CacheFly is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) provider based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The company was founded as CacheNetworks in 2002 but was later relaunched in 2005 as CacheFly. Today, the company provides private, hybrid, and multi-CDN solutions for businesses in the U.S. and several other countries including Spain, Bosnia, Croatia, and Canada.
Cachefly CDN Company Overview
Cachefly is a content delivery network provider founded in 2002 with headquarters in Chicago, IL. It was the first CDN company to provide TCP Anycast for routing purposes instead of using the DNS load balance. Some of the most notable customers of Cachefly includes
- ArsTechnica
- TinyMCE
- Adometry
- Topix
This Cachefly analysis will give you a thorough overview of this particular CDN provider to help you make a more informed decision as to whether they are the right option for you.
Cachefly CDN Network
At the time of writing this analysis of Cachefly, their network was made up of 41 separate Presence Points (PoPs) scattered around the world. From time to time they have special offers that allow users to use a limited number of their PoPs for a smaller fee (usually mostly located in the US). The following list of PoPs is therefore included for their regular plans. The complete geographic list of PoPs in Cachefly is shown in the map of the network and in the table below.
| Americas | EMEA | Asia and Pacific |
|---|---|---|
| Atlanta | Amsterdam | Bangkok |
| Los Angeles | Frankfurt | Perth |
| Seattle | Johannesburg | Melbourne |
| New York | Milan | Hong Kong |
| La Paz | Stockholm | Singapore |
| Chicago | Lisbon | Tokyo |
| Miami | Zurich | Mumbai |
| San Jose | Bucharest | Sydney |
| Toronto | Istanbul | Jakarta |
| Dallas | London | |
| Montreal | Moscow | |
| Sao Paulo | Warsaw | |
| Washington DC | Prague | |
| Doha | ||
| Tel Aviv | ||
| Madrid | ||
| Paris | ||
| Helsinki | ||
| Vienna |
Cachefly CDN Features
CacheFly is simple to set up and provides flexible options, a 100% uptime guarantee and plans that almost everyone can fulfill. The business has 41 PoPs like Africa which is sometimes missed. Antarctica is the only place they don’t own. They have free storage and the option of getting your content in push or pull areas.
Supports all major video formats and is able to withstand bigger activity outbursts. Protection is also easily handled with custom SSL blocking, Link blocking and referrer blocking so you can monitor who sees what. Child FTP account configurations are also provided which allow you to build FTP accounts that are restricted to a specific root directory. HTTPS support exists; the API and traffic are recorded in real-time. Purge and override/honor the server headers for the origin is also available. It may look quite simple but you can do a lot if you know your way around CacheFly. The only thing that is missing? Providing diverse content. A hiccup and not a breach of the deal.
CacheFly CDN Services Operation
CacheFly CDN is not solely a hosting service, and thus provides no traditional hosting options such as shared hosting, VPS, and dedicated servers. The company operates over 40 servers strategically positioned across the globe on all continents except Antarctica. Instead of relying on global load balancing based on DNS, CacheFly CDN services rely on TCP Anycast for all network routing activities.
This provider offers 100 percent SLA availability and features infinite scalability, easy-to-use platform, and streamlined third-party integration. Businesses that use the services offered by this company are typically large corporations that can not afford to run slow load time websites.
CacheFly CDN does not function with websites with dynamic content such as social media websites, as currently configured. It is primarily designed for websites that receive a lot of traffic mainly for static content. CacheFly CDN supports all major video formats and is particularly suitable for websites that want to provide their users with video streaming.
This CDN company has an easy-to-use control panel that allows users to quickly change website files without having to follow complex API commands. The entire setup process is extremely fast and simple. CacheFly CDN provides users with the ability to limit access to certain parts of their website using a shared secret scheme called MD5. Although the user interface is user-friendly, it’s not as sophisticated as you might expect, considering the cost of CDN solutions from this company.
Pricing and Support
Although CacheFly is a popular CDN service, it is very expensive and therefore maybe does not list prices on its website. You will contact the company to find out what they charge for some of their CDN solutions. And if high prices are feasible, you would only want to find this CDN provider when it comes to the success of your company over costs.
In lieu of annual or biennial contracts, CacheFly provides a flexible pay-as-you-go payment model, with a 14-day free trial of just 2 TB for new users. Customers earn free SSL certificates as well, so you don’t have to purchase them from your hosting company.
The technical support team may be contacted at any time by telephone, ticket, or email or live chat (Central Time) during business hours. The 24/7 ticketing system is a huge blessing because the majority of CDN companies do not provide it, and it comes with a blog and knowledgebase for those of you who would like to support yourself (unless this is not as detailed as I like on CDN matters).
Cachefly CDN Review Conclusion
Overall, Cachefly has been a CDN provider for quite some time now. We have a vast network of PoPs worldwide and provide assistance to all their customers 24 hours a day. However, a few downtimes for this CDN provider are their rates, which are very high, and their list of apps.
Cachefly was one of the only CDN providers that did not accept the HTTP/2 protocol when writing this study. This protocol helps users to run much faster and dramatically boost HTTP1.1. However, some of its other features are premium either with an initial expense or by purchasing a more costly monthly package.
Because the plans start at $99/month, these are maybe not everyone’s cheapest CDN solutions. With this size, it comes to approximately $0.38 / GB for 256 GB. There are other CDNs for those who run websites that are simply not necessary to justify this costs and for those who simply want to lower their CDN costs with the same amount of features, if not more accessible. Nonetheless, Cachefly may be a good choice for your use if it does have servers in a region that is important to tourists.
