Amazon CloudFront vs Azure CDN

Likelihood to Recommend

Amazon CloudFront is best suited when there is a need of speed in serving static and dynanic web contents of a web application. If the content is already in that edge location, CloudFront delivers it immediately. If the content is not currently in that edge location, CloudFront retrieves it from an Amazon S3 bucket or an HTTP server. Amazon CloudFront is not appropriate in case users can tolerate some delays or servers are present near to the location of user. It also Integrates through the W3 Total Cache plugin. Amazon CloudFront Pricing based on bandwidth usage that's the best part of it.

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Ashish Agarwal

Software Engineer

GenpactInformation Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees

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If you are looking for a secure, easy to manage, solution to store and distribute your content around the US and/or world, the Azure CDN may be the right solution. The only thing I would caution users on is that once your content is published and distributed it cannot be easily refreshed on the endpoints. Instead, you are at the mercy of the default time to live when the content was first uploaded.

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Andrew Mills

Senior Software Developer

Seventy Seven EnergyOil & Energy, 1001-5000 employees

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Pros

CloudFront, like other CDNs, is a very reliable content delivery network for delivering content like images, videos, HTML, and javascripts that are run on browsers across the world.
It provides secure hosting of content at no extra cost. AWS Certification Manager also provides the ability to create and manage custom SSL certificates at no extra cost for our websites.
It is secure, which means that it uses AWS Shield for Layer 3/4 DDoS mitigation and AWS WAF for Layer 7 protection. Hence seamlessly integrating with other AWS services. So you do not have to shop outside of AWS ecosystem

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Verified User

Team Lead in Engineering

Financial Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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New websites can be boosted up quickly
Easily scalable according to our performance requirements
Easy integration with other Azure services
You only pay for what you need

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Banking Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Cons

If price is the main concern, CloudFront is not the cheapest-in-class by a wide margin
Some of the settings are not obvious to new users, and the management dashboards could use work
Lacks fine-grained access controls and statistical reports for usage

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Joshua Dickson

Director of Engineering

NorthOutComputer Software, 51-200 employees

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For the longest time they didn't have a robust SDK. They have one now, but it could be better.
The different flavors of Azure CDN (Akamai, Verizon, etc) have different costs, but not well differentiated features. Might be confusing to new users.
I'm not overly familiar with it, but AWS does have a programmability in their CDN offering (Lambda @ Edge) and Azure doesn't seem to have an equivalent (Azure Functions is region-specific).

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Erik Ralston

Chief Architect

LiveTilesComputer Software, 51-200 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

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Free/Freemium Version

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Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Entry-level set up fee?

No

Starting Price

$0.02

Amazon CloudFront Editions & Modules

Edition

First 10TB	$0.09
Next 40TB	$0.08
Next 100TB	$0.06
Next 350TB	$0.04
Next 524TB	$0.03
Next 4PB	$0.03
Over 5PB	$0.02

none

Additional Pricing Details

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General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Starting Price

—

Azure CDN Editions & Modules

—

Additional Pricing Details

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Usability

Amazon CloudFront 9.0

Based on 1 answer

Easy way to integrate a CDN within the AWS infrastructure. It allows further customization based on company needs.

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Carlos Becerra

Senior Software Engineer & Project Manager

WiFiesta IncInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

Amazon CloudFront 7.1

Based on 7 answers

CloudFront is a good CDN solution. It can be a bit complicated to implement depending on your needs, but AWS tech support is great. You get to avoid a ton of upfront costs by going with CloudFront. It works best in conjunction with other AWS services in your infrastructure. Once you set it up, you won't need to do much to maintain it. It just works.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

E-Learning Company, 51-200 employees

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Azure CDN 8.0

Based on 2 answers

Great support from the team whenever we're stuck. Very proactive in resolving issues and also making changes as per the requirements of the organization.

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Maria Carver

Production Specialist

The Dow Chemical CompanyChemicals, 10,001+ employees

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Alternatives Considered

Amazon has always been creative and leading, and I have been using its services for years. They are very reassuring and have fast and responsive support--you can call them from any time zone to respond quickly. High security on servers, open hands on changes, and increasing and decreasing server resources and features.

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Ali Kazempour

Information Technology Manager

AzerexInformation Technology & Services, 1-10 employees

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More user friendly and it’s so easy to learn, the prices may be close to each other, but the service is excellent.

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Ali Kazempour

Senior Professional Services Consultant Manager

AZEREX LLC.Information Technology & Services, 1-10 employees

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Return on Investment

Our website loads much more quickly in other countries as a result of CloudFront. For example: loading cached assets from CloudFront in Australia is 4x as fast as it would be to load the same assets without CloudFront.
Very inexpensive service considering the value it brings.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Entertainment Company, 1-10 employees

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Azure CDN reduced origin instance load by removing the need to constantly serve large numbers of static files, meaning applications can be deployed with smaller/fewer instances.
Azure CDN reduces apparent load times to customers by serving cached files out of POPs in the local region of those clients, instead of requiring those clients to make multiple, lengthy requests through to the origin servers.

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Verified User

Director in Engineering

Computer Software Company, 51-200 employees

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Amazon CloudFront vs Azure CDN