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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. CDN
  4. CDN
  5. Amazon CloudFront vs Limelight CDN

Amazon CloudFront vs Limelight CDN

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront
Stacks21.4K
Followers10.8K
Votes935
Limelight CDN
Limelight CDN
Stacks15
Followers12
Votes18

Amazon CloudFront vs Limelight CDN: What are the differences?

  1. Cost: One key difference between Amazon CloudFront and Limelight CDN is the cost structure. Amazon CloudFront offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where users only pay for the data transfer and other service features used. On the other hand, Limelight CDN provides customizable pricing plans that can include a mix of monthly commitments, data transfer, and additional features such as storage or security services. This difference in cost structure allows customers to choose the most suitable option based on their specific needs and budget.

  2. Global Edge Network: Another important difference is the scale and reach of their global edge networks. Amazon CloudFront has a vast network of edge locations spread across the globe, which allows for faster content delivery to end-users. Limelight CDN also has a large network of edge servers, but the exact number and coverage may vary. The extensive edge network of both providers ensures that content can be delivered quickly and efficiently to users worldwide.

  3. Integration with AWS services: Amazon CloudFront integrates seamlessly with various other services offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). This integration enables users to easily leverage additional AWS features, such as AWS Lambda for serverless functions or AWS Shield for DDoS protection. On the other hand, while Limelight CDN provides integration options with various third-party services and technologies, it may require additional configuration and setup.

  4. Content Delivery Performance: Both Amazon CloudFront and Limelight CDN aim to deliver content quickly and efficiently. However, the performance may vary based on factors such as geographical location, network conditions, and the specific content being delivered. Amazon CloudFront leverages the global Amazon network and has optimized connections with AWS services, which can result in faster and more reliable content delivery. Limelight CDN also focuses on high-performance delivery with its extensive network, but the overall performance may depend on various factors.

  5. Security Features: Both Amazon CloudFront and Limelight CDN offer a range of security features to protect content and applications. Amazon CloudFront provides integration with AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF), which enables users to apply custom security rules and protect against malicious attacks. Limelight CDN offers various security options like DDoS mitigation, access controls, and HTTPS support. The specific security features provided by each provider may vary, allowing customers to choose the level of security that suits their requirements.

  6. Customization and Control: Amazon CloudFront offers extensive customization options, allowing users to fine-tune various settings such as caching behavior, origin configurations, and rules for content delivery. It provides a flexible and powerful control panel for managing the content delivery process. Limelight CDN also provides customization options but may have different levels of granularity or flexibility compared to Amazon CloudFront. The level of customization and control available may depend on the specific features and services chosen.

In summary, Amazon CloudFront and Limelight CDN differ in their cost structure, global edge network coverage, integration with other services, content delivery performance, security features, and customization options. These differences allow customers to choose the CDN provider that best fits their specific needs and requirements.

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Detailed Comparison

Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront
Limelight CDN
Limelight CDN

Amazon CloudFront can be used to deliver your entire website, including dynamic, static, streaming, and interactive content using a global network of edge locations. Requests for your content are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance.

Whether it’s your website, mobile applications, videos, music, software, games, or APIs, your content needs to reach customers quickly, reliably, and securely. It provides the capacity, coverage, and performance to cost-effectively deliver a better experience for you and your customers.

Fast- Using a network of edge locations around the world, Amazon CloudFront caches copies of your static content close to viewers, lowering latency when they download your objects and giving you the high, sustained data transfer rates needed to deliver large popular objects to end users at scale.;Simple- A single API call lets you get started distributing content from your Amazon S3 bucket or Amazon EC2 instance or other origin server through the Amazon CloudFront network.;Designed for use with other Amazon Web Services Amazon CloudFront is designed for use with other Amazon Web Services, including Amazon S3, where you can durably store the definitive versions of your static files, and Amazon EC2, where you can run your application server for dynamically generated content.;Cost-Effective- Amazon CloudFront passes on the benefits of Amazon’s scale to you. You pay only for the content that you deliver through the network, without minimum commitments or up-front fees.;Elastic- With Amazon CloudFront, you don’t need to worry about maintaining expensive web-server capacity to meet the demand from potential traffic spikes for your content. The service automatically responds as demand increases or decreases without any intervention from you.;Reliable- Amazon CloudFront is built using Amazon’s highly reliable infrastructure. The distributed nature of edge locations used by Amazon CloudFront automatically routes end users to the closest available location as required by network conditions.;Global- Amazon CloudFront uses a global network of edge locations, located near your end users in the United States, Europe, Asia, and South America.
Management & Reporting;Intelligent High-Speed Purging;Web Acceleration
Statistics
Stacks
21.4K
Stacks
15
Followers
10.8K
Followers
12
Votes
935
Votes
18
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 245
    Fast
  • 166
    Cdn
  • 157
    Compatible with other aws services
  • 125
    Simple
  • 108
    Global
Cons
  • 3
    UI could use some work
  • 1
    Invalidations take so long
Pros
  • 2
    Live Video
  • 1
    Great support
  • 1
    Sub second latency streaming
  • 1
    Free Trial of Services
  • 1
    Instant Purging

What are some alternatives to Amazon CloudFront, Limelight CDN?

CloudFlare

CloudFlare

Cloudflare speeds up and protects millions of websites, APIs, SaaS services, and other properties connected to the Internet.

KeyCDN

KeyCDN

KeyCDN offers super fast and secure content delivery for minimal loading time. In addition to the CDN, it also offers advanced image processing and many other features such as live logs and Let's Encrypt SSL.

Fastly

Fastly

Fastly's real-time content delivery network gives you total control over your content, unprecedented access to performance analytics, and the ability to instantly update content in 150 milliseconds.

MaxCDN

MaxCDN

The MaxCDN Content Delivery Network efficiently delivers your site’s static file through hundreds of servers instead of slogging through a single host. This "smart route" technology distributes your content to your visitors via the city closest to them.

jsDelivr

jsDelivr

jsDelivr is a free CDN for open source developers, with advanced features for javascript projects with access to NPM and Github It uses multiple CDN providers, resulting in the best possible uptime and performance.

Moovweb XDN

Moovweb XDN

All-in-one platform to develop, deploy, preview, experiment on, monitor, and run your frontend.

cdnjs

cdnjs

Everyone loves the Google CDN? Even Microsoft runs their own CDN. The problem is, they only host the most popular libraries. We host it all - JavaScript, CSS, SWF, images, etc! Powered by CloudFlare.

Statically

Statically

A free, fast, & modern CDN for open source projects, WordPress, images, and any static assets.

Incapsula

Incapsula

Through an application-aware, global content delivery network (CDN), Incapsula provides any website and web application with best-of-breed security, DDoS protection, load balancing and failover solutions.

Cloudflare CDN

Cloudflare CDN

A CDN is a distributed network of servers that provides several advantages for a web site: Cached content: By caching web site content, It helps improve page load speeds, reduce bandwidth usage, and reduce CPU usage on the server.

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