CDN (content delivery network) is a geographically distributed servers to provide the internet contents such as images, videos, files, anything to the end users in a quick interval of time (simply caches and delivers these files from their nearest location to the end users), CDN gained immense popularity for the last couple of years, because of its fast delivery time and security.
CDNs are a layer in the internet ecosystem. Content owners such as media companies and e-commerce vendors pay CDN operators to deliver their content to their end users. In turn, a CDN pays ISPs, carriers, and network operators for hosting its servers in their data centers.
Benefits Of CDN
- Improve website load time
- Reduce bandwidth usage
- Secure website
- Handle high traffic
How To Make WordPress Site Faster Using CDN?
One of the biggest factor to rank your site on google search engine or any other search engines is page loading time, yes you need to keep your website page loading time as low as possible means better under 2 seconds, to achieve this you need to do lot of hard work and smart work, if your website takes a longer time to load means your out of competition from search engines, gradually your website will disappear from search engines, not only CDN even you need to choose best wordpress hosting provider, good cache plugin, and best CDN provider, now I will introduce you the best CDN providers for wordpress.
10 Best Free CDN for WordPress sites
Here is a list of 10 CDN providers that you should look into when choosing the right CDN for you.
1. CloudFlare
CloudFlare is currently the best free CDN for WordPress. It provides a combination of security and content delivery. It ensures that the static data and resources are protected and delivered super fast, whenever required.
CloudFlare estimates that they can increase website speed by reducing the bandwidth requirement by 60% and causing 65% less HTTP requests. Currently, over 2 million websites use CloudFlare CDN service.
Features of CloudFlare are:
- Has over 150 data centers globally
- Smart traffic routing to avoid congestion
- Can optimize site speed for visitors on IPv6 server even if your site server is set up for IPv4
- Offers security measures from spamming, DDoS attack and SQL injections
- Provide statistics reports on your website traffic
- Support for MPEG-DASH and HLS video files
Click here to visit the website of CloudFlare.
2. Incapsula
Incapsula is a reliable free CDN for WordPress. It is ideal to speed up your WordPress site by reducing bandwidth usage.
Incapsula claims to be able to speed up websites by 50% and will reduce bandwidth usage by 70%.
This CDN offers extensive caching control in four different ways – caching disabled, only static data to be cached, update data real time and cache static data, and cache all data on your site.
Features of Incapsula are:
- Intelligent caching control
- Feature to collect dynamic changes on your site real-time
- Implements file minification, automated compression, and session reuse to reduce bandwidth speed
- Maintains frequency analysis to keep track on commonly used resources for higher priority and fetched from RAM
- Automatically enables both IPv4 and IPv6 support for your website
- Supports HTTP/2 protocol
- Protection from DDoS
Click here to visit the website of Incapsula.
3. Swarmify
Swarmify is a useful, free CDN for WordPress that allows you to get CDN service for images and videos only. If you run a website that has too many images or videos, then this is the best choice.
The dedicated CDN service to videos cause buffer-free video loading to viewers, thus enhancing UX.
Features of Swarmify are:
- Offers embedding videos on your site using their own video player – SmartVideo
- Delivers buffer-free media content
- You can connect it with your Youtube channels and it will collect the videos for your site
- Unlimited bandwidth for video CDN service
Click here to visit the website of Swarmify.
4. Site Accelerator
This is and exclusive free CDN for WordPress made by JetPack. This CDN is focus on optimizing your images and offering CDN service through their global network servers.
You need to use this CDN through JetPack plugin, and it ensures the image load time is faster on your site.
Features of Site Accelerator are:
- As long as you have JetPack, you can simply enable Site Accelerator from your Dashboard without the need of other platforms
- Accelerate image loading time by optimizing them
- CDN service for all static files
- Easy user interface
Click here to visit the website of Site Accelerator.
5. Netlify
Netlify is an Application Delivery Network (ADN) which is an advanced form of CDN for faster site speed. Rather than focusing on just the static contents, it can store and deliver the entire site. It has an API which allow you to integrate it with your WordPress site.
You can set easy cache control to collect real time changes to your site. It can be used as an alternative to your production servers or staging servers.
Since it follows ADN mechanism, it can keep contents from dynamic sites and applications.
Features of Netlify are:
- It follows ADN service that covers up CDN activities
- Can store and deliver dynamic websites
- Will automatically mark your site and HTTPS
- You can perform A/B testing or upload the site to a staging server
- DNS management.
Click here to visit the website of Netlify.
6. CoralCDN
Coral CDN is a peer to peer CDN service for WordPress that’s completely free of cost. Rather than relying on global servers, it relies on active peering of your data that increases the load time of your static data and resources.
Features of Coral CDN are:
- Easy to mirror all your static resources of your website
- Peer-to-peer CDN technology making load time faster
- Reduces HTTP requests
- Implements a clustering algorithm that exploits distributed network measurements
- Ideal to be used on under-provisioned websites for maximum performance
Click here to visit the website of Coral CDN.
7. jsDelivr
jsDelivr is an open source, free CDN for WordPress that offers the fastest CDN service for all javascripts files on a site. Which means, it provides CDN service for plugins that use jQery, Javascript or any js-libraries.
All applications through npm, WordPress or GitHub can be loaded faster using jsDelivr.
Features of jsDelivr are:
- Completely free and open source
- Over 750 endpoints globally
- CDN service for all Javascript contents
- CDN service for all applications through npm, WordPress or GitHub
Click here to visit the website of jsDelivr.
8. Google Cloud CDN
This is another amazing open source and free CDN for WordPress that is ideal for sites that run under HTTPS (i.e. SSL certified). However, if your site contents are not SSL certified, you can have their URLs turned to HTTPs through this CDN tool.
It uses the extensive reach of Google to deliver static contents from your site to visitors real quick since they have data centers almost everywhere. Plus it helps to generate lower number of HTTP requests.
Also, you can integrate it with Google Cloud Platform and use the Platform Console and Stackdriver Logging for to get complete visual on your site.
Features of Google Cloud CDN are:
- Uses Google Compute Engine and Google Cloud Storage as servers to deliver contents
- Works with sites with SSL certifications only
- Turn contents in HTTPs
- Over 90 caching data centers globally
- This CDN doesn’t require any local or regional DNS to work properly
- Supports HTTP/2 as well
This CDN service is not entirely free. It gives you a small trial period, afterwards, it costs very little. (Yuu will find the price distribution on their website).
Click here to visit the website of Google Cloud CDN.
9. AWS Cloud Front
This is a CDN service organized by Amazon that can be used for WordPress sites through API. This CDN service is fully integrated with AWS infrastructure.
It offers a free trial and afterwards, affordable pay-as-you-go cost.
Features of AWS Cloudfront are:
- Uses Points of Presence (PoP) system with over 156 PoPs
- Integrated with AWS shield to protect data from threats such as DDoS
- Easily use this CDN with your WordPress site through its API for WordPress
- Smart routing by analyzing the best possible network server near site visitor
Click here to visit the website of AWS Cloudfront.
10. MetaCDN
MetaCDN is a popular CDN for WordPress most people use. This CDN is really effective due to its extensive network of Amazon, EdgeCast and Fastly altogether, i.e. a huge number of data servers to easily deliver contents.
However, it is not completely free. You get a small trial run and afterwards, you have a monthly fee.
Features of MetaCDN are:
- Uses extensive server networks of Amazon, EdgeCast and Fastly for faster content deliver.
- Provide detailed reports on your website performance daily
- Best CDN amon all Freemius or Premium CDNs
- Ensures overload of traffic won’t cause your server to crash due to its smart routing system
Click here to visit the website of MetaCDN.
Tip: Apart from using CDN providers, you can also consider using the common cloud storage systems such as Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, etc. as an alternative to CDN service. You can simply store your contents in cloud drives and generate URLs to use on your website. However, this is only when you have a little number of contents since these storage systems doesn’t have a separate security measure.
Conclusion
Website speed and content security are major factors in optimizing your website. Hence start using CDN services and get a better website performance.
If you have used any of these CDNs that I included on this list, please share us your experience on the comments below.