Did you know? When a global streaming service switched CDNs during a live sports event, it lost 12 % of its viewers in under five minutes—latency was the culprit. If your company is preparing to move away from StackPath, the stakes are just as high. Selecting the right Content Delivery Network (CDN) is not a box-ticking exercise; it is mission-critical for performance, revenue, and brand reputation.
Leaving StackPath isn’t merely about “who’s cheaper.” We measured each candidate on six impact-driven vectors:
Tip: Before shortlisting, map your workloads into “static,” “dynamic,” and “streaming” buckets. Which bucket hurts the most right now? This clarity will guide everything from origin shield choices to billing classes.
Question: If your primary pain-point vanished overnight—would it translate directly into higher revenue or lower churn? Hold that thought as you read on.
BlazingCDN marries stability and fault tolerance on par with Amazon CloudFront but at a fraction of the cost—starting at $4 per TB (that’s $0.004 per GB). This pricing predictability is coveted by high-traffic enterprises that serve terabytes daily.
Whether you operate a SaaS platform scaling 10× overnight or a gaming studio shipping 40 GB patches, BlazingCDN’s flexible per-domain configuration eliminates rigid commit headaches. According to customer interviews across media, fintech, and ad-tech sectors, organisations reported up to 38 % infrastructure savings post-migration from StackPath.
Explore the full feature set at BlazingCDN Features.
Industry spotlight: Media companies distributing 4K VOD content cited near-zero rebuffering during prime time, attributing it to BlazingCDN’s low-latency architecture and intelligent route optimisation.
Thought-provoker: How would reallocating 30 % of your CDN budget impact product innovation this quarter?
With more than two decades of edge innovation, Akamai boasts a mature platform favored by Fortune 100 brands. According to Gartner’s 2023 Magic Quadrant for CDN, Akamai claimed leadership for “Execution & Vision.” Their geographically dispersed network translates to sub-50 ms global latency for static assets.
Yet Akamai’s contract complexity—multi-year lock-ins, separate SKUs for TLS certificates—may hinder fast-moving teams. Will protracted negotiations stall your product roadmap?
Cloudflare’s edge is synonymous with “security on by default.” In HTTP Archive’s 2024 State of the Web, sites on Cloudflare enjoyed a 17 % faster median First Contentful Paint (FCP) versus non-CDN peers.
Practical insight: If you’re migrating single-page apps, test “Cache Everything + Stale-While-Revalidate” for near-instant re-hydration during deploys.
Reflection: How much control do your DevOps teams need at 2 a.m., and will scripted terraform meets Cloudflare’s API limits?
Fastly pioneered instant invalidation (150 ms average), a game-changer for newsrooms and stock-trading dashboards. Their Wasm-based “Compute@Edge” lets engineers write logic in Rust or JS for origin offload.
Story: A European sports media outlet cut video start-up delay by 22 % after switching from StackPath to Fastly’s segmented video caching. Readers stayed glued through the penalty shoot-out.
Next question: Could edge-side includes (ESI) reduce your legacy CMS render time?
If your backend lives on EC2, S3, or Lambda@Edge, sticking within the AWS ecosystem shortens migration timelines. CloudFront’s security layers—Shield Standard and AWS WAF—share logs with CloudWatch.
Reality check: Egress cross-region fees still apply. Factor them in if you serve APAC users from a Virginia bucket.
Challenge: Can you exploit Lambda@Edge for personalisation without blowing through your 1M free invocations?
Built atop Google’s private backbone, this CDN excels when paired with Cloud Storage or Google Kubernetes Engine. Their TLS offload uses the same infrastructure that powers YouTube.
Tip: Enable “Negative Caching” for 404s to shrink origin chatter by 7–10 %.
Question: Does your team already leverage BigQuery and Pub/Sub? A single-vendor strategy might outweigh marginal per-GB savings.
Bunny’s “Per-Zone” pricing and image optimisation plugins earn applause from start-ups. Adoption spikes among WordPress agencies and indie gaming publishers.
Pro Tip: Combine Bunny Optimizer with Brotli 11 to shave 20–30 % off transfer size.
Query: Will regional PoP availability align with your mobile gamer audience in LATAM?
Originally architected for high-stakes multiplayer games, Gcore’s network excels at ultra-low latency in CIS and EMEA regions.
Use case: Fintech platforms needing GDPR-compliant routing appreciate Gcore’s EU-centric traffic governance.
Food for thought: Does your compliance team require only EU data flows? Check territorial controls before signing.
Formerly Limelight Networks, Edgio now merges edge compute and cybersecurity. Their Dual-Shield WAF scored highly in MITRE ATT&CK evaluations.
Insight: JavaScript or React-based storefronts see tangible improvements when leveraging Edgio’s prefetch service, which streams JSON before user interactions.
Question: Will bundling WAF, DDoS, and CDN under one SLA simplify vendor management for your SecOps?
Switching CDNs is rarely a “cut the cord” adventure—you need a phased plan. Use this battle-tested checklist:
Pro Move: Automate synthetic monitoring (Pingdom, Catchpoint) to watch for anomalies in the first 72 hours.
Challenge: Which internal KPI will signal a “successful migration” for your board—latency, error rate, or conversion lift?
| CDN | Starting Cost (per GB) | Instant Purge | Edge Compute | Contract Flexibility |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Akamai | $0.049 | ≈1 s | EdgeWorkers | 12–36 mo |
| Cloudflare | $0.05* | ≈300 ms | Workers | Month-to-month |
| Fastly | $0.12** | <150 ms | Compute@Edge | No minimums |
| Amazon CloudFront | $0.085 | ≈60 s | Lambda@Edge | Pay-as-you-go |
| Google Cloud CDN | $0.08 | ≈30 s | Cloud Functions@Edge | Pay-as-you-go |
| BlazingCDN | $0.004 | <1 s | Custom Rules API | Month-to-month |
| Bunny.net | $0.03 | ≈600 ms | Edge Rules | Pay-as-you-go |
| Gcore | $0.02 (EU) | ≈800 ms | Edge Cloud | 3-mo notice |
| Edgio | $0.05*** | <200 ms | Edgio Functions | 12 mo+ |
*Free tier up to 0.5 GB/day. **Bandwidth decreases above 10 TB. ***Indicative; volume-based.
Decision lens: Where does your traffic fall on the volume curve? If it’s above 250 TB/mo, the delta between $0.004 and $0.02 will fund an entire DevSecOps initiative.
You’ve seen how each CDN stacks up on performance, security, and pricing. Now we want to hear from you. What’s holding your migration back—fear of downtime, contract lock-ins, or just decision fatigue?
Jump into the comments with your toughest CDN dilemma, or contact our CDN experts for a no-pressure traffic analysis. Share this article on LinkedIn or X if someone in your network is sweating their StackPath exit. Let’s accelerate the web—one millisecond at a time!