Developers describe and invent many new terms related to technology. And now they describe Cloudflare and Fastly. Both the terms are different from each other. Cloudflare describes web performance and Fastly describes redefining content delivery. Both the terms are categorized as Content Delivery Network but they both show different features.
Cloudflare vs Fastly
The main difference between Cloudflare and fastly is that Cloudflare protects billions of websites along with SaaS services, APIs, and all features that are connected to the internet While the Fastly network gives you control over the content and gives the ability to update content in a short period of a millisecond.
Most developers give their priority to Cloudflare over competitors because of easy setup, security, great CDN and SSL is the most important reason for choosing Cloudflare. Like Udemy, Digital Ocean, and many more popular companies which use Cloudflare. Users get many benefits from the free version of Cloudflare.
Fastly used by Twitter, Udemy, Reddit, Slack, 9GAG, and many more. Fastly is also chosen by many developers because of the one popular feature that is Real-Time updates. Fastly is a real-time content delivery network that provides all over the content, ability to update content and performance analytics.
Comparison Table Between Cloudflare And Fastly
| Parameters of Comparison | Cloudflare | Fastly |
| Short profile | It offers a worldwide CDN with excellent performance and a strong security emphasis. | Fastly was founded in 2011 and has since evolved into a full-service CDN. |
| Network | The network range of Cloudflare is high in the regions. | The network range is short or medium in all regions. |
| Pricing and contract duration | Cloudflare costs none. | Fastly charge differently for different purposes. |
| Cache-control CDN caching | Override caching headers using page rules. | Full and fine-grained control. |
| Customer support for humans | Users get email support for all. And phones only for enterprise customers. | During business hours, the customer receives free email assistance. The user must pay for any additional requirements. |
What Is Cloudflare?
Cloudflare is a worldwide network designed specifically for cloud computing. Cloudflare is a service that encrypts, secures, and speeds up anything linked to the internet. Cloudflare protects your websites, online apps, and APIs. Employees, business networks, and their gadgets are all protected.
Code that runs on the network edge may be deployed and written. Cloudflare improves the performance of your applications, teams, and websites. Because it protects and assures the stability of external-facing resources, it serves as the basis for your apps, teams, and digital infrastructure. It also safeguards internal resources, such as apps running behind the firewall. Cloudflare’s network stretches over 250 cities in over 100 countries. It is easy to use because the Cloudflare dashboard enables quick configuration. Cloudflare is an American web infrastructure and website security company that provides CDN (content delivery network), reverse proxy, edge computing, streaming media, VPN, and DDoS services. Cloudflare’s headquarter is situated in San Francisco.
Cloudflare was first created by three persons who worked on an open-source project that is called Project Honey Pot in the year 2009. It was launched in 2010 and received media attention in 2011 and so on Cloudflare was used by many developers and became popular. Most non-tech persons have limited access to a policy of security mostly for those humans Cloudflare has made to help in giving security and good performance for websites.
What Is Fastly?
Fastly is a cloud computing service company based in the United States. It’s intended to assist developers in extending their basic cloud architecture to the network’s edge. Image optimization, video, CDN, streaming, load balancing services and cloud security are all part of the cloud platform. It also offers security services like protection against denial of service attacks, online application security, and bot mitigation.
Fastly founded in March 2011 by Artur Bergman and headquartered in San Francisco. Fastly also helps distribute the load of the website to different servers. Many large companies are using Fastly for their websites such as Shopify, Slack, the Financial Times, Ticketmaster, and many more. If we talk about how it works so Fastly serves as an intermediary between servers and users. When the end-user sends a request for any content, Fastly uses the closest cache to the user to deliver the content. Many applications have benefits of using Fastly such as e-commerce, mobile apps, Saas, and much more.
A content delivery network is an arrangement that allows customer websites for storing data such as videos, images, etc. The vast and complex setups are run by just a few companies. In order to provide services to its consumers, Google teamed with Fastly and other content delivery network providers.
Main Differences Between Cloudflare And Fastly.
- Cloudflare offers features such as CDN, WAF, and DDOS protection whereas features offered by Fastly are event-driven content delivery, static content delivery, DSA.
- Easy setup is the primary factor for choosing Cloudflare and real-time updates are the key feature for choosing fastly.
- Cons of Cloudflare are that it becomes expensive when you exceed their fair usage limits whereas the cons of fastly are that it costs more.
- Cloudflare Stats range is high whereas Fastly is made after Cloudflare so the stats of it is low in range.
- Tools integrating with Cloudflare are Google Analytics, Terraform, Plesk, and many more whereas tools integrating with fastly are WordPress, Amazon, Google Big Query, and much more.
Conclusion
For choosing a network for content delivery it is important to compare products in terms of their work, performance, ability, and security. The Best CDN is that will optimize your websites and deliver rich content at a higher speed. Cloudflare and Fastly both are highly customizable, offer many features, and are capable of serving dynamic content.
Both terms are interrelated to each other and in some way they are different from each other but both are good in their way for users. And for now, all developers or non-tech people need this type of platform which provides all services in one only. Fastly is considered as best for all developers because it provides many features to all developers and in all regions, yes it is paid for by users but after paying users never gonna regret the services provided by Fastly.
References
- https://www.icir.org/vern/papers/cdn-loops.NDSS16.pdf
- https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3355369.3355575