Building a website essentially requires a Content Delivery Network, also known as CDN. One such CDN system is Cloudflare that helps you take care of protecting your website from all sort of attacks. In fact, in addition to protecting your site, it would also be useful in optimizing the performance of your site. Apart from being a content delivery network, it also offers you a host of cloud-based solutions to take care of the needs that network administrators and website owners may have. However, what if you are unable to use Cloudflare for any reason? This article is an attempt at letting you find the alternatives for Cloudflare CDN. We would list out the best alternative options you may try out in 2018.

What Is Cloudflare?

Cloudflare has been the most popular Content Delivery Network. In fact, it is not just another CDN service that you can use. The US-based CDN service has been well known because of a host of services that it packs in along with the necessary functionality of CDN.

It offers you several cloud-based solutions that would address a host of services. Some of the excellent capabilities that the service comes with include distributed DNS service, reverse proxies, automatic caching and SSL offloading. Cloudflare CDN would offer you protection against common kinds of attacks quite efficiently. In fact, the DDoS attacks have been entirely on the rise over the years, and Cloudflare gives you sufficient protection against such attacks.

However, there may be cases you do not wish to use Cloudflare for your website. Or it could be such that you are just looking for the alternative options for Cloudflare as part of your strategy to keep yourself updated. The list here should help you achieve it in the best possible manner.

Top Cloudflare CDN alternatives

Well, you are now aware why you may need the Cloudflare alternatives, let us now check out the options you have at your disposal. Moreover, Cloudflare has been known to be adhering to US laws quite strongly enough. If you are someone outside the US, you may want to check out the other options.

Akamai

Akamai has been known to be one of the best and largest CDNs. They also have been involved in cloud services. With a market share of around 30 percent, it has been a great name in controlling DDoS and optimization of content delivery.

The company comes with Prolexic’sPLXedge technology and has a 2.3 Tbps bandwidth explicitly meant for DDoS service alone. The service offers you advanced web performance, cloud security, media delivery solutions and mobile performance.

Akamai is known to work as a protective shield around the services and offers you complete security towards proactive monitoring and full outsourcing.

Amazon CloudFront

If you have been aware of AWS or Amazon Web Services, you should be mindful of Amazon CloudFront as well. In fact, it can be the best service on this list. But, if you are looking to opt for all the features that it offers and checking out the affordability as well,  you may need to look elsewhere.

Yes, the service is a little expensive if you want to use all the features that the tool has on offer. Amazon CloudFront is capable of handling any your website requirements – whether static, dynamic or streaming. The Graphic interface is quite simple and easy to use. The tool is competent in managing increased traffic with the additional hardware resources. This referred to as dynamic scaling.

Website owners swear by Amazon CloudFront and consider it to be the best and most reliable CDN service providers. However, if you are an advanced user, the Amazon CloudFront may not be the best you would opt for because of its simplistic nature. However, it remains to be one of the excellent options.

Incapsula

Incapsula comes with several features similar to Cloudflare CDN. It is a cloud-based tool that serves multiple purposes. In fact, it does enhance the user experience by many folds.

If you are checking out the options for the best in safeguarding your website, you can indeed go toIncapsula. Also, you should also be able to get optimum DDoS protection and load balancing as well. Incapsula offers you a bot recognition engine. It has been one of the excellent options for protection against layer seven attacks. The tool comes with web application firewall as well as active protection against hacking attempts.

An extra layer of DDoS protection is what would make it one of the best options you can go with. You would also be benefitted with “IncapRules” which is the best tool for protection from a lot of critical information.

StackPath

StackPath is the best option if you are wondering about the Cloudflare alternatives that you can use for your sites. It works on open source MaxCDN service. The secure CDN service would make it one of the best option for Cloudflare by any standard.

The service is available for almost any part of the world, but it focuses on the North American and European markets. The tool has a web application firewall and a fully-documented API. The application has a shield to take care of all your requirements. All the plans under StackPath offer you SSL, WAF, and DDoS protection. The real-time analysis and a guard are a few of features that would make it a great option.

StackPath has its servers spread across Brazil, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia.

Reblaze

The service works efficiently against several types of attacks that your website may suffer from. In fact, “Rebalze” has been designed to be the best source of protection if you are looking for SQL injection, XSS, and DDoS.

The service has several additional features making it an exceptional option as an alternative to Cloudflare CDN. It offers you platform-specific zero-day vulnerabilities. In fact, one of the highlights we liked is the ability to block traffic from specific countries. Reblaze is also capable of stopping traffic from anonymous accounts. The Elastic Load Balancing is a technique used for handling the increased traffic efficiently.

Protection against DDoS attacks is what would be yet another feature making it an excellent CDN service worth its salt. The technology can identify and isolate malicious traffic and then takes care of it by scaling the bandwidth as per the requirement to control the attacks.

Sucuri

Cloudflare is the best tool against DDoS attacks and CDN services. If you are using Cloudflare only for the protection that it offers you, Sucuri is an option that could be worth the attempt. However, please note that the service does not provide you CDN services.

Sucuri is one of the best options for protection against web security and monitoring. In fact, it comes with several options that would function towards achieving the best performance of your website. Website monitoring, scanning for malware, DDoS protection, and malware removal services are some of the facilities you would be interested in. Sucuri is undoubtedly one of the excellent options among the cloud services providers but does not depend on any platform. That would mean you can use it no matter whether you are running your website on WordPress, Magento or any other platform. It works with supports Drupal, Joomla and v Bulletin as well.

It offers you effective protection against blocks DDoS attacks, SQL injections and XSS JavaScript hacks. It has no free plan though.

KeyCDN

KeyCDN is indeed a great alternative to Cloudflare CDN services. The global service specialized in content delivery service is an expert in speeding up your website performance.

KeyCDN has been an excellent performer when it comes to enhancing the speed of your website. The service has over 24 server locations spread across the globe. They have been in the process of adding up the sites further. KeyCDN has been one of the great alternatives to Cloudflare and offers a similar pricing structure for your needs.

KeyCDN is an excellent CDN option for your website. What makes it one of the universal possibilities is the support that it offers for over 20 different Content Management services. The honorable mentions include WordPress, Magento, Drupal, and Joomla. Just like Cloudflare and most of the other services featured here, KeyCDN works both as a CDN service and a protection tool as well. Some of the essential functions that the tool offers you include two-factor authentification, DDOS protection, origin shield, real-time reporting.

Before We Conclude.

The concept of CDN services has been growing over the past few years. In fact, it has been increasing in the number of options that you have regarding CDN services. Companies like Microsoft have been jumping on the bandwagon. This can indeed make a choice a little more robust.

However, we would hope that the services we have listed here should offer you a choice of the best CDN services that you would be expecting. If you are a Cloudflare user already, you should have a massive expectation regarding the best CDN services. The list featured here should go a long way in making a learned choice.