CDN Recommendation

Installation Hosting
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I’m about to launch a couple new communities in the upcoming weeks and I’m working out all of my hosting and plugin details. A concern I have is storage of uploads. It’s mostly a preemptive measure I’m considering. But I know very little about them. A few questions:

  1. Is a CDN worthwhile at the onset? I’m planning to do the $20/month Digital Ocean installation.
  2. I think I read a topic here about migrating to a CDN later. Am I correct in thinking it’s a simple move later on?
  3. What are some of the most common and most recommended providers? I typically just hear of Amazon.

I greatly appreciate any feedback you can give.

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  1. CDNs being worthwhile on the onset depends on the expected userload and cost. Fortunately there are things like cloudflare which are free and provide an amazing feature to cost ratio.
  2. Yes, moving to a CDN later is quite easy
  3. Some of the most common and recommended providers at relatively fair prices are

MaxCDN
Fast.ly
CloudFlare

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Thanks, @ColdSun. I’m unsure of the load expectation currently. But I’ll certainly look into those.

For now, it’s nice to know I don’t have to worry about it.

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I would also look at keycdn they already fully rolled out http/2

Maxcdn and fastly are great we use both

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Thanks, Sam. Will do. I thought I’d seen Fastly was used here on meta but wasn’t sure. Thanks for the feedback.

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Additionally, if http/2 is something you’re interested in, CloudFlare also supports it (in addition to KeyCDN as mentioned by Sam)

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I’ve been using CloudFlare’s freebie and I really like the benefits and their DNS management.

Tuukka_cdn.png928×444 31.9 KB

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What are the recommended ‘first rung’ providers here in 2022 for very low volume/non-commercial sites where price expectations are based around ‘droplet’ costs.

Seems like Fastly is recommended technically but appears to bill $50 minimum if you want:

  • TLS with support for letsencrypt certs
  • your own domains

That’s too much for a hobby/non-profit/fansite/low-volume-first-year?

Cloudfare appears attractive pricing-wise but isn’t considered technically the best fit?

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If You’re looking for just a CDN that works and is economical, bunny.net is a good one.

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I’ve thought about moving from Stackpath to CDN for a while, I was waiting because I wanted to be sure I could change my CDN without having to rebuild all my posts.

I think I’m going to work on this for real now because Stackpath is going to increase their base price from 10$ to 27$ from next month (it’s not new apparently, but I didn’t know):

Hello,

As you might recall, in March, 2021 we stopped offering a StackPath CDN subscription for $10/month for new customers.

Since that time, we have left that subscription price unchanged for previously subscribed customers, to provide as long of a transition period as possible.

Unfortunately, we are now officially retiring the $10/month price. Beginning with your next billing cycle your subscription will be for the current standard prices for StackPath CDN:

  • SP// CDN Standard – $27.50/month
  • SP// CDN Additional Sites – $1.10/site/month
  • SP// CDN Additional Bandwidth - Tier 2 (1TB - 100TB) – $0.044/GB
  • SP// CDN Additional Bandwidth - Tier 3 (>100TB) – $0.033/GB

We hope that the extended transition period we’ve provided and the benefits you’ve experienced firsthand with StackPath CDN prove the value of our platform and our commitment to our customers.

Since my forum has a fairly low traffic, even 10$ was too much.

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At that price point Cloudflare is unbeatable. You can use it as a simple CDN (create a new DNS that also points to your forum and configure it as DISCOURSE_CDN_URL) or as a proxy for the whole forum.

Either way, don’t forget to disable RocketLoader.

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