paid and free CDN service providers so it’s your responsibility to choose the best option among them.

We hope this article has been of great help to you, you free to share and comment in case you have any questions.