In this article, we will cover the comparison of StackPath and Cloudflare in order to determine which content delivery network is best. So let's begin.
CDN stands for Content Delivery Networks are responsible for the delivery of content all over the internet, including articles on the news sites and videos on the internet. Through this network's latency can easily be reduced which is generally a delay that takes place from when you click on for the loading of the page till the moment the content appears on your page.
The delay is also caused by a number of factors in which few are specific to the page itself. In each case, latency is affected by the actual physical distance between the server from where the website is hosted and the location of the user.
A CDN also shortens the distance with the help of storing cached versions of the webpage's content on servers in different geographical locations concurrently which states that users are able to access it faster. Such as when someone gets access to the website hosted in the US it is done by the local Italian PoP.
StackPath and Cloudflare are among the top five providers of CDN Services of the world. These are the two best service providers and with their services targeted at small scale clients which are yet able to handle large scale websites.
Their prices and services are affordable and scalable respectively its no matter that a website has 100 or 100000 visitors per month.
StackPath vs Cloudflare Comparison 2019: Which One Is Better??
About Cloudflare
Cloudflare was created in 2009 by Lee Holloway, Matthew Prince, and Michelle Zatlyn. Basically, it is a US-based content delivery service. From the day it is engaged in founding it has grown exponentially and has become famous for the security features it offers.
In 2014 it was able to mitigate a DDoS attack that peaked at 400Gbit\ second and at that time it had made the largest history record. While in November of the same year the company also reported another larger attack that also peaked at 500Gbit/ second.
The company offered the services of DDoS protection web application firewall authoritative DNS public DNS resolver and reverse proxy. These all were provided beside the content delivery service.
About StackPath
StackPath is known for its high-speed content delivery services. StackPatch bought MaxCDN back in 2015.
At that time StackPath continued to offer MaxCDN as a separate service as both use the same in house technologies and hardware. They had started that they will integrate StackPath into their own service so that in the future these two can be merged into one but in this case, they had not specified any time which means that they can be either a month, a year or more than that.
At that time it is offering the same services as MaxCDN in addition to a number of security measures. Therefore if you try for the access of official StackPath website then you will be directly redirected to StackPath for making the purchase.
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MaxCDN (StackPath) Customers.
If one is trying to find out the MaxCDN website via search it will only appear as a subpage on the StackPath website. In simple words, one can say as a new customer one must have to sign through StackPath in order to obtain Max CDN services and only old customers have the right to access the old website though it would not last since they will be migrated to StackPath.
StckPath vs Cloudflare: Performance
Cloudflare:
In terms of performance, it reduces latency with the help of load balancing offering railgun and also has 152 centers across 74 countries. It should also be noticed that only business and higher ended plans are offered to access to all the data centers while the free and pro are provided with the limited access.
Reduction of latency through load balancing means that network traffic is distributed among the multiple servers thereby also meant to ensure that a single server is not able to put under high pressure. On spreading the traffic over multiple servers the website gives the response faster.
Railgun is also a Cloudflare's web proxy system that makes the inability of caching of a website's dynamic content like HTML Javascript CSS images and more but ensures that any of the site changes are able to appear instantly. Generally, only around 66 % of content can be cached whereas the remainder can only be accessed by the original server.
It solves the problem by a scheme that allows dynamically generated or personalized website which is to be cached hence significantly reduce the amount of bandwidth which is being used as well as provided for faster downloading many times.
Railgun is offered with a business plan which usually costs $200 per month. Cloudflare also provides a wide range of content of optimization features.which are also relying on techniques like automated content caching, argo smart routing accelerated mobile links rocket loader etc.and the latter it speeds up the loading of a webpage by making confirmation of content loads first and the javascript can also be loaded after all the content is rendered.
And the advantage of these all is that all these are featured to built into right Cloudflare and customers also do not focus to install any third-party plugins so that they can ensure that the content is optimized and cached for delivering the best performance.
Furthermore, pro plan of Cloudflare is inbuilt into site ground and Bluehost web hosting for free which also means getting free access to Cloudflare when you want to buy SiteGround and Bluehost web hosting. But Cloudflare is integrated with the help of just a few clicks.
StackPath's Performance
As similar to Cloudflare's loading balancing feature, it also offers a global traffic management feature which also ensures that traffic is directed by the best available routes latency by minimizing the distance which the data has to travel. As the StackPath is established by the StackPath as they use the latter's server network by which all servers are equipped with the help of SSDs.in fact the solid-state drives offer the fastest write or read times and also the excellent data resilience and improvement uptimes. It also results in an excellent performance.
As Cloudflare StackPath is also inbuilt into WP engine web hosting for free. Hence this engine is a good choice but when you are planning to choose MAXCDN as a CDN provider. Whereas MAXCDN did not offer any content optimization feature as they offer a guide to on how webmasters also can optimize their own content using the third plugin as a WP super cache and WP rocket. They also offer the same features regardless of the planned use in terms of speed.
StackPath vs Cloudflare: (Speed Comparison)
After the testing of two services by using the same website hosted with the same provider but using the different accounts.with the help of one test StackPath and the other for testing of Cloudflare. By the latter, we signed up for the pro account which is as similar to free account but also offers access to more data centers.
We also found a new and a little confusing because Italy's bandwidth costs are not mentioned as it is being expensive which is the reason behind we are not aware that it's only a feature. It would be better if they mention somewhere in the notes that nodes are free and which are the part of the pro plan.
One actually does not understand the exact difference between plans so one should be in touch with the company and converse between a customer service rep. Another explanation of it is if one is connected from Italy to a site on free plan then it would use the Germany node which is not close, hence if a website is not upgraded to Pro then Italy nodes are the best.
StackPath vs Cloudflare: (Security Comparison)
It does not offer any built-in protection to keep their customers safe, but their engineers are constantly monitoring the network and also applying measures to mitigate any attack their customers come across.
MaxCDN will offer the same speed as StackPath but only in case if you are signed up with the account.
You are also getting the additional settings and security to measure provided such as Layer7 DDoS protection malware defense and excellent physical security of the data centers with the features of safeguard and biometric. DDoS protection offer involves multi-layer of security that are able to automatically detect and mitigate any form of attack which are targeting resources of the application.
Cloudflare
On the other hand, Cloudflare specializes in security and also they are better known for the security they provide.
Some of the features they include are as follows:
StackPath vs Cloudflare: Customer Support
Quality of customer also supports as a vital factor when it comes to the comparison of two services. One most important thing is that you need to be able to quickly contact the service provider and the problems which arise can be quickly resolved. Problems such as:
Your website can go down for many hours if in case you set up a document for delivery for the first time and you have problems in changing the DNS name to propagate website correctly. And if you are not able to do and something went wrong then this situation arises.
StackPath vs Cloudfare (Pricing)
- Protecting the origin infrastructure
- Improved control for protecting the applications
- Identifying abnormal traffic and providing protection along with automatic mitigation rules.
- Protecting against direct attacks via a security tunnel between the data center and the origin infrastructure.
- Anticipating of attacks thanks to being shared intelligence across the entire network.
- Blocking malicious bot abuse by multiple security approaches.
- Prevention of customer data breaches for protection against DNS spoofing.
- Argo tunnel protects web servers from direct attacks
The CDN Pricing:
- Your website going down
- Requiring additional bandwidth
- Experiencing problems setting up with CDN services with your website
- Also, it was discovered that your website is slow from certain locations
- Virtual machines- it deploys workloads at the edge of ability to configure as well as controls the computing environment
Cloudflare Pricing Plans
ADDITIONAL CONSUMPTION Additional CDN bandwidth- Upto 100 TB consumed in one month -$0.04 per GB
- 100TB- 1 PB consumed in one month -$0.03 per GB
- More than 1 PB consumed in one month -call
1) For free: it provides free access and for those individuals with a personal website and anyone to would like to explore Cloudflare. It also includes the following features:
Other additional resources- 1M additional WAF requests consumed in the one month- $0.5
- 1 additional WAF rule-$1 per month
- 1 additional monitoring service-$2 per month
- 1M additional DNS queries consumed in one month-$5
2) Pro ($20): it provides the faster access also professional websites blogs and portfolios requires for basic security and performance. It also includes the following features:
Also included in the plans as:- All PoPs includes-it states that every edge location is included with every standard of edge service package with no additional service charges for using the whole map or any of the specific region.
- 24*7 support- the expert tech and the support of accounts are available at all times via ticket chat and phone for any kind of issues or questions at no additional charges.
- 100% uptime guarantee- every kind of StackPath service is covered by a 100% uptime service level agreement. One can trust this platform as it has the reliability one needs for mission-critical applications
3) For Business ($200): it has the fastest access to websites and businesses which requires advanced security and prioritized support. It also includes the following features:
4) For Enterprise (Contact Them): It leads with the custom-tuned for maximum performance for those companies which required enterprise-grade security and performance. It also includes the following features:
Quick Links:
CONCLUSION: StackPath vs Cloudfare Comparison 2019 | Which One Is Better??
If one is looking for the speed StackPatch is obviously best for the security feature. Whereas talking about Cloudflare, it is also far better in terms of security. As StackPath offers better security feature and also offers a free trial for a month in order to test the services. So you should definitely give StackPath a try as it offers a free trial.
- Shared SSL certificates
- Global content delivery network
- Unmetered mitigation of DDoS attacks
Cloudflare may have an unlimited free plan which comes under very basic unimpressive performance. As compared to StackPath which offers quality speed and security at a minimum price due to which I think StackPath is a better choice.
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- HTTP/2 prioritization
- More control with advancement
- Enhanced performance with image and mobile optimization
- Enhancement of security with Web Application Firewall(WAF)
- 24*7 availability of chat and emails
- 100% uptime guarantee
- Enterprise-grade DDoS protection with network prioritization
- Role-based account access
- Up to 10M image resizing requests
- WAF with unlimited custom rulesets
- Access to raw logs
- Access to account audit logs
- Named solution and customer success engineers
- 100-page rules are included
- Multiple custom SSL certificate uploads
- Access to China data centers