Easily compare CacheFly and CloudFront for POP locations, products, pricing, features & support. We hope this helps you better understand the similarities and differences between these content delivery networks.
Company
| Company | CacheFly | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| Short profile | Launched in 2002, CacheFly developed the world's first TCP-anycast based content delivery network. CacheFly has a focus on optimizing the CDN for throughput and has steadily built out the network to now have 50+ POPs on 6 continents. CacheFly provides a 100% uptime SLA and takes pride in acting as 'consultants to our customers'. | CloudFront is the CDN of AWS (Amazon Web Services), the world's largest cloud services provider. CloudFront offers a mature set of content delivery products and has a big network of POPs on many continents. Solid documentation and APIs make CloudFront a developer-friendly CDN. |
Products
| Product | CacheFly | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamic content deliveryNon-cacheable content delivery. User login, shopping cart ... | Dynamic Content Delivery | |
| Small file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of small files (file size <1 MB) | ||
| Large file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of large files (file size >1 MB) | ||
| Live videoDelivery of live video. RTMP? Transcoding/transmuxing? | Ultra Low Latency Video Streaming | Streaming Media |
| Video on demandDelivery of on demand video | VoD | |
| Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization | Smart Image Optimization | |
| DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain | AWS Route53 | |
| WAFWeb Application Firewall | AWS WAF | |
| Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. | AWS Shield | |
| Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs | Fully custom solution | |
| Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers | Custom solutions available for edge scripting | Lambda@Edge |
Network
How many POP locations do CacheFly and CloudFront have in different parts of the world?
| Region | CacheFly | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| North America | 17 | 19 |
| Latin America | 18 | 7 |
| Europe | 16 | 31 |
| Russia & CIS | 0 | 0 |
| Asia excl. China | 7 | 18 |
| China | 2 | 4 |
| Oceania | 3 | 5 |
| Middle East | 5 | 5 |
| Africa | 1 | 4 |
Pricing
| Pricing & contract duration | CacheFly | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum contract term | 1 month | None |
| Minimum monthly costs | $0 (5 TB/m) | None |
| Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests | No | $0.0075 - $0.022 per 10k requests |
| Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred | No | $0.02 - $0.16 per GB (free if origin is AWS) |
| NA/EU traffic (low volume) | $0.03 per GB | $0.085 per GB |
| APAC traffic (low volume) | $0.03 per GB | $0.12 per GB (India: $0.109) |
| LATAM traffic (low volume) | $0.03 per GB | $0.11 per GB |
Features
| Web acceleration | CacheFly | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing. | ||
| Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? | 5 - 180s depending on the change | ~10 minutes |
Apex/root domain OK  No performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com |
Must purchase dedicated IP
Or use DNS provider that can do CNAME flattening
|
Only if used together with AWS Route53 |
| HTTP/2 | HTTP/2 announcement (Sep 2016) | |
| HTTP/3 | HTTP/3 announcement | |
| WebSockets | Using WebSockets with CloudFront distributions | |
| IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? | Custom enablement | IPv6 support announcement (Oct 2016) |
| Compression Reduce file size for faster delivery |
Resend from origin |
Resend from origin, or compress on edge
CloudFront can compress many content types on the edge and supports Brotli
|
| Origin pull - protocolHTTP only or HTTPS possible too? |
HTTP and HTTPS
Match client to edge request protocol is possible
|
HTTP and HTTPS |
| Origin pull - Host headerUse client > edge value? Set specific value? | Set specific Host header value or forward value from client to edge request. Support for AWS Origin Secret Key Header | Can't configure specific other Host header |
| Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP | Origin Shield docs | |
| Waiting RoomDuring peak traffic, route users to a virtual waiting room | Virtual Waiting Room on AWS | |
| Push / uploadStore your content directly on CDN, no customer origin | FTP or Cloud Storage can be enabled | |
| Cache control - CDN caching | Origin headers are honored. Can config caching overrides | |
| Cache control - client caching | Origin headers are forwarded to client. Can config overrides | |
| Serve Stale CDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble |
CacheFly support team can activate this edge behaviour | Supports Cache-Control extensions |
| Purge Invalidate or delete cached objects on CDN |
Purge Speed | Purge Speed |
| Purge - capabilities | Purge all and by directory, not by tag or header | Purge all and by directory/file type (wildcards) |
| Analytics | Near real-time, lots of metrics | Amazon CloudFront Reports & Analytics |
| Log files |
Pull via FTP or have pushed with Log Streaming to customer endpoint
Logs are 5 minutes delayed
|
Only delivered to S3
CloudFront delivers access logs for a distribution up to several times an hour
|
| API | Purge, analytics, configuration | Purge, analytics, configuration |
| HTTPS & Content Protection | CacheFly | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net | Free | Free (not SNI) |
| Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate | ||
| Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN | Upload your own Certificate or Include Automatic Certificate | Free (SNI) or $600/m for non-SNI |
| Token authentication | Self-service activation/configuration | Serving Private Content through CloudFront |
| Geo blocking | Self-service activation/configuration. Predefined and custom rules | Restricting the Geographic Distribution of Your Content |
| Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content | Use AWS WAF for Referer Checking | |
| Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content | Available in a Custom/Private CDN scenario | |
| IP white/blacklisting | Custom rules can be scripted (by support team at no extra charge) | Use AWS WAF to Block IP Addresses |
Support
| Customer support | CacheFly | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation | Yes, public | Yes, public. API docs |
| Humans | All customers get 24/7 email and phone support and a dedicated implementation/solutions engineer. Extra support ('Elite managed') available at a fee with SLA for support response time | Community support is free. Email and phone support (AWS Support) available at extra costs |