Many organizations have to deliver their business-critical content and applications to their users in a secure and reliable way. Especially if you have offices, customers or target audiences located in different parts of the world, you will require access to networking infrastructure. A content delivery network or CDN can help you in delivering optimized experience to your audience in a highly cost-efficient manner.
Before you choose any CDN provider, it is important that you know what makes a great service. The basic purpose of CDN has been to provide improved web performance for client websites. However, there have been vast changes at the IT level in organizations and the need for such network infrastructure has increased across different types and sizes of organizations. Keep these 6 points in mind and evaluate every CDN provider so that you can choose the right one.
1. Consider Your Business
Start by considering your business and your needs and then determine the features and platform your CDN should have to support address your needs. Consider what kind of solutions you provide to your users:
- Real time data
- Image optimization
- Tokenization
Depending on your needs, consider the security policy that the CDN should be using to transmit the data.
2. Bandwidth Requirements
Consider your website’s bandwidth needs. In fact, this is one of the most important factors to determine if you need a CDN provider or not. However, the location of your target audience is another factor that can make it essential for you to choose ucdn even if your bandwidth requirements are not big. Typically, the right CDN provider will offer different plans so that you can choose one that perfectly addresses your bandwidth requirements.
3. CDN Servers
Compare different CDN providers and find out the number of servers they offer. Avoid a provider that has a small number of servers located in different parts of the world. The more the number of servers distributed around the world, the better it will be. If you have audiences in a particular country or region, you should look for a provider that has servers in those regions.
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4. Reliability
Server uptime is a good measure of the CDN provider’s reliability. You should certainly consider the performance levels and features of the server, but you should also consider how reliable they are. The CDN should have servers that run 24/7 and have advanced backup systems to ensure that there is no outage, ever. Do they offer 99.9% uptime guarantee.
Response time is another measure of quality. Find out how quickly the CDN server can respond to browser requests. If the speed is slow, there is no point to choose such a provider. Response time and latency are the key factors to consider when choosing a CDN provider.
5. Customer Support Quality
Consider the quality of customer support provided by the CDN. Is there is an option to call the support team? What is their response rate in addressing client questions? Do they offer email support? Is there a knowledgeable professional on the other end of the phone or a voice mail? Do they offer off-hour support?
Call a CDN provider’s support and ask them about the technology and support service they will be offering. Besides support, you should also consider the technology they are using. So if your site offers video streaming or downloading services, look for a CDN that offers streaming service. Usually a reputed and trusted company offers different support options including email, phone and live chat.
6. Price
You should also consider price when choosing the right CDN provider for your business. You will certainly have a budget to start with. But like any other IT service, quality CDN services also come at a price. Besides, your bandwidth and resource requirements will also affect the cost. Once you have chosen the right type of provider that addresses your specific needs, you should get quotes from them and compare.
Find out what other services or solutions a CDN provider can offer. This can include encoding and transcoding, real-time occasion tracking, digital rights administration, content administration system, and much more. So look for all these factors when choosing the best CDN service that addresses your needs.
