December 6, 2021

Guide to Choosing the Best CDN Providers Today

Updated and expanded for 2024, this practical guide explains how a cdn helps website owners, marketing teams, and technical businesses plan the right strategy for high performance and security focused e commerce operations.

CDN stands for content delivery network. This is a geographically distributed network of interconnected servers. The aim is to speed up the transfer of web content to the user, by giving access to the data relative to where the user lives. For example, if one user is accessing a web page from Spain, it makes more sense for the user to access this data from a server in Spain or a neighboring country.

This type of distributed architecture allows a cdn to serve static files and dynamic HTML closer to end users, which significantly improves website performance for global e commerce websites and other data intensive business websites.

What are CDNs used for?

Speeding up the loading of static content

With CDN technology, you can cache and save various site elements related to static (immutable) content, including images, audio, video, JS, and CSS files. A CDN stores copies of the static site content on its servers worldwide, and when a user opens a web resource, the content will be downloaded from the nearest network server.

Therefore, the traffic passes along the most optimal route. The load on the network is reduced, and the maximum connection speed is achieved. As a result, sites using CDNs load faster.

In addition, to improve the site loading speed, the CDN can be used to compress content (texts, images) and minify CSS and JavaScript code.

Dynamic Content Delivery

Some CDN providers are able to process static and dynamic data. Dynamic data refers to when the data is changeable and adapted to a specific user, which is generated on the server at the time of receiving the request. Speeding up of dynamic content delivery when using a CDN is achieved by choosing the optimal network route and improving bandwidth. Unlike having a separate server, the total bandwidth of the CDN is easily scalable and practically unlimited.

Distribution of streaming content

CDNs are also used to distribute streaming content (e.g. the streaming of audio and video). With streaming CDNs, the data stream is relayed to servers that are already part of the network, and then distributed to users. With the help of load balancers, requests are redirected to the least loaded servers at that time.

Key cdn benefits for e commerce and business websites

When you use a cdn as a strategic solution rather than a simple caching layer, you benefit from faster delivery for images, video, and other website assets, higher uptime, better security during traffic spikes, and more resilient operations for e commerce businesses that depend on continuous sales.

For decision makers, understanding the benefits cdn platforms provide helps justify investment in advanced security, global coverage, and high performance delivery capabilities.

These benefits also include reducing latency for dynamic requests, improving search visibility through better page load times, and optimizing protection mechanisms such as ddos protection, a web application firewall, and tls encryption so that end users can access your website with confidence. These advantages are especially noticeable for e commerce businesses with high daily transaction volumes.

How does a CDN work?

At a basic level, a content delivery network cdn is a distributed system of edge servers and caching pops that use smart routing to deliver media files and website code from the closest location, which helps improve overall website performance and security for every region you address.

To use a CDN, you need to create a domain in the form of:

cdn.domain.com

This is where the content will be distributed from and connected to a CDN provider. As a rule, clients are offered two options for the CDN URL:

A URL that is created automatically;
or
A customizable URL. Configuring a custom URL with a CNAME record (a canonical name that points to the primary domain) allows you to store your assets intended for distribution via CDN on a subdomain in your domain (cdn.domain.com ).

The user types the address in the browser bar such as: www.domain.com, (where the HTML page is located). At the same time, all static content, such as images or videos are loaded from the CDN (from the address cdn.domain.com).

To connect a CDN to individual page elements (images, JS scripts, CSS styles, etc.), you need to register their addresses on the CDN server in the source code of your site, for example, as shown in the screenshot below:

GeoDNS and AnyCast technologies are used to determine the caching servers closest to the user.

Using GeoDNS, you can bind multiple IP addresses to the same domain. Depending on the geographical location specified by the IP address from which the request was sent, the user is redirected to the server closest to them.

With AnyCast technology, several geographically distributed servers are assigned the same IP address (IPv4 or IPv6), called an anycast address. The routing system selects the most suitable server.

What to consider when choosing a CDN provider

When choosing the right cdn providers and designing e commerce architectures in 2024, it is important to evaluate whether each provider aligns with your business requirements, website performance targets, compliance rules, and security expectations.

Having coverage and several points of presence (this refers to caching severs for a CDN). Check the availability in the areas you are interested in.
The number of connections to the telecom operators. The number of connections also affects the speed and uninterrupted data transfer to the CDN.
Provision of additional functionality and capabilities (caching management, images and HTTP headers, cache clearing, loading weighty content, statistics analysis, etc.).
Availability of support for technologies and protocols necessary for your website (SSL certificate, HTTP/2 protocols, IPv6, etc.).
Network security level. In addition to protecting against DDoS attacks, unauthorized access should be filtered out. It's also useful if there is a built-in Web application firewall (WAF) and SSL encryption. However, network security should not be at the expense of performance. This should also be taken into account when choosing a provider.
Quality of technical support. Customer service should be available around the clock to help solve any issues.
Cost of services, pricing.

For regulated industries and data driven businesses, you should also compare cdn service level agreements, logging tools, and web application firewall features to ensure that security monitoring, threat mitigation, and data privacy controls are strong enough to protect customer information during every stage of delivery.

How much do CDN services cost?

Content delivery networks tend to be quite expensive, so the cost criteria plays an important role when choosing a supplier.

Pricing models can be different:

Monthly or annual subscription (for example, from Cloudflare provider):

Payment for the amount of content transmitted over the network (Amazon Cloudfront):

The more traffic to the servers, the less the cost of one GB.

The cost of using a CDN depends on the number of servers involved and their location, and options included in the package, etc.

In the low-cost CDN market, you can find tariffs from $0.01 for 1 GB of traffic, without having to buy any monthly subscription (BunnyCDN):

Some providers offer a free trial period, free tariffs for individuals, etc.

For many e commerce businesses and SaaS companies, the best financial solution is to start with a limited free tier from one or two cdn providers, then use real traffic data to choose the right long term pricing model and optimize overall delivery costs.

How are CDNs useful for SEO?

The speed of websites is increasingly essential to rank well in search engines. In 2021 Google made the time required to load the main content of a page, one of the ranking signals as part of the Core Web Vitals indicator.

If a site loads too slowly, this can lead to a loss of users. This also affects the behavioral factors that Google looks at (such as bounce-back rate) which can then lead to a demotion in the rankings.

Google's research clearly shows how content loading time affects a site's behavioral metrics. For example, as a page's loading time increases from 1 to 10 seconds, the probability of a mobile site visitor leaving increases by 123%.

From an seo perspective, what matters is how fast your cdn can serve HTML, images, and video, whether it maintains uptime across regions, and the degree to which its security layers prevent abusive traffic that could otherwise slow down or take down your website.

The use of content delivery networks is one of the ways to solve this problem. Geographically distributed servers included in the CDN help to make the site's response time minimal for users.

A well configured cdn also helps improve Core Web Vitals by reducing distance between end users and edge locations, accelerating TTFB, and optimizing caching rules so that your website performance remains stable even during marketing campaigns or seasonal e commerce peaks.

The site's reliability also increases - thanks to the distribution of CDN servers, the content remains available even during peak loads. In case of accidents and failures, traffic is automatically routed to other network servers.

Cons and risks of using content delivery networks

Caching Delays

When the file is changed on the primary server, it will remain unchanged on the caching servers. However, modern CDNs provide the function of periodically clearing and updating the cache, deleting old content, and replacing it with new versions to solve this problem.

From a practical e commerce viewpoint, you should define clear cache invalidation rules, test how quickly each cdn propagates new product images and website content, and ensure that critical price or legal updates are not delayed at the edge.

IP blocking

If for some reason, your "neighbors" on the CDN provider's IP are blocked, your site may be blocked along with them. In this case, you should send a request to the CDN provider to change the IP address.

When choosing the right provider, clarify how quickly they can rotate addresses, what mitigation steps are used to prevent abuse, and how their security operations team communicates about incidents that might affect your business.

Loss of traffic from vertical search (e.g. images or videos)

Content from your site, such as images, may be loaded from the CDN server that cached your image, rather than the site itself. For a search engine, this means that the image is not actually on your site but another one. As a result, you may lose traffic to your images.

To avoid this, you can give search robots the version with the image stored on your server and not the version from the CDN. Or you need to upload images to a subdomain on your second-level domain, for example, on a CDN.domain.com, and save the names and hierarchy of files.

For example, if the path to the image before using CDN looked like this:

www.domain.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/image1.png

after it should look like this:

cdn.domain.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/image1.png

This will help the search engine link images to your site, and you will save traffic from image searches.

However, Google analyst John Muller stated that there is no SEO bonus for placing images on the same host/domain. There are some studies that indicate that when using CDN, even the presence of subdomains may not solve the problem. It, therefore, does not guarantee small websites will be able to improve their position in image search.

The appearance of duplicates in the search engine index

CDNs can cause problems with duplicate content if you misconfigure it. Duplicates occur when the search engine indexes copies of pages uploaded via CDN.

Case study: One company providing SEO services experienced this problem.

Google's index included full copies of pages that were stored on the company's CDN (the company cached not only media content, but also the web pages themselves). The search engine indexed the pages on the CDN domain (as well as their normal domain). As a result, about 13.5 thousand duplicate pages appeared.

To solve this problem, you need to configure the canonical header. This is an additional HTTP header that is added to your CDN and tells the Google scanner that the content in your CDN is only a copy.

You can also configure the rel=canonical attribute of the <link> tag by specifying as canonical (preferred for indexing) The URL of the main domain. You can also prohibit the subdomain from being indexed.

However, users who visit the subdomain will not be taken into account, which could lead to a deterioration in the site's behavioral factors. To remedy this, you would need to move the CDN version to a separate subdomain (cdn.domain.com), register it in the Webmaster panel. You could then monitor the site's indexing and the appearance of errors that may occur when using CDNs.

In complex e commerce environments, it is also important to test how a chosen cdn handles canonical tags, hreflang attributes, and various redirects, so that international websites remain correctly indexed and optimized for the right audience.

Incorrect content optimization

Content changes during delivery (code minification, structural changes) can have risky outcomes. Even incorrectly reducing the source code by removing unnecessary spaces, unimportant elements, etc., can negatively affect the performance of a web resource. More significant changes (transferring the JS code to the end of the HTML page, merging files) can disrupt the site's functionality if there is any small error.

We can see one example of this is in a review of CDN service provider Microsoft Azure. They warn that if you compress images and optimize HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you need to be careful when optimizing CSS files because their service may incorrectly modify content stylesheet files.

For this reason, it's best practice to delete unused or duplicate code manually, just in case an automated service creates any errors. Within a CDN these functions tend to be disabled by default in the settings, as they can create the most errors.

Before enabling aggressive code optimization on a cdn, create a test environment, run regression tests on critical e commerce funnels, and verify that analytics, tracking code, and payment scripts still work properly and improve rather than damage conversion rates.

Increased threat of hacking and data theft

CDN servers themselves protect the source server from hacker attacks, but, on the other hand, their use creates more opportunities for hackers. Companies need to be careful, especially when transferring confidential data. Therefore, network security is also an important criterion when choosing a CDN provider.

When you evaluate cdn providers for 2024, examine which web application firewall options they offer, how ddos protection is implemented across cdn servers, what encryption standards are enabled by default, and how logs can be used to detect suspicious requests quickly.

Loss of control over data

Since the content is no longer only on your server but is also hosted on several CDN servers, this leads to a loss of control over the web resource's content.

From a governance and compliance perspective, describe in your privacy policy and terms how third party cdn platforms handle user data, and ensure that contracts, architecture diagrams, and internal documentation reflect these dependencies clearly.

Loss of content stored in CDN in case of closure of the service

One such example of this being when a company posted all their images on a CDN service to speed up their loading. A year later, this resource ceased to exist. The site that posted all their content there, lost all the images in their online store, blog, etc. As a result, their position plummeted in the SERPs, and it took a long time to find new images and restore the site's position.

To reduce this risk, keep a master copy of all website content in your primary hosting or storage system, and treat the cdn as a powerful but replaceable solution that can be migrated if the provider changes pricing, coverage, or security posture.

Who needs to use a CDN?

CDNs can be very helpful to:

Large online stores and other types of sites focused on making their content more accessible in different regions or countries.

For example:

The Amazon online store, stores static content on CDN servers.

Services that distribute multimedia content and streaming.

For example, Kiswe is a company that provides live ticket streaming to fans around the world, including concerts, sporting events, and live television.

Resources that distribute game content and software.

For example, the Finnish media company Rovio Entertainment, which is behind the creation and distribution of the Angry Birds series of games, uses Amazon CloudFront, because this service helps reduce the latency of API calls and integration with AWS Shield. AWS WAF provides protection against DDoS attacks.

In addition, fast growing e commerce businesses, subscription platforms, and media websites with users across multiple regions benefit from lower latency, higher availability, and stronger security layers when they choose a well architected cdn solution.

Practical criteria for choosing the best cdn provider

Since every business has different traffic patterns, technical resources, and security expectations, the best approach is to create a simple evaluation table before choosing the right cdn solution for your website.

List your primary markets and regions, then compare which cdn has points of presence closest to your core audience.
Estimate the amount of static and dynamic content you will deliver and how many requests per day you expect so you can test pricing, free tier limits, and scalability.
Check what performance monitoring tools, logs, and analytics each provider offers and how these can be used for optimizing page load and response time.
Evaluate the built in security stack: ddos protection, waf, ssl certificates, tls configuration, bot mitigation, and automation for rule updates.
Clarify how quickly technical support responds, whether they provide e mail and chat support, and if expert assistance is available during high risk events or migrations.

This structured step by step approach helps website owners choose between leading brands such as Akamai, Fastly, Cloudflare, and Amazon CloudFront, and focus on the cdn that aligns with their specific business goals, security standards, and cost constraints.

How cdn choices impact user experience and sales

How quickly pages load, how reliably assets are delivered, and how well a cdn absorbs traffic spikes directly affect user experience, bounce rate, and sales for e commerce businesses and subscription platforms.

A well chosen cdn service reduces distance between users and edge locations, helps deliver content faster than a single server, and improves website speed during campaigns, product launches, and seasonal events when demand is highest.

By combining smart caching policies, image optimization, and robust security features, a cdn can improve trust in your brand, increase conversion rates, and support long term growth without constant infrastructure changes.

To summarize:

Since the cost of CDN services are relatively high and the use of this technology carries significant risks, it makes sense to use it for large international companies that transmit a large amount of media content. Or where their servers cannot cope with the demand.

The prerequisites for the effective use of a content delivery network are:

Choosing a reliable CDN provider that provides all the necessary capabilities and has points of presence in the regions where your site is predominantly used.
Availability of a qualified technical support team.
Creating a subdomain for distributing content via CDN in your domain (cdn.domain.com ).

For each project, a cdn strategy should define how the cdn caches content, where the cdn stores logs, and which teams manage configuration and ongoing security processes.

When selecting vendors, document cdn performance tests, align cdn security policies with corporate standards, and confirm that cdn support meets your response time expectations during critical events.

You also need to check the download speed and other indicators of your site's quality before and after connecting the CDN. If these indicators have not improved but worsened, you should be looking elsewhere.

During peak campaigns, monitor cdn dashboards, track cdn error rates, and adjust cdn routing or caching to keep conversion rates, user experience, and overall performance stable.

There is no need to use a content delivery network for small companies whose target audience is concentrated within one region, and the site does not have a large volume of "heavy" static data (images, video, audio, etc.).

In cases such as this, the problem of slow loading is solved by carrying out technical work on the site itself. The reasons for the slow speed may be:

Unoptimiszed images;
Heavy and redundant code;
Incorrect connection of JS and CSS;
Errors in database configuration;
Insufficient server power.

For compliance teams, clarify what cdn data is stored, which cdn regions are used, and how the cdn integrates with existing logging tools, analytics, and other security monitoring systems.

Smaller teams can start with a single cdn, then expand to a multi cdn architecture if reliability targets or regional cdn coverage require more resilience and better performance.

Labrika’s guide to optimizing cdn usage

You can check your site's loading speed using the Labrika report "Speed and Usability,". This shows an assessment of speed indicators and gives recommendations on their optimization.

This guide from Labrika helps clarify cdn pricing models, compares cdn features, and explains how to plan cdn implementation without disrupting operations, security controls, or business processes.

By following a simple checklist, you can ensure cdn configuration is documented, cdn changes are tested, cdn related incidents are reviewed, and cdn benefits are measured in terms of revenue growth, risk reduction, and better e commerce performance.

Regular audits of cdn logs, cdn access rules, cdn ssl settings, and cdn waf policies help maintain strong security and compliance while optimizing content delivery for your audience.

How Labrika helps in choosing the right cdn solutions

Labrika’s analytics reports, technical audits, and practical recommendations help business owners understand how content delivery impacts search visibility, how security issues can affect performance, and how to choose the right cdn solutions for their specific business model.

Using these insights, you can focus on optimizing page load metrics, configuring security layers, and selecting cdn based solutions that support e commerce sales, brand trust, and long term scalability.

By combining on site optimization with a good cdn solution and clear security policies, businesses can improve availability, handle traffic spikes, and deliver content efficiently to end users across multiple regions.

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Labrika allows you to test how different technical changes, including cdn based delivery and security enhancements, impact website performance metrics, conversion rates, and overall business results.

Features

Key Labrika features focus on optimizing website content, monitoring performance, and highlighting security related issues that may limit the effectiveness of a chosen cdn or other delivery solutions.

Updated on December 31, 2025.

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