Item: OnApp CDN
Rating: 10
Author: Matt Lundstrom

Overall Satisfaction with OnApp CDN

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use OnApp CDN to off-load image and other files from our main servers to speed up browser load times and maintain more CPU for processing of files and databases on the servers that need them most. By putting images, video and even JS on the CDN servers, these files remain near the visitors that are requesting the files, which speeds up their browsing experience and reduces loads on the primary servers which would normally serve these files.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Ease of setup. You can be CDN enabled within a few minutes.
Huge CDN network rivals any other out there.
Competitive pricing due to web hosts who own OnApp CDN Edge Servers competing for traffic on their CDN POPs.

Cons

There really is nothing I can think of. It's simple and intuitive to use after your first instruction on the system.

Return on Investment

OnApp in general has been a good investment, though in the early days this was a questionable result as stability was nothing like what it is today. Things have gotten much better over the years and I would anticipate OnApp to generate ROI so long as customers are looking for cloud and CDN solutions in general. I'm not sure that investing in OnApp as a hosting provider specifically for the CDN capability will generate any positive return, but the OnApp system as a whole has the features required that most should be able to make a return on.

Alternatives Considered

VMWare and Akamai

We compared VMware for its virtualization capabilities and ended up deciding on OnApp as the UI was more intuitive for less technical support staff, which meant that our customers would have more staff available to help them with cloud related issues. We also checked our Akamai specifically for CDN however again the OnApp platform seemed simpler and less expensive to leverage, and with the added benefit that we had more control of the CDN 'in-house' than using a fully third party platform.

Other Software Used

Evernote

Likelihood to Recommend

OnApp CDN is great for virtually any site with a desire or requirement to offload processing resources to a content delivery network in general. The OnApp CDN is one of the largest, if not largest CDNs on the planet and is well equipped to handle virtually any type of file distribution, including video. Video distribution POPs on the OnApp CDN are less available because each host that offers video has special requirements they may or may not be willing to get involved with. If you plan to distribute video on OnApp CDN first check if the number of POPs available for serving video suit your needs.

Comments

Please log in to join the conversation

OnApp CDN - Why we offer it to our customers.