Choosing The Best CDN Service

By Juliette Cruz


A CDN service is designed to provide a strong backbone to your website. As your site grows in popularity, you will want to make sure that your visitors are never met with a site down message when they stop by. Whether you are rendering simple HTML or providing a streaming video service, network problems can cause a serious interruption if you are not prepared.

Many websites start by using a shared or dedicated hosting environment. While this may be fine when you first begin, you will want to move towards a much more stable environment as your site grows. The distributed network provides more stability by reducing the load on a single server. Shared server environments are even more dangerous because neighbor sites can cause the server to crash, causing your site to suffer as well.

The first thing you will need to consider is how much bandwidth you will need. If your site is already up and running, you should be able to gauge this based on past performance. The providers typically have a series of packages for different levels of need. Many allow you to go over your package amount by charging a set amount per gig that you go over. If this is common, you will want to upgrade your package.

The next step is determining the type of services you will require. All of the providers will provide HTTP or HTML delivery. If you need streaming video, photo gallery, or live streaming video services you will need to make sure they have the right hardware to optimize the performance. As your site grows, you will want to anticipate additional needs and plan to upgrade your services.

Having access to support is critical to your web business. Many providers claim they have 24 hour support. However, many only provide phone support during regular business hours. If your site goes down in the middle of the night, you may be limited to delayed email support only. In this case, you could lose a large number of visits and cause irreparable damage as customers look for your competitors.

Check the providers stability and reputation before buying. A simple web search will usually reveal complaints and reviews of each provider. Things to look for are how long they have been in business, their financial stability, number of customers, and any other reputation information. This may be the most critical step in the process.

The price should be the lowest denominator in the decision process. Though price is important when working with a budget, you want to measure the cost based on other factors as well. If you buy the cheapest service and have many problems, your bottom line will be affected. Two providers may have identical pricing plans for very different reasons. One may be providing below cost service to compete. Another may have a larger customer base which allows them to keep the prices low. Without doing background business and reputation checks on the various providers you may not be able to truly compare each one.

In order to compete with others on the web, you need to be sure you have chosen the best CDN service provider for your needs. Cost should not be the highest priority in selecting providers. Choose carefully and base your choice on the stability of the provider and their ability to meet your growing needs.




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