28 Mar Best Free CDN Services to Speed Up WordPress

CDN is the next popular thing in WordPress these days and it came out right after Google made it official that speed at which a website loads up is count as a ranking factor.

So, why your blog isn’t running with this new facility? If you’re not sure what exactly this mechanism is, then I’ll give you a brief introduction covering all basic aspects.

You can begin with a free CDN in starting and then move onto premium ones, once you’re sure that it’s affecting ranking and health of your website in a positive way. and then move onto premium ones, once you’re sure that it’s affecting ranking and health of your website in a positive way.

Here I’ll add a compilation of free CDN services to speed up WordPress website or blog. And it is recommended to use them only if the traffic is average (not at all with high volume).

How does CDN speed up WordPress website/blog?

Suppose you’re accessing a particular website from London, and the server where that website is hosted is also in London. What effect will it have? Literally, you’ll be able to access that website as instantly as possible.

This is the simple concept of CDN (if you weren’t aware of). Content Delivery Network or CDN stores static content (images, flash, CSS, etc.) of your website at different servers across the world, while keeping rest of the data including static ones at the primary server. This increases the speed at which a user (from anywhere around the world) accesses that website.

When it comes to SEO, websites with great speed will rank higher on SERPs and Google itself have stated it numerous of times. So, why don’t you assign this magical technical feature to your website?

Also, a CDN can save the main server of your website from getting crashed due to overload, just because a part of the content is held by another server. So it’s another benefit which should be counted.

If you wish to try it out for once, then you don’t need to worry about payment. As you can either get a free trial of most popular and high-class CDN providers or even start with few completely free ones.

Best Free CDN Services for WordPress

Here is a compilation of best free CDN services for WordPress. Please, not that I’m including CDNs which offer free trials because there aren’t many better options available when it comes to free. So you can get started with any of them, track results and continue with a complete version if it seems to be working (which it will for sure).

#1 MaxCDN

This is not just the most popular CDN provider but also the simplest one to use. If W3 Total Cache plugin is there on your blog (for the purpose of improving speed by caching technology) then implementing MaxCDN is very easy and can be possible within this plugin. Move onto CDN tab and enter ID and API details to get started.

Now since, this isn’t a free option but it does offer Free Trial. The only way for qualifying for a free trial is if your website uses over 15TB of data in a month. Once you find yourself eligible then they will offer each and every service included with the free trial of their CDN.

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#2 CloudFlare

This is one of the most heard names in this specific industry. It is available in different pricing models along with a free one as well. The one that comes without any cost offers features like fast site performance, broad security protection, SSL support and complete statistics. According to their pricing information, CloudFlare never charges for bandwidth.

Also, you can run different plans over the different website you own, right within a single account and the consolidated bill feature is their to further enhance your experience. The user reviews I found during my research were good and I’ve personally used it over one of my website getting high traffic. No doubt, it is the best recommended free CDN service.

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#3 KeyCDN

While many people have not heard of KeyCDN, they should. KeyCDN is a fairly new CDN service that helps WordPress users speed up their blogs. Like CloudFlare, MaxCDN, and many other CDN providers, KeyCDN charges users per GB. However, they advertise themselves as the lowest globally priced CDN provider, meaning you will speed up your blog, and do so without breaking the bank. They even have a pricing calculator, so you can get a good estimate of what you will pay for the service before you buy.

When you purchase the Premium plan, you get access to a lot of features, including HTTP/2 support, Instant Let’s Encrypt SSL, Origin Shield, Secure Token, Fast TCP Stack, Rea-time stats, and much much more. If you are in the market for a CDN provider, definitely give KeyCDN a look.

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#4 Incapsula

Just to ensure that their CDN is working properly on your website, they recommend users to use their plugin. Once plugin is activated and so does the service, readers of your website will start experiencing bump in speed. The free version covers features like Bot protection, Login protect, access control along with CDN and Optimizer.

If you’re looking for dedicated support then this isn’t the case here but a dedicated community is there, where you can question and get answers from other community members.

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#5 Photon

Know Jetpack? This is the plugin which comes pre-installed with every fresh WordPress install and recently WordPress started offering its own CDN service to each and every Jetpack users. All the images are uploaded to their multiple server networks and it then decreases the page load speed.

The module is available within the Jetpack without any cost. If you’re familiar with Jetpack then this will be the easiest way of implementing a CDN solution at your website but it works only for images for now. Also, it’s just a one-time setup and it never asks anything in the future. The free option isn’t the best one in their package but still, it’s FREE.

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#6 CoralCDN

It does look very basic from the kind of website it has, but it is good enough to be recommended. And yes its Free! It has been there in this industry since 2004 and right now it is operating over 300 servers around the world. Off course, in the free version you won’t get access to all those servers but still it will be good enough to boost performance quite easily.

Full Details & Download

Conclusion

I hope you take the decision soon. I know it’s hard to implement any sudden changes on an on-going website which is doing well. But trust me, adding a CDN will only improve the performance and there will be no downside unless you choose a very poor free CDN. Don’t forget to share this compilation to all your friends. Peace.