There are many factors that can influence your decision in going for single or multi-CDN, and things to consider when it comes to choosing the right provider for your business. You may have questions about performance vs cost-effectiveness, what kind of benefits you can expect, and whether investing in CDN is worth it. Leaseweb’s Product Manager for CDN, Shanook Jansen, explains everything you need to know about choosing the right CDN.
What is CDN?
Before we dive into choosing the right CDN for your business, let’s clarify what a CDN is. CDN stands for Content Delivery Network and is a network connected to different PoPs (Points of Presence) or data locations across the world that is used to send data to your users as quickly as possible. It distributes your traffic evenly according to the best paths for a user request.
What is the difference between a Single–CDN and Multi-CDN?
A Single-CDN has a global network with different PoPs around the world, however they are usually focused on a specific geographic location. For example, they could be more dominant in Europe, meaning that most of their PoPs are in Europe, but they also have PoPs in the Americas, Asia, etc.
So, what Multi-CDN providers aim to do is to have the benefit of different Single-CDN providers, with strengths in different areas, combined into one CDN solution. This means you can benefit in terms of geolocations but also in terms of pricing. Strategizing for each region becomes easier because you only need to worry about your Multi-CDN service, as is the case with Leaseweb Multi-CDN, since it’s an automatic switching layer. However, if you prefer to choose each Single-CDN service yourself, there are also providers with such options.
How Do You Choose the Right CDN?
Of course, it depends on what your business needs in terms of content delivery. The first thing to consider is where your end users are based. If you have a global customer base, then it would be wise to use a Multi-CDN provider so that you can have an equally distributed global presence. But if your end users are mostly streaming your videos or using your website in a specific region, like Japan for example, then it might be more beneficial to choose a Single-CDN provider that is specialized in delivering content to that region.
How CDN Helps Your Business to Profit
Remember that making a good profit is not only about having many customers, but also about ensuring customers will return for your products. This means you need to think about performance, and a CDN helps you to generate the best possible performance. For example, if you have an e-commerce website and there are a lot of users that want to buy from your website and they can’t do it because the website takes too long to load or it keeps having outages, people are not going to want to buy there. So, without the best performance, you’re going to lose customers and prevent people from becoming loyal customers. You also need to keep in mind the most cost-effective solution that is close to your customers.
Is CDN More Beneficial for Certain Industries?
No, CDN can be beneficial for any industry, but choosing the right CDN is more dependent on what you want to do with it. If you are a business that is continuously sending a lot of traffic globally and you’re dependent on low latency so that content is delivered to your end users quickly, then you probably need a multi-CDN solution. For example, software updates or global payments, these are all things that need to happen fast and need a multi-CDN solution.
Is CDN a Big Investment?
The cost of CDN can be low or high, depending on how much traffic you generate and which provider you are using. It can be anywhere from one hundred euros per month to thousands of euros per month, depending on the type of business. But the investment is worth what you get back from it, which is performance, user experience, fewer outages which all help lower churn.
What are the key considerations for choosing CDN?
The first thing to ask yourself is: What is important to your business? Are you looking for low latency so that your end users can have the best possible experience? Perhaps your priorities are cost management or customer service. Consider what level of security you need and how many PoPs you need. Once you have determined these, you can consider the regions that are important to you and whether single or multi-CDN suits you better.
Learn more about Leaseweb Multi-CDN.