The 10 Best Free CDN Providers To Speed-Up Your Websites

Slow page loading time increases the bounce rate of the users. The Bounce rate means the speed at which the user will leave your site and bounce to other sites.

According to report published by Google, just a 2-second delay in loading the page results in a 103% increase in the bounce rate. 53% of the mobile users bounce to a different site if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load.

You can boost the speed of your website in many different ways, but the best and easiest way is using a CDN (Content Delivery Network).

In this article, we’ll be taking a look at the top 7 free CDN providers for 2023, helping you to make an informed decision.

What is a CDN (Content Delivery Network)?

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a globally distributed network of web servers that facilitates faster content delivery. CDN caches the contents from your website on their web servers that are hosted by different globally located data centers. When a user asks for the content, it delivers them from the nearest web server.

Content owners such as media companies and e-commerce vendors pay the CDN providers to deliver their content to the end-users. And the CDN providers pay the Internet Service Providers, carriers, and network operators to host their servers in their data centers.

Generally, if you are not using a CDN, when a user comes to your website, they are redirected to your web host’s server, located at a central location. Meaning every user is accessing contents from a single server, hence increasing the loading time of your website.

But if you use a CDN, whenever a user access the content of your website, it is delivered to them from the web server closest to them. It reduces the traffic created on your hosting server, which can crash your site.

Advantages of using CDN on a website:

1. Improved performance: Faster load times and reduced latency due to content being distributed closer to users.
2. Better user experience: Faster loading websites lead to higher user satisfaction and retention rates.
3. Increased reliability: CDNs balance network traffic, preventing server overloads and ensuring continuous operation.
4. Cost savings: Reduced bandwidth costs and server load, as content is cached and doesn’t need to be re-delivered repeatedly.
5. Enhanced security: Protection against cyber attacks, such as DDoS and DoS, by absorbing large amounts of junk network traffic.
6. Scalability: Ability to handle a large number of users and manage traffic loads effectively.
7. Global reach: CDNs enable businesses to deliver content to users in geographically distant locations more efficiently.
8. SEO benefits: Faster-loading websites are favored by search engines, leading to improved search rankings.

Top 7 Free CDN Websites To Increase Performance

From a small blogging site to a big-brawling industry, whatever your website is, I have picked out some of the best CDN providers to help point you in the right direction.

1. CLOUDFLARE

Cloudflare CDN is a globally distributed network of servers designed to optimize website performance, enhance security, and reduce server load. By caching static content and accelerating dynamic content delivery, Cloudflare CDN significantly improves page load speeds and reduces bandwidth usage.

With expert-level features and functionality and novice-friendly ease of use, CloudFlare is a hugely popular American Content Delivery Network since 2009.

The setup process is simple. You don’t have to edit your code. To use Cloudflare, you only have to update your DNS name servers, and the service will automatically kick in. It is a great CDN option.

Benefits and Features of Cloudflare:

1. Improved Site Speed and Performance: Cloudflare CDN caches static and dynamic content across a global network spanning more than 285 cities in over 100 countries. This helps reduce latency and ensures faster page load times for users around the world.
2. Enhanced Security: Cloudflare CDN provides advanced security features such as DDoS mitigation, threat intelligence, and Web Application Firewall (WAF), protecting websites from various online threats and vulnerabilities.
3. Cost Savings: By reducing bandwidth usage through caching and optimization techniques, Cloudflare CDN contributes to cost savings for businesses.
4. Minification: Cloudflare CDN supports minification of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files, which helps reduce file sizes and further improve page load times.
5. Load Balancing: Cloudflare’s load balancing feature distributes web traffic across multiple servers, ensuring better availability and reduced page load times.
6. Browser Caching: Cloudflare CDN allows businesses to leverage browser caching, instructing visitors’ browsers to cache static resources for faster page loads during repeat visits.

Pricing

• Free Plan: Offers basic performance and security features, including free CDN, SSL and analytics.
• Pro Plan: Priced at $20 per month, it provides advanced performance and security tools such as CDN, image optimization and a Web Application Firewall.
• Business Plan: Priced at $200 per month, includes all from Pro Plan and additional features and support for businesses.

By leveraging Cloudflare’s global network and advanced features, businesses can enjoy faster page load times, enhanced security, and cost savings.

2. BunnyCDN

Bunny CDN is a content delivery platform that provides a reliable, powerful, and lightning-fast Content Delivery Network (CDN) designed to offer incredible performance at cost-effective pricing. It aims to make great performance simple at any scale.

Here are some benefits and features of Bunny CDN:

1. Cost-effective: Bunny CDN offers one of the most affordable pricing structures in the market, making it an attractive option for businesses of all sizes.
2. Global Network: With a Tier 1 global network, Bunny ensures fast and reliable content delivery across the world.
3. Advanced Caching: It uses advanced caching techniques to optimize content delivery and reduce latency.
4. Edge Rules: Customizable edge rules allow users to control caching behavior and enhance the performance of their websites.
5. Security Features: Bunny offers various security features, including SSL encryption, to protect your content and keep your website secure.
6. Optimized for Video: It is designed to deliver exceptional performance for video streaming, ensuring smooth playback and minimal buffering.
7. Scalable by Design: The platform is built to handle growth and expansion, with a network capacity of over 80 Tbps.
8. Easy Integration: Bunny CDN can be easily integrated into web applications, providing a boost in speed and performance.

Pricing

• Standard Network (114 PoPs): $0.01/GB to $0.06/GB
• Volume Network (10 PoPs): $0.002/GB to $0.005/GB
• Bunny Optimizer: $9.50/website per month
• Bunny Stream Video CDN: $0.005/GB

3. NITROPACK

NitroPack is an all-in-one, cloud-based site speed solution that optimizes WordPress, WooCommerce, and custom-based websites. It caters to various platforms, including WordPress, WooCommerce, and custom-based websites. With NitroPack, users can effortlessly improve their site’s speed without any coding or technical skills required.

Benefits and Features of NitroPack:

1. Caching: NitroPack ensures a high cache hit ratio with separate cache files for desktop, mobile, and tablet devices.
2. Image Optimization: It takes care of all aspects of image optimization, including lossy and lossless image compression, advanced lazy loading, preemptive image sizing, WebP conversion, and adaptive image sizing.
3. Code Optimization: It removes unused CSS and optimizes the code to improve website performance.
4. Compatibility: NitroPack is compatible with WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, OpenCart, and custom-built websites.
5. Built-in Cloudflare CDN: Premium plans include built-in Cloudflare CDN to enhance site speed and performance over the cloud.
6. Resource Loading and JavaScript Execution: It uses a proprietary resource loading mechanism and preloads assets to offload tasks away from the main thread, taking advantage of modern CPU’s multi-core nature.
7. Easy Setup: NitroPack can be set up in less than 3 minutes, without any coding or technical skills required.

PRICING

• Business plan starts at $21 per month for 50000 pageviews and 25 GB CDN bandwidth.
• Growth plan starts at $51 per month for 200000 pageviews and 100 GB CDN bandwidth.
• Scale plan starts at $176 per month for 1 million pagviews and 500 GB CDN bandwidth.

4. BlazingCDN

BlazingCDN is a CDN software platform that helps deliver online content faster and securely to users around the world. It is widely used by small and medium-sized companies to optimize their websites. The platform allows users to measure traffic and access statistics through a dashboard, helping them automate workflows and optimize content delivery.

Benefits and features of BlazingCDN:

1. User Experience Optimization: BlazingCDN stores cached versions of your content on data servers, ensuring faster loading times and improved user experience.
2. Decreased Server Load: By distributing content across multiple servers, BlazingCDN reduces the load on individual servers, enhancing overall performance and stability.
3. Improved Site Speed and Website Performance: It help to reduce latency and bandwidth requirements, resulting in faster page loads and better website performance.
4. Advanced Website Security: It offers enhanced security features to protect your content from cyber attacks and ensure its availability to users.
5. Cost Savings: By reducing bandwidth usage and server load, BlazingCDN contributes to cost savings for businesses.
6. API Integration: It provides an API, allowing developers to easily integrate the CDN services into their applications and workflows.

Pricing:

• Free plan available
• Premium plan priced at $0.005 per GB.

5. KeyCDN

KeyCDN is a lightning-fast Content Delivery Network that ensures content is delivered around the world in a flash!

KeyCDN offers two types of zones: Pull Zones and Push Zones. Pull Zones automatically pull files from an existing website without requiring manual data uploads, making them the preferred choice for most users. On the other hand, Push Zones require data to be uploaded to the CDN storage cloud and are typically recommended for distributing larger files, such as those larger than 10 MB.

Features of KeyCDN:

1. Competitive Pricing: KeyCDN offers the lowest price at $0.04/GB (every region) with a pay-as-you-go model, making it an affordable option for users of all sizes.
2. Advanced Features: It provides a variety of advanced features such as HTTP/2 Support, Free SSL, Instant Purging, a RESTful API, Real-time Analytics, and Two-Factor Authentication.
3. CMS Integrations: It supports over 24+ CMS integrations, including popular platforms like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Magento.
4. Improved Performance: By using KeyCDN, web applications can benefit from better performance, increased reliability, cost savings, and resilience against cyber attacks.
5. Comprehensive Dashboard: The user-friendly dashboard allows users to manage zones, API, view invoices, and manage FTP accounts, all on one page.
6. Enhanced Security: It offers top encryption standards with two-factor authentication, free SSL, and protection against hotlink attacks. Additionally, it provides SEO features like canonical URLs and robots.txt to help improve website rankings on search engines.

Pricing

• North America – $0.04/GB for first 10 GB
• Asia Oceania – $0.08/GB for first 10 GB
• Latin America – $0.10/GB for first 10 GB

With its user-friendly interface and flexible settings, KeyCDN is an excellent choice for website owners and developers looking to improve their site’s performance and user experience.

6. ImageKit

ImageKit.io is a powerful image optimization and delivery platform that enables users to deliver optimized images across web and mobile applications with minimal effort. It offers an integrated Media Library and AWS CDN, allowing users to instantly deliver perfect images and videos without writing a single line of code. ImageKit.io is used by over 30,000 websites and mobile applications in 100 countries, ensuring fast and efficient delivery of images, JS, CSS, and other static files.

Benefits and Features of ImageKit:

1. Real-time image optimization.
2. Resizing and cropping capabilities
3. Improved page load performance due to optimized images
4. Fast CDN delivery
5. Seamless integration with cloud storage, web servers, domain names, and CDNs
6. AI-based image tagging and background removal
7. Access to a global fast CDN and distributed processing regions for quick content delivery

Pricing:

• Free plan with 20 GB storage and 20 GB bandwidth.
• Premium plan priced at $49 per month with 20 GB storage and 40 GB bandwidth.
• Enterprise plan is price above $500+ per month.

 

7.FlyingCDN

 

FlyingCDN is a next-generation CDN specifically designed for WordPress websites. It is a service that uses Cloudflare Enterprise to proxy your site for enhanced performance and security. To use this plugin, you need a registered account and a site connected to FlyingCDN.

The 7 key features of FlyingCDN include:

1. Cloud optimization: It optimizes and caches your site in the cloud, reducing server load and improving overall performance.
2. Image optimization: It optimizes images on the fly and converts them to WebP format without affecting the original images, resulting in faster loading times.
3. Powered by Cloudflare Enterprise: FlyingCDN utilizes the advanced capabilities of Cloudflare Enterprise to unlock more performance and security for your website.
4. Advanced Security Features: Your website is protected by advanced security measures such as DDOS protection, firewall, and other security features. This ensures that your site remains safe from potential threats and attacks.
5. Optimized for Core Web Vitals: The service is designed to enhance the Core Web Vitals of your website, which are crucial for user experience and search engine rankings.
6. HTML rewriting and resource optimization: The service rewrites HTML and optimizes CSS, JavaScript, fonts, and other resources for faster loading and improved performance.
7. Advanced cache management: You can purge HTML pages alone or in the background without purging the entire cache, giving you better control over your website’s caching strategy.

Pricing

• Startup plan priced at $10 per month for 100 GB bandwidth.
• Professional plan priced at $20 per month for 500 GB bandwidth.
• Business plan priced at $30 per month for 1000 GB bandwidth.

By leveraging these features and optimized plans, FlyingCDN helps you create a faster and more secure website, ultimately enhancing user experience and boosting your site’s search engine rankings.

8. Google Cloud CDN

Google Cloud CDN is a service that uses Google’s global edge network to serve content closer to users, accelerating websites and applications. It works with the global external HTTP(S) load balancer or the global external HTTP(S) load balancer (classic) to deliver content to users efficiently.

Key Features of Google Cloud CDN:

1. Global Edge Network: Cloud CDN leverages Google’s globally distributed edge caches to accelerate content delivery, ensuring faster load times for users around the world.
2. Integration with HTTP(S) Load Balancing: It works seamlessly with Google’s global external HTTP(S) load balancer, making it easy to set up and manage.
3. On-Demand Caching: Google CDN automatically caches content at the edge locations, reducing the distance data must travel and improving performance.
4. Easy Setup and Management: Enabling Cloud CDN is as simple as checking a box in the HTTP(S) Load Balancing settings, making it easy to implement and manage.
5. Scalability: It is designed to handle traffic spikes and scale with your business, ensuring consistent performance even as your user base grows.

Pricing

• Usage-based pricing: The cost depends on the amount of data transferred (measured in gigabytes) and the region.
• Requests-based pricing: The cost is determined by the number of requests made to the CDN.
• Cache hits: Users pay for cache egress bandwidth when content is served from the cache.
• Cache misses: Users additionally pay for cache fill bandwidth when content is not found in the cache and needs to be fetched from the origin server.
• On-Demand plan: This affordable plan charges around $0.15 per GB for usage and $0.10 per M for requests.

9. Fastly

Fastly is a CDN that accelerates websites by optimizing the delivery of web and mobile traffic, allowing businesses to scale globally, improve performance, and save on costs.

Key Features of Fastly CDN:

1. Reduced latency: Fastly CDN reduces the delay between user requests and responses, providing a faster user experience.
2. Improved performance: Fastly’s advanced caching techniques and strategic points of presence (POPs) help deliver content quickly and efficiently.
3. Scalability: It can handle unpredictable traffic spikes and allows businesses to scale their operations globally.
4. Network security: It offers features like DDoS protection, WAF, and SSL to ensure the security of your content.
5. Customization: It allows users to customize their CDN configuration using Varnish Configuration Language (VCL), providing flexibility and control over content delivery.
6. World-class support with 95%+ average annual customer satisfaction ratings

Pricing:

• No free plan available
• TLS/SSL secure connections: $20.00 per month
• Bandwidth & requests: $50.00 per month

10. Amazon CloudFront

Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network service provided by Amazon AWS that offers high performance, security, and developer convenience. It delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to viewers with low latency and high transfer rates through a globally distributed network of edge locations.

Here are the six key features of CloudFront CDN:

1. Faster Performance: Amazon CloudFront optimizes network performance by using intelligent routing based on real-world latency measurements and direct connections with end-user ISPs.
2. Security: It provides both network and application level protection, integrating seamlessly with AWS Shield for DDoS mitigation and AWS WAF for Layer 7 protection. It also supports SSL/TLS encryption and automatic certificate renewal through AWS Certificate Manager.
3. Programmable and DevOps Friendly: It offers programmable edge computing capabilities through CloudFront Functions and AWS Lambda@Edge, allowing developers to run custom code across the AWS global network without provisioning or managing servers.
4. Cost Effective: Amazon CDN operates on a pay-as-you-go pricing model, charging only for the data transfer and requests used. There are no long-term contracts or fixed platform fees.
5. Integration with AWS: It is deeply integrated with AWS services such as Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Elastic Load Balancing, and Amazon Route 53, ensuring improved performance.
6. Global Reach: With 132 Points of Presence (121 Edge Locations and 11 Regional Edge Caches) in 59 cities across 26 countries, Amazon CloudFront ensures high availability, scalability, and performance for users worldwide.

Pricing

Amazon CloudFront Pricing Overview:

• As part of the AWS Free Usage Tier, you can get started with CloudFront for free.
• On-Demand pricing starts at $0.085/month for the first 10TB of data transfer.
• Invocation pricing starts $0.10 per 1 million Function invocations.
• Field-Level Security pricing starts $0.02 for every 10,000 requests encrypted at the field level.

In conclusion, CloudFront is a powerful and efficient content delivery network (CDN) service that offers numerous benefits to businesses and developers. With its global network of edge locations, CloudFront ensures fast and secure delivery of static and dynamic content, improving user experience and overall performance.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What does CDN mean?

A CDN is a system of globally connected servers designed to speed up the loading of webpages and data-heavy applications. CDNs work by caching content like web pages, images, and videos on geographically distributed servers near the user’s physical location.

Which are the best CDN for websites?

Cloudfare CDN, BunnyCDN, NitroPack, CloudFront and FlyingCDN are some of the best CDN providers.

 

Conclusion

Thus, this article proves that CDN has become quite important in improving your website’s performance and boosting up its speed. Now, you can select whichever CDN provider you want, from the ones I mentioned above, as per your website’s requirement.
If you have any questions related to CDN or requests, you can always comment down below and let us know.