Introducing the top seven free CDN providers for WordPress that will help boost your site speed. Well, what is a CDN? Read on, I’ve explained that. These are arguably the best free CDN services for WordPress available today!
Well, it can’t be stressed enough how much your site speed matters these days. Not only from an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) standpoint, but also from a user experience perspective!
Obviously, who would want to visit a site that loads slowly? Not me, anyway.
It’s no secret that a quick loading site gets higher rankings in the search results and gets more happy visitors/customers – who would return for more.
Search engines like Google always strive to offer the best user experience to its users. And site speed is definitely one of those top search ranking factors that contribute to a richer user experience.
Google has already cautioned that “Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users.”
So if you haven’t yet given “site speed” its due diligence (assuming you have a WordPress site), then you better start right now!
And how do you do that?
There are several things, you can do to speed up your WordPress site. And setting up CDN on WordPress site is one of those proven tweaks to get more speed. So you can definitely do the magic –
By installing any of these free CDN providers for WordPress.
Ok, but before we dig any deeper, let me briefly explain what a CDN is!
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What is a CDN?
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a group of interconnected servers spread across different geographic locations around the globe. These servers store various static elements of a website such as images, code (JavaScript, HTML), and so on.
How does CDN Boost your Site Speed?
Let’s imagine that you have installed any of these free CDN services on your WordPress site hosted in the UK.
Now, if a user is accessing your site from Kansas City in the United States, then your website’s static elements are provided by a CDN server located in Kansas City (or from the nearest available server) – and not from your web host in the UK.
This localized access of website resources will speed up your site at the user’s end.
I hope you need no more compelling reasons to install one of these free CDN services for WordPress sites.
By the way, I forgot to mention that the paid CDN services are super expensive and highly unaffordable for small-budget bloggers/businesses making these free CDN services for WordPress sites highly sought-after and relevant!
Now let’s cut to the chase and look at the best 7 free CDN providers for WordPress sites!
1. CloudFlare
The free CDN service that tops the list is CloudFlare, and deservedly so!
- ClouFlare’s CDN network boasts a staggering network of 115 data centers spread across the length and breadth of the globe.
- Obviously, the more the number of data centers, higher would be the performance and reliability of the websites that it serves.
- Apart from saving precious bandwidth, CloudFlare also secures your site from hacks, harmful bots, and crawlers.
To get started, all you do is install the CloudFlare plugin on your WordPress site, activate it, and set it up for improved speed, security, and performance.
2. Photon by Jetpack
If your site is heavy on images, then Jetpack’s photon feature is worth trying out. If you already have the Jetpack plugin installed on your WordPress site, then you may be already utilizing their Photon feature.
The Photon feature is designed to load up your site’s images faster at the user’s end. This also lowers the workload on your web host.
To integrate this CDN, you must install and activate the Jetpack plugin on your WordPress site and your images will be dynamically served from WordPress.com’s global cloud servers.
3. Incapsula
Just like any other powerful CDN, Incapsula also has a vast geographically distributed server network.
Activate the Incapsula WordPress plugin, and your website should start loading up quicker at your user’s end thanks to one of their powerful content distribution servers.
Incapsula also protects your website from a variety of nasty web threats like DDoS attacks. And also does real-time threat check.
4. CoralCDN
CoralCDN, originally developed by MIT students, utilizes billions of computers across the internet to serve as its data centers. That’s exactly why they can afford to offer their services for free!
This type of CDN is known as the Peer-to-Peer content delivery network.
CoralCDN route your site’s static content through their network by just appending ‘.nyud.net’ to your domain name.
For example: if your site’s domain name is www.yoursite.com, then CoralCDN plugin makes it www.yoursite.com.nyud.net
5. Swarmify
Swarmify is yet another free and powerful peer-to-peer based CDN to enhance your site’s performance.
It is also arguably one of the best free CDN providers for WordPress sites available now.
With their servers spread across 196 countries, they offer 250 GB (and 10 GB of image) bandwidth for free.
6. jsDelivr
jsDelivr is one of the free CDN services for WordPress sites to speed up JavaScripts.
JavaScript is found on every other WordPress blog and it must load fast! Though you have tried, deferred loading of JavaScripts but they are still loaded only at a deferred time. jsDelivr can help you out delivering them optimally.
You need to host all your JavaScript files on jsDelivr network to load them up real quick for your blog users.
7. Google Cloud Platform
If you know how to tweak the code, this service is for you.
A project maintained by Google Cloud Platform can be utilized for hosting sites, data storage, and running web-based apps.
In my understanding, you must host your WordPress site on Google App Engine, to boost your site’s performance. I have hosted one of my sites on Google Cloud Platform.
Wrapping up
What we’ve discussed now are undoubtedly the best free CDN services for WordPress sites!
If you are looking to improve your site’s performance for FREE, then these are the best free CDN providers for WordPress sites that you can count on.
Well, are you using one of these services? Or do you know any other free CDN services for WordPress sites?
Please do let us know through a comment.
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Looking for site speed tweaks? You may like –
How to Increase Page Speed using Htaccess (WordPress)
Enable Keep-Alive in WordPress to Speed up Your Site
How to Optimize Images in WordPress for Page Speed
How to Cache Gravatar Images in WordPress for WP Optimization
Great list. Didn’t know about some of the CDN providers listed here. Will surely try them. Currently using Cloudflare and it’s probably the best one yet.
I have a question that which one is the best CDN from the above list that you provided.
Try using Cloudflare or KeyCDN.
Hey, Thanks for tips but I’m using free CDN of Cloudflare I’m getting some error from 5xx when again loading the webpage can please us to fix … this problem ..