Top 10 Content Delivery Network (CDN) Providers in 2021 - Spiceworks (2024)

A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is defined as an ecosystem of servers and data centers spread across the world that helps deliver content at ultra-low latency while supporting many concurrent users. This article discusses the key features to look for in a CDN solution and shortlists the top ten providers in this domain.

Table of Content

• 5 Key Must-Have Features of a Content Delivery Network in 2021
• Top 10 CDN Providers You Should Consider in 2021

5 Key Must-Have Features of a Content Delivery Network in 2021

A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is an ecosystem of servers and data centers spread across the world that helps deliver content at ultra-low latency while supporting many concurrent users.

As we spend more and more time online – consuming web apps, online content, on-demand video, digital publications, etc. – a robust content delivery network (CDN) is required to support this delivery and consumption mechanism at the backend. CDN ensures that the content created by enterprises reaches users without any loss in quality, at high speeds, and with minimal downtime.

In addition, a CDN solution can enable additional capabilities like performance monitoring, optimization, and security to provide you with an end-to-end content distribution solution. There are five features you need to achieve this:

Features of content delivery network provider

1. Global scale: The network must be present in every region you wish to penetrate. The provider can address this via its own data centers and servers by partnering with a public cloud or a local carrier, or even through virtual machines.
2. Low latency: Latency refers to the interval between data origination and data delivery at consumption endpoints, essentially referring to the seed of content delivery. A CDN can minimize latency by positioning its centers near the user and via routing optimization.
3. Security: Online content can be exposed to various threats, which is why you need stringent security measures. In this context, support for hypertext transfer protocol secure (HTTPS) is a prerequisite, and you can have firewalls, threat intelligence, and security analytics as well.
4. Cloud compatibility: The CDN should help deliver content from any storage environment across public, private, hybrid, and multi-cloud. Additionally, you should be able to host the CDN on the cloud for more accessible management.
5. Advanced analytics: CDN metrics can reveal important insights into website performance, audience behavior, and network bottlenecks. You should be able to view key performance indicators (KPIs) in real-time or in near-real-time.

Now that you know the key features of a CDN solution, let us discuss the top ten solutions in this segment.

Also Read: 10 Best Content Management Systems (CMS) Software in 2021

Top 10 CDN Providers You Should Consider in 2021-2022

Let us now look at the top CDN platforms and solutions that satisfy the above criteria.

Disclaimer: These listings are based on publicly available information and include vendor websites that sell to mid-to-large enterprises. Readers are advised to conduct their own final research to ensure the best fit for their unique organizational needs.

1. Akamai

Overview: Akamai is a leading CDN company founded in 1998. It’s been publicly traded since 2001 and leverages its intelligent edge platform to support enterprise content distribution via multiple clouds. Akamai’s flagship platform caters to various use cases, from web performance optimization to global media delivery, security, and even industry-specific solutions for network operators.

Meant for: Akamai is best suited for content providers of every size.

Key features: The key features of Akamai include the following:

• Global scale: Akami is present in 130+ countries and has alliances with 1700+ local networks worldwide with dedicated regions for media delivery and storage.
• Low latency: It supports ultra-low latency (ULL) through Akamai’s chunked transfer encoding (CTE) feature, reducing latency and the overall transfer time for live-streamed media.
• Security: Akamai offers a host of dedicated security solutions for protecting your websites, APIs, specific web pages, and web applications. It also supports scalable cloud security to protect CDN from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
• Cloud compatibility: It is compatible with all environments, including on-premise, hybrid cloud, and multi-clouds.
• Advanced analytics: It provides detailed media analytics for insights into video streaming quality and software delivery, including Quality of Service (QoS) Monitor and Audience Analytics features.

USP: Akamai is one of the oldest CDN providers in the market and continues to retain its leadership, even amid the rise of next-gen competitors. It can handle millions of concurrent users and supports large-scale content delivery such as the Star Network.

Pricing: Akamai is priced as per individual implementation.

Editorial comments: If you are in the business of delivering content via the web or traditional channels, Akamai should be among the first options you consider.

2. Amazon CloudFront

Overview: Cloudfront is a CDN offering powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), first launched in 2008. It uses AWS’s global infrastructure, including Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, and Elastic Load Balancing systems, to deliver high-quality content. Amazon CloudFront has a developer-friendly environment, ideal for those who require deep customizations and programmable edge computing.

Meant for: CloudFront is best suited for OTT content providers and digital media companies.

Key features: The key features of Amazon CloudFront include the following:

• Global scale: It has 225+ points of presence (PoPs) linked via the AWS backbone, which is a private network built on 100 GbE metro fiber cables across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, and the Mediterranean, Red Sea, and South China Seas.
• Low latency: It offers ultra-low latency performance, approximately 10% faster than the average latency across CDNs as per tests by AWS.
• Security: It integrates with AWS Shield Advanced and AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF), in addition to the availability of AWS Shield Standard by default.
• Cloud compatibility: It integrates with your existing AWS services and developer tools.
• Advanced analytics: Rich analytics are available through Amazon CloudFront monitoring, and you can receive near-real-time alerts via Amazon CloudWatch.

USP: CloudFront uses one of the most popular cloud infrastructures in the world. It boasts of very low latency and excellent support for developer requirements.

Pricing: There are three options – pay-as-you-go, the CloudFront Security Savings Bundle, and custom pricing.

Editorial comments: Enterprises already leveraging the AWS cloud infrastructure should consider CloudFront as a powerful and easy-to-integrate CDN solution.

3. Azure CDN

Overview: Like AWS, Microsoft also offers content delivery capabilities via the Azure cloud infrastructure. It is primarily meant for website development and supports media use cases such as online streaming, gaming, etc. Azure CDN accelerates dynamic content that cannot be retained in a cache through its sophisticated routing optimization technology.

Meant for: It is best suited for software companies and small to mid-sized mixed-media providers.

Key features: The key features of Azure CDN include the following:

• Global scale: It has POP’s across North America, South America, Europe, Africa, India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Australia, and New Zealand. Further locations are available via partnership with Akamai.
• Low latency: It enables low latency and high-capacity CDN, aided by partnerships with Akamai and Verizon to further aid speedy content delivery.
• Security: It offers protection against DDoS attacks and invests over $1 billion annually in cybersecurity research.
• Cloud compatibility: It can be hosted in Azure or any other environment. It is natively integrated with relevant Azure services such as Web Apps, Media Services, Storage, and Cloud Services.
• Advanced analytics: It uncovers insights into customer engagement with content, asset cache, and real-time traffic.

USP: Azure’s CDN partners with two of the world’s largest media delivery providers – Akamai and Verizon. This extends its CDN capabilities far beyond its own infrastructure and technology.

Pricing: Azure CDN is priced as per your zone of operation, and the partner-powered features you choose, as well as content volumes and custom content flows via the Microsoft Rules Engine.

Editorial comments: Azure CDN is extremely developer-friendly, and the Rules Engine empowers you to define specific performance benchmarks to optimize the delivery of various asset types.

4. CacheFly

Overview: Founded in 2002, CacheFly is a pure-play CDN company known for developing the world’s first CDN that uses transmission control protocol (TCP) combined with anycast methodology. The company has built a robust architecture for delivering digital platforms, contempt, and services anywhere in the world, with a particular focus on mobile optimization.

Meant for: CacheFly is best suited for digital-native companies operating in specific geographies.

Key features: The key features of CacheFly include the following:

• Global scale: It has 50+ global PoPs, serving 3500+ customers in over 80 countries.
• Low latency: CacheFly enables < 1-second ultra-low latency video streaming via its WebSocket-based solution and Live Video Workflow.
• Security: It has a range of cybersecurity capabilities in the CacheFly Security Suite, including DDoS prevention, bot mitigation, and more.
• Cloud compatibility: It is compatible with multi-cloud environments across AWS’ S3, Azure Storage, and Google Cloud Storage.
• Advanced analytics: It supports real-time reporting and historical analytics on website traffic, content speeds, user downloads, etc.

USP: CacheFly claims to have some of the best performance benchmarks in the industry with speeds that are 30% faster than other majors CDNs, a 98% cache hit ratio and 100% availability in the past twelve months as per internal tests.

Pricing: CacheFly starts at $595 per month for startups, with separate packages for global enterprises, companies operating in remote regions, and for managed services.

Editorial comments: While it has fewer POPs than other CDN providers, CacheFly is a compelling option for businesses in hard-to-reach areas such as south and central America, remote parts of Australia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and others.

5. Cloudflare

Overview: Established in 2009, Cloudflare has rapidly grown in popularity as a leading infrastructure provider. The World Economic Forum recognizes it as a Technology Pioneer, among other accolades. Cloudflare offers a fast and secure global network for static and dynamic content delivery.

Meant for: Users with any scale of requirement, from independent professionals to large enterprises, can use Cloudflare.

Key features: The key features of Cloudflare include the following:

• Global scale: It has data centers in 200 cities across 100+ countries and supports approximately 25 million online properties.
• Low latency: It drives ultra-fast content delivery and intelligent routing of content requests along the fastest path using the Argo Smart Routing feature.
• Security: You can gain from a complete suite of security solutions across application, network, and user levels, including threat intelligence, web application firewalls, and secure access service edge (SASE).
• Cloud compatibility: It works on any cloud infrastructure with a dedicated cloud firewall for content security.
• Advanced analytics: It offers insights on website cache via website performance dashboards. You can filter data as per parameters like hostnames, missed cache URLs, etc.

USP: One of Cloudflare’s major differentiators is that it supports the latest generation of HTTP/3 protocol, which was introduced in June 2021. This enables the usage of Quick UDP Internet Connections or QUIC in place of the older TCP, which is faster and more secure.

Pricing: Cloudflare is available in four plans – Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise, starting at $20 per month.

Editorial comments: If you’re looking for a flexible, affordable solution to support website content delivery (i.e., non-media use cases), Cloudflare would be a good choice.

6. CDN77

Overview: CDN77 is a content delivery network provider that’s focused on live and on-demand use cases. The company was founded in 2011 and handles some of the most complex content requirements today, from ad-hoc education content for Udemy to high-quality imaging for the Hubble Space Telescope.

Meant for: CDN77 is best suited for video-on-demand and live-streaming platforms.

Key features: The key features of CDN77 include the following:

• Global scale: It has 35 POPs across six continents and delivers 2-3% of the world’s internet traffic during peak periods.
• Low latency: It offers direct access to 14 top transit providers and 3000+ local internet service providers (ISPs) for low latency delivery in any location.
• Security: It enables secure connections via HTTPS. Additional security features include token-based signed URLs, proxy servers, whitelisting and blacklisting, and content theft prevention.
• Cloud compatibility: It is compatible with any hosting environment and ships with its own cloud-based CDN storage (free up to 50GB).
• Advanced analytics: CDN777’s real-time analytics are updated every five minutes. It has a powerful dashboard for insights on traffic consumption, bandwidth capacity, performance overview, and billing.

USP: CDN77 has two major USPs. First, it has a Clients Solutions & Engineering team to tailor your CDN setup. Second, it has a proprietary DDoS protection capability powered by machine learning (ML).

Pricing: CDN77 has preset monthly plans for up to 150TB, custom monthly plans between 150TB and 50 PB, and high volume plans for 50PB+. Pricing starts at $199 per month.

Editorial comments: Apart from its other features, CDN77’s pricing transparency makes it a compelling solution for companies of every size looking to get started with the technology.

7. Fastly

Overview: Fastly offers an edge cloud platform meant for web content and web app optimization. The offering is segmented into three parts – Deliver, Secure, and Compute – or you could leverage the full edge cloud platform to action a configurable CDN in a serverless environment.

Meant for: It is best suited for digital mixed-media companies and online publications.

Key features: The key features of Fastly include the following:

• Global scale: It has POPs across North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, with multiple POPs in major cities.
• Low latency: It supports low latency content delivery even for large-scale live events. It also displays the total number of requests handled per second via a live ticker on its website.
• Security: It offers web app and API protection, DDoS mitigation, account takeover prevention, and TLS encryption.
• Cloud compatibility: It is built on Azure Cloud but can seamlessly integrate with any hosting environment.
• Advanced analytics: It provides you with performance and activity reports via historical statistics. You can also obtain service statistics for specific features and real-time analytics on data traffic, updated every second.

USP: Fastly’s USP is that it gives you genuinely real-time visibility into your network performance and delivery reach. Digital-based media companies can leverage this feature to maintain high uptime.

Pricing: Fastly is available in Trial, Essential, Professional, and Enterprise versions, with bandwidth-based pricing for each.

Editorial comments: Fastly offers an end-to-end solution for web-based content providers. Its serverless architecture ensures that it is highly scalable without causing downtime.

Also Read: What Is Enterprise Data Management (EDM)? Definition, Importance, and Best Practices

8. Google Cloud CDN

Overview: Like Microsoft Azure and AWS, Google has its own Cloud CDN, launched in 2015. It is tightly integrated with the rest of Google’s cloud services. It can be activated at a single click if you already use Cloud Load Balancing to optimize content asset storage and delivery via Google.

Meant for: It is best suited for mid-sized to large enterprises with an existing dependence on the Google ecosystem.

Key features: The key features of Google Cloud CDN include the following:

• Global scale: It operates in 100+ locations with POPs in every continent and connects with other network operators with edge POPs worldwide.
• Low latency: It offers last-mile delivery powered by QUIC, which was designed and developed at Google.
• Security: It maintains security via built-in HTTPS, signed cookies and URLs, and request authorization on a per-user basis.
• Cloud compatibility: It is integrated with Google Cloud and supports hybrid and multi-cloud architectures, including on-premise content.
• Advanced analytics: You can unlock detailed network analytics via Google Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging services, along with raw log export.

USP: The main USP of Google CDN is probably Google’s massive cloud infrastructure backing it, as well as the company’s advanced analytics services.

Pricing: Google Cloud CDN is built based on bandwidth consumption and HTTP/HTTPS requests, with additional fees for cache egress and cache misses.

Editorial comments: Cloud CDN is a good option for companies developing and deploying web apps via Google’s infrastructure. The company’s partnerships with CDN providers like Akamai, Fastly, Cloudflare, and others further add to its capabilities.

9. StackPath

Overview: StackPath, founded in 2015, is best known for its edge cloud platform that powers its CDN web application firewall (WAF). It is a relatively young company, raising $216 million in Series B funding in 2020. However, the strategic location of its compute resources in the world’s most densely populated areas has earned it customers of every size, from independent users to Fortune 50 companies.

Meant for: It is best suited for multi-format digital companies, particularly in video, games, and IoT sectors.

Key features: The key features of StackPath include the following:

• Global scale: It has 50+ edge locations in 35+ markets with a special focus on densely populated areas.
• Low latency: Its ultra-low latency capabilities are powered by virtual machines that enable 2.6x faster speed than competitors as per internal testing.
• Security: It includes an end-to-end web application firewall with threat identification, DDoS attack mitigation, certificate management, and security analytics.
• Cloud compatibility: It operates via virtual machines hosted on StackPath servers. Also, it connects with all types of computing environments.
• Advanced analytics: You can obtain detailed CDN analytics on bandwidth usage, bandwidth rate, request volumes, cache hits and misses, and data center-wise performance.

USP: StackPath leverages virtual machines hosted on physical servers to emulate public cloud-like resiliency. This delivers a dedicated, secure environment for routing your content, guided by Edge Rules, to shape the content experience.

Pricing: StackPath Starter Plans begin at $15 per month, as per G2.

Editorial comments: StackPath has several unique capabilities that make it ideal for disruptive organizations, including CDN support for containers, EdgeSSL for certificate management, and serverless scripting.

Also Read: What Is Enterprise Content Management? Definition, Key Advantages, and Best Practices

10. Verizon Media Platform

Overview: Verizon Media Platform was launched in 2013, powered by technologies acquired by purchasing two companies – EdgeCast and upLynk. EdgeCast’s CDN and upLynk’s video encoding technology coupled with Verizon’s massive network presence created the powerful and highly popular Verizon Media Platform for content delivery.

Meant for: It is best suited for large and multinational digital organizations.

Key features: The key features of Verizon Media Platform include the following:

• Global scale: It is present in six continents and has 5000+ delivery partners.
• Low latency: It strategically positions network interconnections to reduce the number of “hops” made by network traffic, resulting in fast speeds.
• Security: It is managed by a security team, along with WAF, DDoS, bot mitigation, and the dedicated Verizon Digital Media Managed Security Services.
• Cloud compatibility: It is compatible with all cloud infrastructures and connects with your on-premise content assets.
• Advanced analytics: It offers separate analytics solutions, in addition to quality of service (QoS) data, session data, and more.

USP: Verizon Media Platform’s biggest USP is its robust market presence in the U.S., owing to Verizon’s own network capabilities. In fact, it is among the few carriers in the world to offer a full feature CDN solution tailored for both video and other digital content delivery.

Pricing: The platform is custom-priced as per implementation.

Editorial comments: For large enterprises, Verizon is among the top alternatives when choosing a CDN partner. Importantly it powers 10% of the global internet and is geared for complex use cases.

Also Read: What Is a Content Delivery Network (CDN)? Definition, Architecture and Best Practices

Takeaway

By 2025, the CDN market will be worth $24.7 billion globally, as per a ResearchAndMarkets report. This is spurred by the massive increase in demand for digital and OTT content across every region and device type during the pandemic. CDN solutions like those discussed above will help you scale, contain costs, drive performance, and leverage content as a central cog in your business model.

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