Best CDN Services to Slash Website Load Times in 2023

Cloudflare is one of the most famous CDN providers, and for a good reason. It’s a go-to solution for small businesses, individual bloggers, large enterprises, and professionals, as it can scale to meet the needs of corporate networks, secure APIs, and web applications. 

This CDN provider has multiple products, such as SASE, application services, network services, a platform for developers, zero trust services, and more. Both the application and zero trust services have free plans, including a free SSL certificate.

Cloudflare has great coverage, with data centers in more than 100 countries and 275 cities around the globe. The infrastructure can process around 36 million HTTP requests per second.   

Unlike some other CDN providers, Cloudflare offers a highly functional free plan. Anyone can reliably use the service with unlimited bandwidth and get DDoS protection with an easy-to-use interface. 

So, do you even need a premium subscription if you’re running something like a hobby blog? 

The answer is yes, you’ll need it at some point. Having a fast CDN like Cloudflare can improve your SEO with image optimization, improve your pages for mobile viewing, add a web application firewall, PCI DSS 3.2 compliance, and provide 100% uptime.

With Fastly, you don’t get unlimited bandwidth like you do with Cloudflare, and the company is much less transparent with its pricing plans. 

The base price is $50 per month, and then there’s a pay-as-you-go fee of $0.12 for the first 10 TB for North America. Expect that you’ll have to submit a request to get an exact quote for your needs and website traffic.

This content delivery network company includes a number of useful features in its Essential package, including a WAF, DDoS protection, TLS encryption, easy updates, and the option to deploy on any type of infrastructure, including cloud, data centers, or hybrid setups. 

Fastly is convenient for providing network services that include websites with media content streaming. If you’re running an eCommerce site and you rely on online transactions, Fastly can cache and deliver content in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard - PCI DSS. 

If you need clarification regarding Fastly’s offers, you can always consult some of the experts working there to see what’s the right service for you. You can also take advantage of a limited free trial. We recommend trying the service out for yourself before deciding on any of the paid plans on offer. 

Bunny.net is a fast-growing CDN company founded in 2014. It currently powers more than 1 million websites, and the content delivery network handles more than 650 billion requests per month. Bunny.net recently received series A funding, which will be used to improve the user experience further and add new features to the network. 

Bunny.net has a range of products, and Bunny CDN is just one of them. With an 80+ Tbps network and servers that use NVMe drives, the service can significantly reduce latency and speed up the load time of your websites. Bunny.net directly connects your visitors to 14 Tier 1 transit providers and over 3,000 ISPs. 

The CDN service provider also includes comprehensive security measures. You can set up geo-blocking and network limits, and Bunny.net also includes DDoS and hotlinking protection as well. 

Another great feature of Bunny.net is access to reports and analytics regarding your traffic. Through a user-friendly control panel, you can measure performance, monitor traffic, and get access to real-time stats for your website. 

With more than 110 locations, Bunny.net is a great option for anyone who’s in the market for a CDN, and if you’re still not convinced, there’s a 14-day free trial available to try it out for yourself. 

StackPath is a Texas-based edge server platform offering plenty of solutions for anyone looking for a CDN vendor. StackPath also has the expertise of industry veterans from companies such as Highwinds, Fireblade, and MaxCDN. 

With StackPath, you can reduce load time for your APIs, improve SEO, and reduce the bandwidth consumption on your dedicated servers. Even if your server is hosting large files, such as software installation files or high-resolution videos. Users can download files in segments, and StackPath doesn't impose any file size limits. 

StackPath can mitigate any DDoS attacks on your website, in addition to protecting your server from a request overload. StackPath’s Origin Shield balances the load between multiple Points of Presence, so if there’s an issue with connectivity with one edge server, another one automatically handles the requests. 

The provider also delivers SSL certification from PoPs, further reducing the workload from your original server. On top of that, you get a free EdgeSSL certificate for each website or web application you add to the CDN or WAF service on StackPath.

StackPath covers a smaller number of locations compared to some other CDN vendors, but it makes up for it with edge servers that won’t be overloaded with requests as easily.

Sucuri is more than just a CDN service, as it offers website security solutions such as malware scanning and removal, hack protection, security scans, and more. However, if you’re in the market for a CDN with a firewall, you won’t be disappointed with Sucuri. 

With this provider, your cached website will most often have load speeds improved by 70%. The company guarantees that your website will be reliably accessible, as the CDN has multiple redundancies that will prevent any interruptions from making it unavailable. This fast CDN can be used with multiple platforms such as WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, Magneto, and phpBB.

More importantly, you can significantly improve the security of your website with Sucuri. It offers great DDoS protection, and if your site is under a DDoS attack, you can restrict access to the Admin panel for your whitelisted IP address. 

If your server host didn’t provide you with a free SSL certificate, you get one automatically with a Business or Professional subscription plan. Sucuri is easy to set up, as only a DNS change and access to web server credentials are required.  

If you’re also looking for an affordable and reliable cloud backup service, you’ll be pleased to know that this is also in Sucuri’s repertoire. For a small monthly fee, you can maintain a cloud backup and roll back your website to any point in the last 90 days. 

Overall, Sucuri has several plans on offer to suit the needs of businesses of all sizes, including a firewall and a cheap CDN service.

CacheFly is one of the best content delivery networks for delivering video content, including live broadcasts, with less than one second of latency. It has more than 50 PoPs worldwide, making it perfect for streaming. 

The experienced team behind CacheFly started in 1999, and now it has customers among renowned companies and corporations such as Microsoft, LG, Adobe, P&G, Vodafone, and many more. 

If you’re looking to expand your business in some of the emerging markets such as South America, CacheFly can greatly help you out with establishing a responsive website. The Essential package is great for small businesses, and it covers 10 TB bandwidth monthly, up to ten websites, and it includes standard customer support. 

With Growth and Performance subscriptions, you receive managed CDN solutions, priority support, dedicated account managers, and many other benefits. 

Some notable features offered by this CDN provider include SSO, 2FA, storage optimization, and many custom options you can tinker with to have your CDN tailored specifically for your needs. 

You can even get the first month for free, but you’ll have to contact CacheFly directly to receive a quote. The company has flexible billing terms and doesn’t require you to sign a long-term contract, so you can try CacheFly’s global content delivery network without any risk.