Company Overview
MaxCDN is a well known Content Delivery Network provider that began as a startup back in 2009 and is currently headquartered in Los Angeles, California. At the time of writing this MaxCDN review, their customer base stood at approximately 16,000 and their CDN service is currently used to power millions of websites. MaxCDN announced in July 2016 that they were acquired by Stackpath, a web services platform designed to secure, accelerate, and scale Internet businesses.
MaxCDN actively supports open-source projects and has the infrastructure in place to handle both small and large customers. A few of their most notable customers include
- BuySellAds,
- WPEngine, and
- Stumbleupon.
In this MaxCDN review, we’ll discuss a few key components that should help you in making a better-informed decision regarding if MaxCDN is best suited for your CDN needs.
Network
MaxCDN’s network is currently comprised of 19 different Points of Presence (PoPs) as well as over 50 peering partners spread across the globe. Their complete geographic list of PoPs is displayed in the table below.
| US | EU | South America | Asia and Pacific |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seattle | Amsterdam | São Paulo | Singapore |
| Los Angeles | London x2 | Sydney | |
| Chicago | Frankfurt | Tokyo | |
| New York | Paris | Hong Kong | |
| Virginia | Israel | ||
| Atlanta | |||
| Dallas | |||
| San Francisco |
Although MaxCDN offers 19 PoP locations, it should be noted that not all locations are included by default. The Entrepreneur and Professional plans both include all PoPs located in the US as well as EU (therefore 14 PoPs). However, If you require the use of their Sydney, Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong, or Israel PoP locations you are required to purchase an add-on which costs $15/month per pull zone.
Features
As with most CDN providers, MaxCDN comes with an array of additional features you can use to further accelerate your content delivery, provide increased security, etc. The comprehensive list below outlines a collection of features that MaxCDN offers as well as ones that cost extra and a couple that they currently don’t offer.
| Feature | Supported? |
|---|---|
| Origin Pull | Yes |
| Origin Push | Yes |
| Instant Purge | Yes |
| Real-time Statistics | Yes |
| API | Yes |
| ALPN | Yes |
| Raw Logs | Yes |
| Byte-range Requests | Yes |
| Gzip | Yes (Limited to certain file types) |
| HTTP/2 | Yes |
| Shared SSL | Yes |
| Custom SSL | Yes |
| DDoS Protection | Yes |
| Free Support | Yes 24/7 (Via Phone, Live Chat, and Email) |
| Origin Shield | Yes (Extra cost of $200/month) |
| Secure Token | Yes (Extra cost of $99/month) |
| Additional Zones | Yes (Extra cost of $12 / year per zone) |
| Custom Rules | Yes (Extra cost) |
| Let’s Encrypt SSL | No |
MaxCDN Pricing
MaxCDN pricing provides a couple of different options when it comes to paying for the CDN bandwidth you use. Their pricing decreases as you use more bandwidth and if you commit to an annualized payment you essentially get 2 months for free. The following outlines a few aspects of their “Entrepreneur” plan.
| 100GB / mo | 500GB / mo | 1 TB / mo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price per month | $9 | $39 | $79 |
| Price per month (paid annually) | $7.50 | $32.50 | $65.83 |
| Websites (zones) | 2 | 3 | 5 |
Next, up they also offer a “Professional” plan that is suited towards larger clients who have more traffic. The same payment option applies to this plan as the one above, if you commit to an annualized payment then the cost is reduced and 2 months are essentially free.
| 5TB / mo | 10TB / mo | 25 TB / mo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price per month | $299 | $499 | $1199 |
| Price per month (paid annually) | $249.17 | $415.83 | $999.17 |
| Websites (zones) | 7 | 10 | 25 |
MaxCDN also offers custom CDN pricing for enterprise or large traffic volume clients. This pricing also varies depending upon the amount of traffic you are using and is priced on a per GB basis. To choose this option you must contact MaxCDN and receive a custom quote.
MaxCDN Review – In Conclusion
Overall, MaxCDN is a well-known solution with pricing plans that are both affordable for small and large websites alike. With 19 PoPs around the globe they are fairly well connected in terms of global presence, just be aware that plans only start with US and EU locations. If you require the use of their Asia and Pacific PoPs this requires an add-on which costs $15 / per month / zone. There are also additional costs for certain features such as origin shield, secure token, etc.
However, with 24/7 support you’ll never be left in the dark and with annualized payment options you can save yourself a few dollars each month. Hopefully, this MaxCDN review has given you more insight into the overall company as well as the service they provide in order to help you make a better-informed decision for choosing a CDN provider.
