We’re all used to a few big players in the CDN realm, but there’s a new CDN in town: CDNsun.
HOW CDNSUN STARTED
CDNsun started up in 2012 and since then, they’ve been solely focused on speeding up people’s websites with their HTTP/2 enabled CDNs, offering free custom SSL certificates so that they can deliver content in any manner needed.
In that time, they’ve set up a network extending to over 70 datacenters all over the world meaning that they have excellent coverage for all of your readers/customers across the globe .
SETTING UP A CDN
The process of setting up a CDN is very simple. Just click on the button to create a new HTTP Pull CDN (which would suit most setups), enter the CDN details, like your CDN CNAME (you can just use the cdnsun.net one if you like) and what your origin URL is, and you’re on your way. After 10 or 15 minutes, CDNsun has created your CDN across their global network and you’re ready to go. It really couldn’t be any simpler.
The process for integrating the CDN with WordPress is the same as any other CDN – you’ll want to use a plugin that supports using a CDN, like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache.
CDNSUN FEATURES
When you go through the process of setting up a CDN, you’ll notice that there’s a whole bunch of configurable advanced options, such as:
- Cache expiration time
- HTTP MP4 Pseudo Streaming
- HTTP FLV Pseudo Streaming
- Block crawlers
- IP access policy
- Hotlinking policy
- Country access policy
- Limit traffic
- Limit cost
We’ve never seen options like this before on a CDN and it’s nice to be able to configure these things with ease. We’re not sure how the limit traffic and limit cost options work (does the CDN just stop working if you hit your limit or does it temporarily redirect back to the original content on your site?), but the fact that you have these tools at your disposal is really handy.
CDNsun also does a lot of cool stuff with video, like being able to stream video (MP4 and FLV) over their CDN, so you can host your own videos (rather than having to use YouTube or Vimeo).
This finegrained control really allows you to make the most of your CDN and limit overuse by blocking hotlinking for example (the practice of other sites linking directly to your CDN content, thus utilising your CDN bandwidth at your cost).
PERFORMANCE
Given that we hadn’t heard of CDNsun before, we weren’t quite expecting it to live up to the performance of other more well-known CDNs. So we put it to the test. We copied our existing personal site which is hosted on WP Engine to another installation, turned off the built-in CDN and served our static resources from CDNsun instead. Our site uses the CDN provided by WP Engine, which is handled by MaxCDN, one of the most well-known CDNs, so this is a good comparison to go by.
We tested the load time for each site at all of Pingdom’s 6 testing locations and compared the results for each site. Here’s how they stacked up:
CDNsun | MaxCDN | |
Amsterdam | 1.83s | 2.13s |
Dallas | 1.30s | 2.67s |
Melbourne | 4.48s | 4.78s |
New York City | 1.94s | 1.56s |
San Jose | 1.45s | 1.38s |
Stockholm | 1.21s | 2.72s |
Average | 2.04s | 2.54s |
Well, as you can see, CDNsun actually fared better than MaxCDN in two thirds of the tests and was 20% faster on average. So, there’s absolutely no reason to question the performance or capabilities of CDNsun – in fact, you may do even better with CDNsun than with some of the other CDNs that you’re perhaps more familiar with.
THE COST
CDNsun’s pricing structure is pretty simple. The cost per TB of data for the smallest user is $45. This is the most expensive tier. As you have more and more traffic, the cost goes down from there, to a cost of $33 per TB for users with over 100TB/mo. Most users will pay at or close to the $45/TB cost.
CDNsun also doesn’t charge monthly fees. The service is pay as you go.
On the contrary, let’s look at MaxCDN. For most users, who will be at the smaller end of the scale, the cost could be as much as double that of CDNsun. For 100GB/mo, the cost is $9/mo, which equates to $90/TB and if you’re using 1TB/mo, the cost is $79, which is still way higher than CDNsun.
CONCLUSION
CDNsun has an excellent and fairly priced CDN which is superior to its competitors. If we were in the market for a CDN or someone asked us for a recommendation, CDNsun would be at the top of our list.