Company Overview
Cachefly is a content delivery network provider that was founded in 2002 and based in Chicago, IL. They were the first CDN company to offer TCP Anycast for routing purposes rather than using DNS load balancing. A few of Cachefly’s most notable customers include:
- ArsTechnica
- TinyMCE
- Adometry
- Topix
This Cachefly review will provide you with a detailed overview of this particular CDN provider to help you make a better-informed decision whether they are the right CDN choice for you.
Network
At the time of writing this Cachefly review, their network was comprised of 41 different Points of Presence (PoPs) distributed across the globe. They do have special offers from time to time which allows users to use a smaller number of their PoPs (usually mostly located in the US) for a smaller fee. However, for their standard plans, the following list of PoPs are included. Cachefly’s complete geographic list of PoPs are displayed in the network map and table below.
| Americas | EMEA | Asia and Pacific |
|---|---|---|
| Atlanta | Amsterdam | Bangkok |
| Los Angeles | Frankfurt | Perth |
| Seattle | Johannesburg | Melbourne |
| New York | Milan | Hong Kong |
| La Paz | Stockholm | Singapore |
| Chicago | Lisbon | Tokyo |
| Miami | Zurich | Mumbai |
| San Jose | Bucharest | Sydney |
| Toronto | Istanbul | Jakarta |
| Dallas | London | |
| Montreal | Moscow | |
| Sao Paulo | Warsaw | |
| Washington DC | Prague | |
| Doha | ||
| Tel Aviv | ||
| Madrid | ||
| Paris | ||
| Helsinki | ||
| Vienna |
Features
Knowing which features a particular CDN offers is very important when choosing a CDN provider. This allows you to better determine if they are truly the right choice for your website’s needs. The following table includes a round-up of popular CDN features and outlines which ones Cachefly currently supports, which ones cost extra, and which ones currently aren’t supported.
| Feature | Supported? |
|---|---|
| Origin Pull | Yes |
| Origin Push | Yes |
| Real-time Statistics | Yes |
| API | Yes |
| Gzip | Yes |
| Shared SSL | Yes |
| DDoS Protection | Yes |
| Origin Shield | Yes |
| Secure Token | Yes |
| Free Support | Yes 24/7 (Via email) |
| Instant Purge | Yes (Only with Premium, Platinum, and Enterprise plans) |
| Raw Logs | Yes (Only with Premium, Platinum, and Enterprise plans) |
| Custom SSL | Yes (Extra cost $500 NRC, $100 MRC) |
| Additional Zones | Yes (Extra cost of $10 / month per zone) |
| Custom Rules | Yes (Extra cost) |
| ALPN | No |
| HTTP/2 | No |
| Let’s Encrypt SSL | No |
Cachefly Pricing
At the time of writing this Cachefly review, Cachefly does not disclose any information pertaining to their pricing structure. Therefore, if you want pricing information from them you will likely need to call their sales team and talk to a specialist.
Cachefly Review – In Conclusion
Overall, Cachefly is a CDN provider that has been around for quite some time. They have a comprehensive network of PoPs distributed around the world and provide 24/7 support to all of their customers. However, a couple of downfalls to this CDN provider is their pricing, which is quite high, as well as their feature list.
At the time of writing this review, Cachefly was one of the only CDN providers left that didn’t support the HTTP/2 protocol. This protocol provides users which much faster speeds and is a major improvement over HTTP1.1. Additionally, a few of their other features come at a premium either with an upfront cost or through purchasing a more expensive monthly plan.
Since plans start at $99/month, this may not be the most economical CDN solutions for everyone. With this pricing, for 256GB it comes out to approximately $0.38/GB. For those who run websites that simply aren’t large enough to justify this expenditure as well as for those who simply want to lower their CDN costs, there are other CDNs that have lower price points with just as many if not more available features. However, if Cachefly has servers in an area that is important to your visitors, they may be a suitable option for your use-case.
