If your website loads too slowly, visitors may leave without reading your content. To ensure your website performs at its best, it’s important to find the right WordPress CDN.

Although there are many content delivery networks (CDNs) available, the best providers will offer extra security measures, image optimization, and minimal downtime. There are also solutions that you can easily integrate with your WordPress website.

In this tutorial, we’ll introduce you to CDNs and explain why you should consider using one. Then we’ll show you what to look for when choosing a CDN for WordPress and introduce five of the most popular providers. Let’s get started!

An Introduction to Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)

As a website owner, you want to deliver the best user experience possible. One significant factor that affects that is page loading speed.

When your website is too slow, it can cause visitors to abandon your content quickly. Nearly 40% of users leave if a page takes three seconds or longer to load. To avoid this problem, you can use a CDN.

A CDN is a group of servers responsible for delivering fast online content to users across the world. It often optimizes images, videos, JavaScript files, and HTML pages so that your website functions properly with no downtime or decreased speed.

Some web hosts offer caching tools, but you can’t use a hosting plan to replace a CDN. You often need both to achieve the best performance and functionality. For example, here at Hostinger, we provide access to LiteSpeed cache optimization.

Why Should You Consider Using a CDN

When using a CDN, you can decrease the distance between users and your website’s content. Rather than relying on one server to deliver content to every location, a CDN provides data centers closer to each online visitor. This way, they can experience faster and more reliable services.

Here are some of the main benefits of using a content delivery network with WordPress:

Although CDN’s primary goal is to increase your website’s performance, it can also provide effective security measures. Many CDNs have distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) mitigation to prevent DDoS attacks. This ensures that you receive organic traffic rather than botnets infected with malware.

Ultimately, you should consider using a CDN if your website has a global audience. Additionally, websites with many media files or large traffic spikes can benefit from a CDN. You can keep your website running smoothly by optimizing images, videos, and other files.

However, before you sign up for a CDN, it’s important to understand the potential risks. Some content networks can be vulnerable to cache poisoning. Additionally, if your CDN provider uses a suspicious data center, your IP could be blacklisted.

However, you can avoid these problems by using a trusted CDN. Reliable, well-reviewed CDN providers should have extra security measures to protect your website.

What to Look for in a WordPress CDN Provider

When you decide to start using a CDN, it’s important to know what to look for. Although many CDN providers are available, it’s best to choose one with a larger network size and wide distribution of servers. To aid in your search, let’s consider three more factors.

1. Overall Performance

Since CDN will be responsible for maintaining the speed and security of your website (at least partially), it’s crucial to ensure that the provider is up for the task. You can navigate to their website and look for key features and performance metrics.

Here are some factors to pay attention to:

When you go to a CDN provider’s website, you’ll usually find a features page and a description of its primary use cases. This can include specific information about what type of content this CDN specializes in:

Another way to see whether a CDN is suitable for your website is by viewing its edge server locations. For instance, Cloudflare displays a detailed page about its global network, which provides information about the countries and cities where it delivers services:

If you know where most of your traffic comes from, you can also ensure the CDN has nearby data centers. This way, you can find the best solution for your audience.

2. Ease of Use

It’s important to use a CDN that will easily integrate into your WordPress website. To decide which platform is right for you, you can start by finding out whether your web host supports a specific provider. Often, web hosts offer a built-in CDN service.

When choosing a CDN provider, you should also consider its level of customer support. Ideally, you’ll want its team to be available 24/7 to solve any issues that might pop up.

You may also want to look for a knowledge base where you can search for specific resources. This might include customer forums, an FAQ page, or product tutorials.

It’s also important to prioritize responsive and knowledgeable customer service that uses in-house tech support rather than a call center. This can be important in gaining valuable, actionable advice. The best way to gauge a provider’s level of support is to check out reviews from current customers.

3. Cost

Finally, it’s important to keep your budget in mind. Most CDN providers offer various pricing tiers, so you’ll need to determine which option best fits your budget. Companies will typically charge by the amount of gigabyte data transfer, so you only pay for what you use.

Pricing might vary depending on your region. There may also be a minimum monthly charge. Ultimately, if you’re unsure how much a CDN will cost, you can contact its customer service to get an estimate.

When evaluating CDN pricing, some factors should be considered:

• Your website’s traffic
• Extra features, such as more storage
• Security options

If you have a limited budget, you can use a free CDN for WordPress. These can be useful for basic sites such as static blogs or personal websites.

However, although free CDNs can have some benefits, they will usually have more limited features and less reach. A premium CDN can offer access to advanced analytics, accelerated page speeds, and better customer service.

When evaluating each potential provider, be sure to look for transparent, honest pricing. After signing up, you won’t want to encounter extra monthly fees or other unexpected costs. Again, reviews from existing customers can be invaluable here.

5 Best CDNs for Your WordPress Website

To help you choose the right CDN for your needs, we’ve compiled a list of the five best providers for WordPress websites. Let’s look at what they offer in terms of features, functionality, and security.

1. Cloudflare

Although Cloudflare was originally a simple application to combat email spam, it is now one of the most popular services for protecting your website and optimizing its performance. Cloudflare’s primary goal is to “build a better internet” through a global CDN.

Cloudflare has data centers located in over 100 different countries. Due to this expansive network, it can reach 95% of the global population in about 50 ms. Using Cloudflare, you can accelerate your content while maintaining its reliability and security.

Features:

Since Cloudflare provides free plans, this provider can be best for website owners with limited budgets. Using a free CDN, you can build a personal website or hobby project that doesn’t need extended features.

Pricing: Cloudflare provides a free CDN with Unmetered DDoS Protection and a Universal SSL Certificate. If you need advanced features, its paid plans start at $20/month.

2. Sucuri

Sucuri is a CDN provider that aims to supply websites with effective and affordable cloud-based technology. Its ultimate goal is to give you enough safety and speed to build a successful website:

With no configuration required, Sucuri’s CDN plans can increase your website speed by 70%. They also include website protection, such as malware removal, hacking prevention, and a 24/7 security team.

Features:

If you’re unsure whether Sucuri is the right CDN for you, you can view its different platform types and the optimal websites for each plan. For instance, the Basic platform is best suited for cleanups and security scans on blogs and other small websites.

Pricing: All of Sucuri’s website security platform plans come with free CDN speed enhancement. The lowest pricing tier starts at $199.99/year.

3. KeyCDN

Next up, KeyCDN provides a global CDN that spans six continents. Its high-performance network easily integrates with WordPress to make your website fast and secure.

Whether you’re looking to accelerate your page speed, optimize WordPress images and videos, or access cloud storage, you can use KeyCDN to meet your needs. With a user-friendly dashboard and 24/7 customer support, KeyCDN ensures that you can manage and customize your CDN as needed.

Features:

Since KeyCDN was designed to be accessible, it is one of the most affordable options. It can be the best pick for individual creators with small websites who need to keep costs low.

Pricing: KeyCDN’s pricing tiers are based on region, with plans starting at $0.04/GB for the first 10TB. The minimum usage is $4/month.

4. StackPath

StackPath is an edge computing platform that gives developers the infrastructure they need to deploy and accelerate their workloads. Its Edge Network has over 50 locations worldwide that deliver content with the minimal time to first byte (TTFB).

With StackPath, you don’t have to avoid using large files on your website. Its CDN comes with large file delivery capable of handling HD and 4K video, streaming, and game installers. Additionally, you can tailor your content to personalize the user experience and optimize performance.

Features:

• Customizable content delivery with EdgeRules
• Asset optimization, such as GZIP compression and large file segmentation
• SSL certificate management
• Real-time reports on bandwidth usage, requests, and cache hit ratio
• Origin Shield

StackPath specializes in audio and video delivery, so gaming and entertainment websites can benefit most from using its CDN for WordPress. It can help you avoid common issues such as buffering, sync failure, and device incompatibility.

Pricing: Although there are no prices listed on the StackPath website, you can use their contact sales page to schedule a demo or a consultation with a team member.

5. bunny.net

One of the most trusted content delivery platforms, bunny.net has powered over 900,000 websites. It was founded in 2012 to offer enterprise-grade services at an affordable price.

When you sign up for the bunny.net, you gain access to an intuitive control panel where you can customize your content delivery. This is designed to be easy to use, with powerful features such as a usage statistics page. You can get detailed metrics about your bandwidth usage, requests served, and cache HIT ratio.

Features:

• Image optimization and video delivery
• 99.99% uptime
• DDoS protection
• Raw logs and real-time statistics
• 24/7 customer support

Thanks to its accessible plans and high-performance video delivery, bunny.net could be best for creators who need video portfolio support at a low cost. This way, you can focus on creating a well-designed website and finding new clients.

Pricing: bunny.net has pricing options starting at $0.01/GB per month. Plus, new users can try this CDN for free for 14 days.

How to Implement a CDN on Your WordPress Website

Exactly how CDN integration works will vary widely, depending on your provider and web host. One of the easiest methods is to implement the built-in CDN offered by your web hosting provider (if they have one).

You can sign up directly through your CDN provider. For this example, we’ll be using Cloudflare. First, go to the sign-up page and enter your email address and password:

Then click on Create Account to access your Cloudflare dashboard, and select Add Site:

For a website that already exists, you can enter its root domain. If you don’t have a domain yet, you can purchase one through the Cloudflare Registrar.

After entering your domain, Cloudflare will identify your DNS records. Then you can select a plan level. You’ll need to activate your domain with Cloudflare as a final step.

Conclusion

With a WordPress content delivery network, you can ensure that your audience is experiencing high-performing content. Although it can be challenging to find the right provider, each offers unique advantages in terms of price, security, and customer support.

To review, here are the best CDNs for WordPress websites:

1. Cloudflare – a free CDN for WordPress that can be a solid option for personal websites.
2. Sucuri – a multi-level CDN platform with specific tiers for different website types.
3. KeyCDN – one of the most accessible and affordable CDNs.
4. StackPath – an image and video-focused network that could benefit media websites and portfolios.
5. Bunny.net – a fast CDN provider with simple, transparent pricing tiers.

Do you have any questions about how to choose the best CDN provider for your website? Let us know in the comments section below!