6 Best CDN Services for WordPress

6 Best CDN Services for WordPress

Speed and performance are vital to the user experience of a website. You probably wouldn’t be pleased with websites that take time to load, so the same goes for your audience when they visit your WordPress site. There are many speed optimization methods that make your website faster, such as reducing the JavaScript and CSS […]

Speed and performance are vital to the user experience of a website. You probably wouldn’t be pleased with websites that take time to load, so the same goes for your audience when they visit your WordPress site. There are many speed optimization methods that make your website faster, such as reducing the JavaScript and CSS codes where possible and compressing large images. But despite all that, there is one factor that you can’t change or control – the distance between your website’s hosting server and a user trying to access it.

The farther a user is from your site’s main server, the longer it takes for data to travel to their device. So how can you overcome it and improve the speed of your website? Well, that’s exactly what Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are there for. 

So today, we’ll be discussing CDNs, what they are and what they do, and how they make your site faster. Once you know about the benefits of CDN, you will definitely be interested in implementing them for your website as well, so we will also review 6 of the best CDN services for WordPress.

What Is A CDN Service And How Does It Work?

Before we get to what a CDN is, let’s cover some basics. Like we mentioned before, when a user tries to access your website, the data travels from your site’s web hosting server till it reaches the user’s device. If the distance is large, it takes some time for the data to reach the user, which delays site from loading completely, and this is known as latency.

CDN is a network of interconnected servers placed across different locations, and these servers can connect to your site’s central server. A cached static data of your site is then stored in all the CDN servers. Now when a user tries to access your site, the data doesn’t come from the main server. Instead, the user receives the cached data of your site from the CDN server closest to their location. The distance between the server and user is now significantly reduced, so your website loads quickly.

To sum things up, CDN increases your site’s loading speed and performance by connecting users to servers closest to them, thus reducing the distance and time taken for data transfer.

Benefits of CDN – Why You Need CDN for Your WordPress Site?

WordPress sites are hosted by various web hosting services, and your site’s data is stored in their servers. The server could be anywhere. For example, your casino portal could be located in the UK, but your site’s web hosting server could be in the US. Those users near the server’s physical location will enjoy faster loading speed when they visit your site. But users from far-off locations will experience latency and slow loading speed.

If your website caters to audiences from various countries all around the world, you’d want your site to be fast and smooth for everyone. And that’s simply not possible without CDNs. So the main benefit of CDN services is that they improve the speed and performance of your WordPress site for global audiences. Users from any region around the world can access your website and get fast loading speeds. Not only does this improve the user experience of your audience, but it also improves the SEO of your website as search engines can also detect that your website has good loading speed in all regions.

6 Best CDN Services for Your WordPress Site

By now, it should be clear that CDN services are essential for your WordPress site. Then let’s take a look at the best CDN WordPress services, which offer lots of servers and excellent features.

StackPath

StackPath, formerly known as MaxCDN, has servers across various countries and improves your site’s speed, and accelerates the transfer of large multimedia files such as audio-visual media. Even the file downloading speed is increased through StackPath’s CDN servers. Tight security features, DDoS protection, and inbuilt analytical reports are also included in their service. All of this comes for quite a reasonable price, as their base plan costs just $20 per month, but the higher plans can go up to $2k per month.

Amazon CloudFront

E-commerce giant, Amazon, has expanded its services to many areas, including web services and content delivery networks. CloudFront is Amazon’s own CDN service with over 200 servers distributed around 40+ countries. With such extensive coverage, they can deliver content with high speed and efficiency anywhere around the world. They also have advanced security features such as strong encryptions and protection from layered attacks. And the best part is that they even have a free plan for starters. Pricing for higher plans varies based on data transfer out and HTTPS requests, which you can check on their site.

Google Cloud CDN

Just like Amazon, tech giant, Google, has also launched its own CDN services. Google Cloud CDN offers a widespread network of the content delivery system and also gives you greater control over your site’s caching. However, the catch here is that Google’s CDN service only works for WordPress sites hosted through Google’s Cloud platform. So if your WordPress site is hosted on Google Cloud, this is the best CDN service for you. Their pricing is also determined by data usage and volume of requests instead of a fixed monthly rate.

Cloudflare

Cloudflare is not just a CDN service but an overall computing solutions provider. CDN is one service among their many products, servers spread across more than 100 countries. You can also control and customize the cached data on their network, and they effectively reduce bandwidth consumption as well. Cloudflare can deliver both static and dynamic content at high speed to users from all regions. They have four pricing plans – Free, Pro ($20/mo), Business ($200/mo), and Enterprise (need to request a quote). 

KeyCDN

KeyCDN is great for beginners who are new to the concept of CDNs, as it’s super easy to configure and integrate with your WordPress site. Serving 6 continents with multiple servers, they boast advanced TCP stacks and complete SSD coverage to ensure that your site content is delivered superfast to different regions all over the world. KeyCDN offers a 14-day free trial, so you can check out their services without paying anything. If you decide to purchase their service, the prices vary for different levels of data usage and different regions, so you can check out their site to know the rates.

WPEngine

WPEngine is actually a WordPress hosting service, but they offer CDN services, among other features. And the good thing is that their CDN services come included with the web hosting package, so you don’t need to pay for it separately. Their CDN servers store and deliver static cached data of your site efficiently, so it’s a superb choice to have a CDN service that is already a part of the hosting plan itself.

Summary

Content Delivery Network is the best solution for a site’s loading and performance issue due to geographical distances between end-users and servers. By simply integrating your WordPress site with a CDN service, your content is delivered with low latency, even when it hosts an extensive collection of icons and images and high page speed in all corners of the world. If you want your site to provide the best user experience to audiences from every region, then check out the CDN services we have listed above and choose what’s best for you.