i am using ucc ssl in my website. shall i use cloudfare pro plan? i saw in FAQ that said "need to be updated to business or enterprise plan to add custom ssl"

Hi Kevin
Great article for a CDN novice like me.
I'm looking to move all my sites over to a CDN and I've started with a single site on the free CloudFlare plan.

Fortunately my hosting provider has a very easy CloudFlare setup via cPanel, which I used to connect the first site.

Thanks Kevin, an incredibly useful; informative and unbiased coverage of both MaxCDN and Cloudflare. I am about to launch a new website and your post has helped me make my decision. Thanks Champ, you are a legend for this article!

"In 2004, CloudFlare handled the largest DDoS attack in internet history"

2014. ;)

Correction regarding the Cloudflare Always On feature. Cloudflare's explanation indicates not that "if your server is down, no cached page will display" as you conclude, but rather that a cached page will display only when your server is down.

As Cloudflare explained:

“The Always Online feature [...] is only designed to work with timeout errors from your server. The error code from your server being returned was an empty reply [...]”

From which you conclude: "CloudFlare’s cache system is only supposed to help out with timeout errors. If your server is down, no cached pages will be displayed."

Your conclusion is, if you'll forgive my bluntness, flat out wrong. In this instance, your server was returning a reply, which means your server was not actually "down"; it may have been struggling under the strain of the DDoS attack, but it was still up and running. If your server truly goes down, it won't respond at all. That causes a timeout error, at which point Cloudflare Always On should kick in.

It may seem like a technicality from a user's perspective, but we're talking about technical systems here, so, yes, they're going to depend on technical issues. That's how it works. It sounds like Cloudflare's Always On works as advertised to address the specific issue it's designed to address. No, it can't solve every possible thing that can go wrong with your website, but then, what can?

I have CloudFlare installed and configured properly on our site. It is setup correctly to use the "always on" feature. I recently had the server go down a few times and I received a cryptic 504 error page from CloudFlare, not cached content. This happened multiple times over multiple days.
I was trying to access the homepage which one would imagine would be constantly cached.
I received a reply (a few days later from support and yes I have a paid account) and was told what I read in this article. That not all pages are cached—and like I said this was the homepage. I'm still surprised by this.
Anyhow, just sharing my real-world experience with CloudFlare for what its worth.

Think you should also include KeyCDN in your next review (https://www.keycdn.com) because they offer same features as MaxCDN but half the price $0.04/GB

Thanks for the detailed post though about Cloudflare! Cheers!

KeyCDN is interesting, but there doesn't seem much in it between MaxCDN and KeyCDN. Pricing is different, but not much else...

Exactly, that's why they are very appealing. But they do have tools maxcdn doesn't offer. Just read their blogs and you'll see. They even made a image optimization plugin.

I'll take another look. Thanks. :)

Just want to share my experience with MaxCDN. If your server is using Nginx with Google Pagespeed module, don't use MaxCDN because its system doesn't work with Google Pagespeed. I have wasted time with their technical support to ask for their assistance to make Google Pagespeed work with MaxCDN, I receive a scripted answers and turned out that they don't know solving the issue. In the end, I switched to other CDN provider.

I'm curious!! How can one add both CDN services with one domain??? How is it even possible? Can anyone please guide me the process? I want to give it a try since Cloudflare is no good with its security features. I'm losing a bunch of traffic in every month bcoz I think CloudFlare doesn't work well in Pakistan.

Thank you so much for sharing this valuable article.

You have a few key points wrong. How exactly is maxcdn caching your homepage? I doubt they are. They aren't a proxy.

Maxcdn would also charge you hundreds if they took the ddos. Cloudflare is free.

Maxcdn is a cdn without a proxy. Cloudflare is a proxy with a cdn.

The best solution is Cloudflare then manually adding another cdn by uploading big files which Cloudflare will not cache.

Cloudflare support for free version is a big disappointment (No7 2017). They were good once. The first option starts at $20/month and no option between $0-$20. So, they become a trap now.

Thing is you don't have many other options if you want to add some basic DDoS protection to your site... I'm still surprised they offer a free plan! If you want to speed up your site using MaxCDN, remember it could cost a lot more than $20 depending on your bandwidth.

Use Google domains as your registrar, they offer the ability to add Dos protection for free with a push of a button. I’ve moved all my sites to google domains.

Im currently using cloudflare for https://www.seoexpertpage.com but i'm having a problem when it comes to AMP. Cloudflare AMP cache returns a 404 error page for resources that do not match these content types. Not certain if i transfer to MAXCDN would that solve the issues.

thoughts?

Hi, thanks for the article, but I need help with my decision. I just need js and css files on a cdn. Would cloudflare suffice or should I spend the $9 on maxcdn?

Great article. It covers the features and usability issues almost nobody talks about. Thanks

Great article! I have been using CloudFlare for a couple of years now and it saved us a lot of bandwith. Recently I also added MaxCDN but since that doesn't work in conjunction with CloudFlare the cdn.domain.com bypasses the CloudFlare proxy directly to MaxCDN. What this means is that most static files and cached items are served by MaxCDN and not by CloudFlare as it was in the past. And since CloudFlare doesn't charge for the cache functionality but MaxCDN does it means our monthly costs went up significantly.

Bottom line I do see benefits to use both but for those that are using cloudflare now be aware that when you add MaxCDN your monthly costs for data will go up. For those that use MaxCDN and consider adding Cloudflare - do it there are few drawbacks.

Awesome comparison about the # of data centers, clarification on what adding zones to MaxCDN does, and just a nice overall comparison. I use both on my own site with WP Rocket and SiteGround cloud hosting... site runs like a dream. Thanks for taking the time to write this, from a fellow speed geek.

Thanks for the post. Very helpful. I have Cloudflare via my hosting company. I upgraded to Cloudflare Plus and recently changed my url to a more appropriate one for my blog. Getting Cloudflare to work with me to change the account is a nightmare. The responses are of the 'kick for touch by asking yet another stupid question variety'. To me, as a relatively non-technical end-user, support is everything. Cloudflare's isn't up to much, so I am probably going to MaxCdn

I have tried the cloudflare free version, and my experience was not
the best. I have not tried Max CDN yet, but it is on my to do list.

In my experience, Cloudflare's FREE plan does not speed up your site significantly (but it can save a lot of bandwidth), it's a lot better once pro features are active.

I recommend BelugaCDN (http://www.belugacdn.com) its similar to MaxCDN so you can cache your media files and they offer the first 100GB completely for free. Support has been fantastic as well.

Great article Kevin!

What would you recommend to use in Africa. Since MaxCDN does not have any data center in the continent, shouldn´t be wiser to use CloudFlare instead?

Thanks

Hey. Is the $5 per extra domain offer still available for CloudFlare?

I love using Cloudflare for my sites, its free fast and easy to use, you got a lot and pay nothings, that's much more then any other provider.

Nice detailed review. You may want to correct this info.
"MaxCDN will cache every single page on your website and will display a cached version of your website in the event of downtime"
It won't . MaxCdn would cache the static part js,css,pdf files only. Actual server side processing still happens on your server. (PHP, MySQL) in Wordpress.
MaxCDN will have you speed things up but not help you at all during down times. Pure CDN services are not designed for that.

Love the post. I just started using maxcdn, but I will give using both of them a try and see how it works. I did also run across this arcticle https://www.maxcdn.com/one/... talking about any possible conflicts combining the two.

Thanks again

Thank you so much for this article. This was exactly what I needed to make a decision. Deciding to go with both, as you mentioned. CloudFlare for security, and MaxCDN for the CDN functionality. Very helpful stuff.

Thanks for the great article, However, When I have both CloudFlare and MaxCDN running at the same time, as suggested. My page got loaded twice for some reason? I already disable CloudFlare Caches, and only enable "Always Online". Does anyone encounter the same issue?

Hey Kevin, great write-up! I wanted to clarify something for your readers, which is that MaxCDN does not cache entire web pages like CloudFlare does, as it is a "true" CDN (as opposed to a WCO, the term CloudFlare prefers) meaning that it only delivers static files:

https://www.maxcdn.com/one/...

And, it is true that CloudFlare's "Always On" feature only works for time-outs, but it has worked properly for dozens of pages (per site) in my experience. If you think about dynamic PHP scripts or frontend input fields (etc), this is probably a good thing, so that users are not submitting data or interacting with the website when the server is 100% crashed.

Anyway we offer BOTH of these great services to our managed WordPress hosting clients over at LittleBizzy, the company that I started last year. Cheers!

Great post! Very clear explanation! Even though I am totally newbie in IT but I could understand your explanation clearly. Thank you very much, this is helping me a lot :-)

Great post. I have been trying to find out the true differences between these two CDN's and this article explains it much better than anyone else (other authors seem to get all personal in their own opinions, instead of keeping to the facts). I am using the free CloudFlare service and happy with what I am getting. As my site expands and pressure builds for faster load times, I will consider adding MaxCDN as well. Thanks again!

Hi, great article. I would add and this is what you mention about maxcdn : the security tools. Here at https://welpy.com we use maxcdn + sucuri. The integration is super easy and it works like a charm with W3 super cache for wp. Sucuri support is very good too (even if maxcdn is the best support we've got from the dozen of tools we use). We had a closer look at cloud flare because how hoster (http://servint.net) - amazing support too- has a deal with cloud flare but we feel very confortable with sucuri + maxcdn so we stay with them.

Great article! Very helpful :) I'm currently in the situation on choosing one or the other. Too bad we can't just merge the two and create a super cache/content system. Meantime thanks again for the breakdown!

You do mention using them both together, would that slow down the loading speeds or anything of that matter? Like in all aspects i'd assume things would work faster but you never know. What would you say?

Hiya, did you end up using CloudFlare, MaxCDN or both? Using them both should be A-OK, but you might need to experiment a bit to get the best results. It's also worth thinking whether or not your site actually needs both. Depends on the site, of course. :)

Hi there!

Yea i did try both out which seemed to be working quite great actually. I have a multi media website so content loading speeds are well needed. Though i must say after a good month of using both services I've removed them both as CloudFlare was blocking a good amount of users.. Can't really explain what the exact problem was but having people not being able to access the site is no bueno.

Meantime great article! Helped out a lot at the end of the day.

- Thanks for the follow-up comment. Interesting info. :)

Wow. Thank you so much for your comprehensive review! This was so helpful in understanding the difference and why I should use both. Thanks! :)

Glad you liked it! ;)

Good read for sure. I've been using MaxCDn for over a year on my site as well as clients, and have had 0 issues. My clients love the extra speed their sites provide especially on mobile devices. One thing I've seen a lot of is people not setting MaxCDN up correctly. Once you set it up correctly its a beast. And works great with SSL enabled sites.

What would you say is the main issue (that you've seen a lot of people do incorrectly) with setting MaxCDN up?

Great read. It's amazing how much value CloudFlare provide on the free plan. Highly recommended.

Very true - it is quite astonishing how much CloudFlare give away for free!

You are a lazy webmaster. Many replies below, with no reply. Nothing said below is challenged or acknowledged by you. So who is right? Who is wrong? Are you really the expert here? Seems like you can't bother to reply to comments and there are some very important points brought up. You've ignored those. So to me, why would I trust anything you wrote? If you are the "expert" then start addressing some of the comments below.