Easily compare Fastly and CacheFly 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 | Fastly | CacheFly |
---|---|---|
Short profile | 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. | 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'. |
Products
Product | Fastly | CacheFly |
---|---|---|
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 | Video on Demand | VoD |
Image OptimizationAutomatic image transformation/compression/optimization | Image Optimizer | Smart Image Optimization |
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 | Fastly Managed CDN | Fully custom solution |
Edge ComputeRun your code on CDN edge servers | Compute@Edge | Custom solutions available for edge scripting |
Network
How many POP locations do Fastly and CacheFly have in different parts of the world?
Region | Fastly | CacheFly |
---|---|---|
North America | 25 | 17 |
Latin America | 8 | 17 |
Europe | 20 | 16 |
Russia & CIS | 0 | 0 |
Asia excl. China | 13 | 7 |
China | 0 | 2 |
Oceania | 8 | 3 |
Middle-East | 1 | 5 |
Africa | 3 | 1 |
Pricing
Pricing & contract duration | Fastly | CacheFly |
---|---|---|
Minimum contract term | None | 1 month |
Minimum monthly costs | $50 | $595 (35 TB/m) |
Requests costsCustomers pay for client to CDN requests | $0.0075 - $0.016 per 10k requests | No |
Ingress costsCustomers pay for origin-to-CDN bytes transferred | None | Yes |
NA/EU traffic (low volume) | $0.12 per GB | n/a |
APAC traffic (low volume) | $0.19 per GB | n/a |
LATAM traffic (low volume) | $0.28 per GB | n/a |
Features
Web acceleration | Fastly | CacheFly |
---|---|---|
Instant setupSign up, configure, start testing. | ||
Change propagation delayHow fast do config changes propagate to all POPs? | Instant! | 5 - 180s depending on the change |
Apex/root domain OK |
Global anycast IPs are available |
Must purchase dedicated IP
|
HTTP/2 | ||
WebSockets | Limited availability | |
IPv6Do the edge servers have IPv6? | IPv6 at Fastly | |
Compression |
Resend from origin, or compress on edge. Brotli! | Resend from origin, or compress on edge |
Origin pull - protocolHTTP only or HTTPS possible too? | HTTP and HTTPS |
HTTP and HTTPS
|
Origin pull - Host headerUse client > edge value? Set specific value? | Can be different from origin host | Set specific Host header value or forward value from client to edge request |
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. Some storage free, more storage available at additional costs | |
Cache control - CDN caching | Full and granular control | Origin headers are honored. Can config overrides |
Cache control - client caching | Full and granular control | Origin headers are forwarded to client. Can config overrides |
Serve Stale |
Cache-Control extensions support | CacheFly support team can activate this edge behaviour |
Purge |
Instant! | Purge Speed |
Purge - capabilities | Purge all and by key | Purge all and by directory, not by tag or header |
Analytics | Real-time! | Near real-time, lots of metrics |
Log files | Real-time streaming of logs to your server |
Pull via FTP or have pushed to customer endpoint
|
API | Purge, analytics, configuration | Purge, analytics, configuration |
HTTPS & Content Protection | Fastly | CacheFly |
---|---|---|
CDN domain HTTPSUse the CDN's domain, like cloudfront.net | Free for first 5 domains, $20 per additional domain | Free |
Customer domain HTTPSYour domain in the CDN's certificate | $100/m per FQDN, $275/m for wildcard domain | Custom pricing |
Customer cert HTTPSYour certificate on the CDN | EV cert possible. | EV cert and/or Non-SNI possible |
Token authentication | Enabling URL token validation | Self-service activation/configuration |
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 | Authenticating before returning a request | Available in a Custom/Private CDN scenario |
IP white/blacklisting | About Edge ACLs | Custom rules can be scripted (by support team at no extra charge) |
Support
Customer support | Fastly | CacheFly |
---|---|---|
Documentation | Yes, public | Yes, public |
Humans | Email support during business hours is free. Pay extra if you need more/better. Two paid plans available | 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 |