Easily compare CacheFly and Fastly 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 | Fastly |
---|---|---|
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'. | Founded in 2011, Fastly has grown into a mature CDN provider. Fastly offers a range of services including streaming media delivery and private CDN but Fastly is best known for being a 'real-time CDN', meaning changes happen instantly and the platform can deliver 'uncacheable' content well. |
Products
Product | CacheFly | Fastly |
---|---|---|
Dynamic content deliveryNon-cacheable content delivery. User login, shopping cart ... | ||
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 | |
Video on demandDelivery of on demand video | VoD | Video on Demand |
Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization | Smart Image Optimization | Image Optimizer |
DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain | ||
WAFWeb Application Firewall | Web application firewall | |
Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. | DDoS Mitigation | |
Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs | Fully custom solution | Fastly Managed CDN |
Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers | Custom solutions available for edge scripting | Compute@Edge |
Network
How many POP locations do CacheFly and Fastly have in different parts of the world?
Region | CacheFly | Fastly |
---|---|---|
North America | 17 | 25 |
Latin America | 18 | 8 |
Europe | 16 | 20 |
Russia & CIS | 0 | 0 |
Asia excl. China | 7 | 13 |
China | 2 | 0 |
Oceania | 3 | 8 |
Middle East | 5 | 2 |
Africa | 1 | 3 |
Pricing
Pricing & contract duration | CacheFly | Fastly |
---|---|---|
Minimum contract term | 1 month | None |
Minimum monthly costs | $0 (5 TB/m) | $50 |
Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests | No | $0.0075 - $0.016 per 10k requests |
Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred | No | None |
NA/EU traffic (low volume) | $0.03 per GB | $0.12 per GB |
APAC traffic (low volume) | $0.03 per GB | $0.19 per GB |
LATAM traffic (low volume) | $0.03 per GB | $0.28 per GB |
Features
Web acceleration | CacheFly | Fastly |
---|---|---|
Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing. | ||
Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? | 5 - 180s depending on the change | Instant! |
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
|
Global anycast IPs are available |
HTTP/2 | ||
HTTP/3 | Enabling HTTP/3 | |
WebSockets | Limited availability | |
IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? | Custom enablement | IPv6 at Fastly |
Compression Reduce file size for faster delivery | Resend from origin | Resend from origin, or compress on edge. 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 be different from origin host |
Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP | Also available as separate product (Media Shield) | |
Waiting RoomDuring peak traffic, route users to a virtual waiting room | Stateful waiting room with Compute@Edge | |
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 | Full and granular control |
Cache control - client caching | Origin headers are forwarded to client. Can config overrides | Full and granular control |
Serve Stale CDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble | CacheFly support team can activate this edge behaviour | Cache-Control extensions support |
Purge Invalidate or delete cached objects on CDN | Purge Speed | Instant! |
Purge - capabilities | Purge all and by directory, not by tag or header | Purge all and by key |
Analytics | Near real-time, lots of metrics | Real-time! |
Log files |
Pull via FTP or have pushed with Log Streaming to customer endpoint
Logs are 5 minutes delayed
|
Real-time streaming of logs to your server |
API | Purge, analytics, configuration | Purge, analytics, configuration |
HTTPS & Content Protection | CacheFly | Fastly |
---|---|---|
CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net | Free | Free for first 5 domains, $20 per additional domain |
Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate | $100/m per FQDN, $275/m for wildcard domain | |
Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN | Upload your own Certificate or Include Automatic Certificate | EV cert possible. |
Token authentication | Self-service activation/configuration | Enabling URL token validation |
Geo blocking | Self-service activation/configuration. Predefined and custom rules | |
Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content | Creating and using Edge Dictionaries | |
Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content | Available in a Custom/Private CDN scenario | Authenticating before returning a request |
IP white/blacklisting | Custom rules can be scripted (by support team at no extra charge) | About Edge ACLs |
Support
Customer support | CacheFly | Fastly |
---|---|---|
Documentation | Yes, public | Yes, public |
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 | Email support during business hours is free. Pay extra if you need more/better. Two paid plans available |