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To be successful, an Internet business needs a CDN partner who can quickly and easily take over the entire infrastructure load.
But how do you choose a contractor to whom you can entrust your data, given the ever-increasing technical requirements of infrastructure?
How is content for latency-sensitive services properly stored and delivered?
How can you reduce capital and operating costs?
How can you make your business more profitable and your customers happier?
We’ve prepared a comprehensive checklist to help you decide on a CDN provider.
Different types of content require different solutions. One bandwidth is required for static files but for games and streams you need much more.
If most of your content is static, choose a provider with a wide network of points of presence (PoPs). It will be an advantage if the provider places their equipment in the best data centers and the largest traffic exchange points. This way you can be sure of the quality distribution of your content.
Compared to other applications, online games need maximum bandwidth and consistent performance, as even milliseconds of latency can completely ruin the gaming experience, and you’ll lose players forever.
To prevent this from happening, look at CDN providers who have experience providing infrastructure to major game developers and publishers. Such providers can deliver heavy content with minimal delays and relieve the load on servers during traffic surges. This can be done, for example, by using origin shielding technology which additionally protects the origin server from high loads when there’s a large number of requests from CDN servers.
Content delivery networks that specialize in streaming video and video on demand (VOD) in real time need to be able to deliver it without buffering.
The task of a CDN provider is to ensure high-quality content delivery to the regions and countries where your customers are located.
Choose a service provider with the closest PoP to your users, as this will provide a consistently high download speed of content to your customers.
Look for providers with developed infrastructure and minimal response times.
The first time a user accesses your content, it has not yet been cached. The content delivery network must receive data from the origin storage servers, wherever they are. This happens when a user first requests a specific file.
To ensure the fastest delivery of content to the CDN cache, choose a provider that can route traffic and bypass internet downloads that can interfere with delivering content.
Choose a provider that allows you to securely deliver your data using Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates to create secure HTTP connections, and also allows you to use your own SSL certificate or get a free Let’s Encrypt certificate for confidential communication between clients and servers.
Choose vendors that offer the following options:
A quality CDN provider offers its customers:
Often, large CDN providers don’t offer customers the option of signing up by themselves. In order to create an account, the user must contact a manager through whom the integration with the service is carried out.
However, it is far more effective to customize the server yourself according to your needs. Choose a provider that allows you to manage all the features through a public API or interfaces in your personal account. As a rule, all settings have hints and links to articles in a knowledge base if you want to know more.
It’s also important that you can change the settings yourself at any time without the need to contact technical support—this will save you a lot of time.
CDN prices vary depending on the amount of traffic.
Some content delivery networks offer free plans for indie developers and small businesses with a monthly traffic limit of up to 100 GB.
Enterprise businesses are often presented with special offers at attractive prices.
Some service providers publish comparative pricing data from public sources.
Gcore | Fastly | Akamai | EdgeCast | CDN77 | AWS CloudFront | |
Free | + | − | − | − | − | − |
1 TB | €25 | From €111 | ~€63 | €45 | From €43** | From €73*** |
5 TB | €100 | From €554 | ~€297 | From €59** | From €210** | From €367*** |
10 TB | €150 | From €1 108 | ~€585 | From €117** | ~€280 | From €734*** |
* As of December 1, 2020.
** For the USA and Europe.
*** For North America, Europe, and Israel.
The expertise of the technical support staff of a CDN provider directly reflects the quality of services. Ideally, a support specialist should have deep knowledge and extensive experience, instantly answering customer questions via online chat or by phone.
If you are looking for a CDN, Gcore invites you to take advantage of a 14-day free trial period.
We guarantee: