Easily compare AdvancedHosting 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 | AdvancedHosting | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| Short profile | AdvancedHosting provides dedicated servers, cloud servers, cloud storage, CDN, AnycastDNS, DevOps as a Service and domain registration since 2002. The CDN has ~25 POPs on 4 continents, supporting delivery of video and static assets. | 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 | AdvancedHosting | 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) | CDN for Static Content | |
| Large file deliveryStatic object delivery; caching of large files (file size >1 MB) | ||
| Live videoDelivery of live video. RTMP? Transcoding/transmuxing? | CDN for Video | Streaming Media |
| Video on demandDelivery of on demand video | CDN for Video | |
| Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization | ||
| DNSAuthoritative DNS for customer domain | Anycast DNS | AWS Route53 |
| WAFWeb Application Firewall | AWS WAF | |
| Anti-DDoSDDoS attack protection. Specific product(s) for this. | AWS Shield | |
| Private CDNDedicated edge resources & custom configs | ||
| Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers | Lambda@Edge |
Network
How many POP locations do AdvancedHosting and CloudFront have in different parts of the world?
| Region | AdvancedHosting | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| North America | 9 | 19 |
| Latin America | 2 | 7 |
| Europe | 9 | 31 |
| Russia & CIS | 1 | 0 |
| Asia excl. China | 3 | 18 |
| China | 0 | 4 |
| Oceania | 0 | 5 |
| Middle East | 0 | 6 |
| Africa | 0 | 5 |
Pricing
| Pricing & contract duration | AdvancedHosting | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum contract term | None | None |
| Minimum monthly costs | $0.01 | None |
| Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests | None | $0.0075 - $0.022 per 10k requests |
| Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred | Yes | $0.02 - $0.16 per GB (free if origin is AWS) |
| NA/EU traffic (low volume) | $0.025 per GB or $0.5 per Mbps | $0.085 per GB |
| APAC traffic (low volume) | $0.025 per GB or $0.5 per Mbps | $0.12 per GB (India: $0.109) |
| LATAM traffic (low volume) | $0.025 per GB or $0.5 per Mbps | $0.11 per GB |
Features
| Web acceleration | AdvancedHosting | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing. | ||
| Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? | 2 to 3 minutes (video takes longer) | ~10 minutes |
Apex/root domain OK  No performance degradation when using http(s)://domain.com |
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? | IPv6 support announcement (Oct 2016) | |
| Compression Reduce file size for faster delivery |
Resend from origin only
Does not compress on the edge
|
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
Video: only pull over HTTP
|
HTTP and HTTPS |
| Origin pull - Host headerUse client > edge value? Set specific value? |
Can be different from origin host
Video: only origin Host
|
Can't configure specific other Host header |
| Origin ShieldOne POP pulls from origin, other POPs pull from the shield POP | Free. | 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 | $25/TB | |
| Cache control - CDN caching | Origin or CDN controlled | |
| Cache control - client caching | Origin or CDN controlled | |
| Serve Stale CDN serves cached but expired content in case origin is in trouble |
Supports Cache-Control extensions | |
| Purge Invalidate or delete cached objects on CDN |
A few minutes | Purge Speed |
| Purge - capabilities | Purge specific files, purge all (not for VideoCDN) | Purge all and by directory/file type (wildcards) |
| Analytics | Cache hit ratio and error rate not yet available | Amazon CloudFront Reports & Analytics |
| Log files | Available on request (support ticket) |
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 | AdvancedHosting | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net | Free (not SNI) | |
| Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate | Let's Encrypt with auto-renewal. CDN handles all. | |
| Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN | Can be an EV certificate. Free. | Free (SNI) or $600/m for non-SNI |
| Token authentication | Antihotlink protection | Serving Private Content through CloudFront |
| Geo blocking | VideoCDN only | Restricting the Geographic Distribution of Your Content |
| Hotlink protectionThird parties cannot deeplink to your content | Set allow and/or block list. | Use AWS WAF for Referer Checking |
| Basic authenticationUser logs in on the CDN to get content | ||
| IP white/blacklisting | VideoCDN only | Use AWS WAF to Block IP Addresses |
Support
| Customer support | AdvancedHosting | CloudFront |
|---|---|---|
| Documentation | API docs and VoD API docs | Yes, public. API docs |
| Humans | Ticket system, Skype and email support is free. | Community support is free. Email and phone support (AWS Support) available at extra costs |