Top Content Delivery Networks for Web Developers and Webmasters

CacheFly

CacheFly is a popular Content Delivery Network that you can rely upon completely! Adding companies such as Adobe and Microsoft into their portfolio list, CacheFly has created such an awesome impression among most professionals. Network map of CacheFly will just amaze you because this CDN solution has set up powerful servers in almost every parts of globe, ensuring quick availability of content for everyone. Nevertheless, it is to be noted that CacheFly is for websites that receive massive traffic, as the basic plan, offering data transfer of 256GB per month, is available at $99 each month. Plus, regardless category of your content — let it be apps, games, audio or video — CacheFly will have a dedicated CDN Service for each of them.

CloudFlare

If you are looking for a solution that not only speeds up but supercharges your website or blog, you can go, without a bit of doubt, with CloudFlare — one of the most trusted and widely used content delivery networks in industry. With a relatively expansive network of servers, CloudFlare can serve each of your users at best level without depending on his or her location. And the best part of CloudFlare is that it offers a free plan as well! And, even in higher plans, the company has not put limits in terms of bandwidth.  So, considering opinion from a huge number of professionals, it’s advisable to implement CloudFlare CDN in your website or blog, and you can definitely find something superb.

MaxCDN

Having provided superb Content Delivery Network solution for bigger brands such as TheNextWeb, The Washington Times, BuySellAds and jQuery, MaxCDN does not need an introduction to be recognized as a noticeable solution that helps you serve content well to your readers. By implementing features such as MaxPOPs, MultiPath Network and FastStack, MaxCDN will make transfer of your data quite easier and quick, regardless platform and device of readers or users. In additional MaxControl control panel of the CDN will help you keep track of analytics and then act well in a way such that results would be impressive. According to your requirement, you can go with Starter, High Volume or Custom plans, but MaxCDN does not offer a free plan.

Windows Azure

It does not matter what is your attitude towards Microsoft and other products from the firm, but this cloud-based CDN and storage solution is something worth a shot! When compared to other CDN in industry, services of Azure are very economical, and you can find the approximate price according to your requirement. Also, to suit different varieties of requirements, Windows Azure offers different services, namely Virtual Machines, SQL Databases, Mobile Backend etc. And, of course, Windows Azure has put notable brands such as Mazda, HarperCollins, Diebold and Xerox into the list of clients.

RackSpace Cloud Files

RackSpace is yet another noteworthy name when it comes to cloud storage and powerful Content Delivery Network, in association with a widespread network partner. Despite not having a free trial, the pricing plan of RackSpace will be something really productive because you have to spend only 10 cents per 1GB of data you store in servers. Also, as we said, RackSpace has association with Akamai in order to make your files available globally. Since Akamai is one of the firms that serve around 30 percent of overall internet traffic, including those of Facebook and Twitter, you can be quite sure of RackSpace’s reliability as a Content Delivery Network.

Cloud Storage and File Sharing Websites

Apart from these CDNs, Cloud Computing world is rich in terms of personal cloud storage as well! Some prominent personal cloud storage and sharing services are:

• 4Shared
• MediaFire
• CloudApp
• DropBox

And the list never ends, you know!

What do you think about these CDNs and cloud storage services? If you have used any of these, we would love to hear your opinion about theses. Plus, if you think some other solutions deserve space in this list, please free feel to let us know through comments.

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However, apart from the three basic web hosting services commonly known to all (Shared, VPS and Dedicated hosting), there also exist few others that take the web hosting market to another level. Let us primarily look at the aforementioned fundamental web hosting provided by almost all the hosting companies.

Shared Hosting

Shared Hosting is the most preferred and commonly used hosting plan especially for the personal and small-scale websites. The main reason behind this is availability of necessary resources in affordable rates. Here, the administrative power and control minimizes since a single web server is shared by many users and so is the resources provided. All the features such as the RAM, disk space, Web mail servers, MySQL storage servers (database support) and so on are shared by the clients. Thus, this option may not be useful for the sites with high traffic and heavy data. Another downside is the security issues it falls short off!

Benefits of Shared Web Hosting:

• Cheap Hosting Plans
• Reliable Features
• Host looks after Technical Maintenance

Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting

By the name itself, one can get an idea of this hosting being private and more secured. Hence, it is somewhat expensive and definitely the cost is worth it since you have the power to control the system configuration and installations. Basically, it is a dedicated virtual machine allotted to the client in a shared hosting environment i.e. it shares the available resources without affecting other private servers. Briefly, it is combination of both dedicated and shared hosting in a more secured and accessible manner.

The benefits of VPS Web Hosting are:

• Dedicated Hosting Resources
• Controlled Configuration
• Privacy and Security

Dedicated Hosting

This one’s the most expensive yet trusted hosting service plan. The word ‘Dedicated’ here means the entire server is dedicated to the client’s website, and then be it a single website or number of such, all the resources available are completely allotted to a single developer. It is best suitable for commercial websites with regular heavy traffic. The Dedicated Hosting is a way more managed hosting and the client has control over both the Operating System and Hardware of the services provided.

Read: Virtual Private Servers (VPS) Vs Dedicated Servers Hosting

Benefits of Dedicated Web Hosting are:

• Flexibility and Customization Freedom
• Highly Secured
• Plenty of available resources
• Efficient Performance

Semi-Dedicated Hosting

Very few Web Masters are aware about this kind of hosting. It particularly serves those websites that have grown so extensive that they cannot be managed by the shared servers. You can better consider it the state of a site that is lying in between shared and dedicated hosting! There exists just a considerable amount of semi-dedicated host providers such as Bluehost, HostGator etc.

Interestingly, at some point it depends on the host company as to what kind of package they provide you under the name of Semi-dedicated plan. It can be either a VPS or Shared hosting with some additional amount of resources and facilities provided in order to let your site perform better. It is considered more reliable than the shared server as MySQL and E-Mail bases run on different servers thus deducting the load on the site. Note that neither too many customers share the server nor the server is completely allotted to a single customer.

Benefits of Semi-Dedicated Web Hosting are:

• Affordable
• Increased resources than Shared
• High Sustenance and Easy Upgradation

Reseller Hosting

This type of hosting is most probably handled and worked out as a business deal, especially by the newbie in Hosting Market. The reseller, one who holds the reseller hosting account, acts as a hosting provider. The account holder rents out part of his owned disk space and bandwidth to other customers thus providing them hosting services. This comes out to be a profitable deal to the reseller as he purchases wholesale hosting services and then sells some resource parts to other needy customers. The severe drawback of this service is the technical and customer care support. The reseller may not guarantee complete support to its clients in any manner.

Benefits of Reseller Web Hosting are:

• Cheap Packages and Less Expenses
• No Maintenance Burden
• Provision of Resources as per the requirement

Cloud Hosting

We all know that the Cloud computing technology is on high rise. With the hosting services being managed by the virtual servers on cloud networks of computers, it is claimed that in near future the entire hosting industry may turn into Cloud Hosting. The basic idea behind this hosting is that the resources are spread across separate servers so that hosting services are best offered in every aspect. The main concern is about the privacy of sites’ data. However, the fundamental theory of cloud hosting focuses on Pay for what you use i.e. you need not spend extra rentals for the resources you are no longer in need of!

Benefits of Cloud Web Hosting are:

• Least Downtime Risk
• Follows Divide and Rule Concept
• High Scalability and Reliability
• More Freedom and Power

Collocation Hosting

Paying for hosting services provided by some other web server rather than owning one is what we call collocated hosting. The server is connected to data center from where the data transfer takes place and the cost is estimated. The client has full authority to manage the entire working of the server along with the problem fixation.

Benefits of Cloud Web Hosting are:

• Complete Control over both Hardware and Software
• Cost Efficient
  

Free Web Hosting

Now this one’s an interesting stuff to go through, but on the other side it is less preferred by the web developers. The reason is straight forward: Low security, numerous apps and banner displays, no strong technical support and inclusion of host name in the domain name. Yes, it’s true that nothing is for free of cost in this world. For hosting your website under the category of free web hosting, you will have to pay the amount in some other term like by displaying the host banners and ads on your web pages. It is recommended that you should avoid free hosting if you really serious about your website. WordPress is the most popular among all.

Benefits of Free Web Hosting are:

• Free of Cost
• User-friendly Host
• Best for the Beginners

The hosting types are not only limited to these discussed above. File Hosting, Video Hosting, Internet Forum Hosting, Image Hosting, Internet Service Provider (ISP) Hosting, Email Hosting, Self-Service Hosting and many such fall under the different kinds of web hosting services. At the end of the day, it’s the decision of the Web Master that should be taken on the basis of site requirements, as to which web hosting to go for!

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