This CDN delivers a wide range of plans, and it’s highly competitive on performance and price.
While some CDNs target the big business market, and others focus on simpler budget solutions,5centsCDN does its very best to provide something for just about everyone. Looking for power? 5centsCDN offers over 1,150 PoPs around the globe, including some servers from other top providers (Akamai, G-Core Labs). That brings real benefits in some typically poorly-served regions. Many CDNs have only one or two locations in South America, for instance; 5centsCDN has seven. But if that’s overkill for what you need, the company also offers plans using just a handful of PoPs from as little as $0.0025 per GB (more on those below). Video features include support for live streaming, video on demand and comprehensive transcoding, and unusual supporting features including the ability to schedule a video playlist, or automatically playing videos on your site for a specific period of time. Free SSL support is available via shared SSL or a Let’s Encrypt option, and you can also use your own custom certificate. A stack of features ranges from OpenStack-powered cloud storage, to secured token protection for your content, origin shield support for reducing load on your server, and a rich API to help customize operations to suit your needs. And the list goes on – check out 5centsCDN’s exceptionally detailed ‘All Features’ page to find out more. If you run into problems,5cents provides support via email, ticket, live chat and Skype. There’s an SLA, too, with the company promising 99.9% uptime for the CDN (there are live uptime figures on a status page here). There’s no way for us to tell whether every customer sees that, but it’s still good to see 5centsCDN making such public commitments. We also have some issues with the website, though, which can be confusing, or even misleading in some areas. One page writes in glowing terms about the web application firewall, saying it ‘was designed from scratch to outwit today’s real-world threats, rather than yesterday’s theoretical problems’. Sounds great, but there’s just one problem; it doesn’t exist, it’s not available in the control panel, and it’s still listed on the To Do section of the company’s roadmap. We suspect that’s a mistake rather than an active attempt to deceive customers (there would be no point in that, as a free trial allows everyone to see for themselves), but it’s still unacceptable. Customers should be able to trust what’s on the website, and that’s clearly not always the case. We wouldn’t necessarily rule out 5centsCDN because of that, but if you have priority features, make sure you confirm the company delivers what you expect before you hand over any cash.5centsCDN prices are generally great value, but as usual with CDNs, it might take quite a few calculations to understand exactly what you’ll be paying. The Standard plan charges just $2.50 a month for 1TB of traffic (overage is priced at the same $0.0025 per GB). You’re restricted to 10+ PoPs and delivery in North America and Europe only, but that still looks good to us. Fastly charges $0.12 for North America and European traffic, Amazon CloudFront asks $0.085, CDN77 and many other relatively good value providers are still priced at $0.03-$0.04. The Volume plan triples in price to $7.50 for the same 1TB traffic, but this time you get access to 30+ PoPs and delivery worldwide. Opting for the Premium plan gets you 1TB traffic and 60+ PoPs for $10 a month, while the Enterprise plan supports the full 1,150 PoPs for $15, with an overage of $0.
