Earlier, we discussed how CloudFlare Supercharges Your Website Security And Performance. We discussed how CloudFlare helps you secure your website, protects against intruders and helps reduce the loading time for your website.
I received a lot of great feedback from you and not just that, this quickly became one of the top 10 popular posts on my blog.
Now, a lot has changed since I first posted this article and I realize it’s time to revise this post. It’s time to add the missing pieces and make this post complete and a one-stop solution for people looking to implement CloudFlare and MaxCDN services together.
As your page size increases (especially when you have a lot of images, JavaScripts on the pages), you begin to see a slowdown in you page loading speed.
When that happens, you know you have work to do to make your website fast and secure at the same time.
While the basic CloudFlare is a free CDN and does a great job, you can really enjoy tremendous improvement in your website loading time when you combine CloudFlare with a full CDN service such as MaxCDN.
My Testimonial On MaxCDN and CloudFlare Combo
Before I talk more on these technologies, I would like to share with you some of the statistics of my own website as a testimonial for the success I received using them.
My website, as you can see, has image rich content with bunch of java scripts in addition. That means my home page, as you can notice, is more than 1 MB for sure.
When I was hosted on a shared server with GoDaddy prior to implementing CloudFlare and MaxCDN, the average loading time seen using Pingdom load test was about 20 to 27 seconds with Performance Grade around 65/100.
GTMetrix performance report showed Page Speed Grade as 'B' with 68% and YSlow Grade as 'C' with 67%. That was a sad story.
I decided to give CloudFlare and MaxCDN a test while still with GoDaddy and the results were astounding. Within a couple of hours after the implementation, Pingdom showed dramatic improvement with Load Time shrinking to about 7 to 8 seconds.
To my amazement, the Performance Grade also jumped straight to 83/100 on Pingdom.
Similarly, as expected, performance report on GTMetrix also showed improvement with the Page Speed Grade as 'B' with 83% and YSlow Grade as 'B' with 83%.
If you are on a shared hosting plan, struggling with your website loading time and you don’t yet feel you are ready for a VPS or a dedicated server, you will be amazed with the cost effectiveness and value MaxCDN and CloudFlare combination can add to your website’s performance.
What is Content Delivery Network (CDN)?
Basically, CDN is a technology that replicates your website’s static content to servers (called nodes) around the world by the service provider. This is to serve your visitors from the nearest node to their location.
This frees up your hosting web server which handles the PHP/processing side of things, from having to do double duty — process the page and serve the content.
The CDN’s servers are optimized for the sole purpose of serving your static content quickly no matter where in the world your visitors come from. Static files include images (.jpg, .png, .gif), stylesheets (.css), JavaScripts (.js), etc., that make up the bandwidth of your page loads.
With CDN implemented, your website can load much faster and can handle much more traffic that it can without it. Your visitors (including Google) very much appreciate the improved loading time as well.
Why Use MaxCDN?
Like anything else, there are choices available in this space as well. Amazon CloudFront and Google Page Speed CDN are the services that are popular in the marketplace along with MaxCDN.
But the reasons I chose to implement MaxCDN (parent company is NetDNA) for my website are:
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It is affordable. A yearly price of $90.00 (that goes down with the discount coupon checkout25 and you get 25% off for life) is an awesome deal considering the benefits it provides.
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It works flawlessly. It is easy to implement either via popular W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin in less than 10 minutes. If you are using other cache plugins like WP Super Cache or similar, you should be able to configure MaxCDN with those as well the same way.
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MaxCDN works alongside of CloudFlare like a charm (which I love because of CloudFlare's awesome features).
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MaxCDN and CloudFlare both have incredibly prompt customer service experts who are very helpful and to the point.
What Does It Cost To Implement MaxCDN?
When I signed up, they didn’t have these many options. But now, with their revised pricing structure, they are offering more features in their current plans.
At the moment they are offering a special 25% discount with a coupon code “checkout25” that gets you this discount on every bill for life on all plans.
The standard plan, which is $90 a year before discount, gets you 100GB bandwidth per month which is way more than most blogs need anyway. Plus, they let you implement it on two websites together in this plan.
The best thing about MaxCDN pricing is, their fee is much lower when compared with the other popular services in this space with no compromise in quality of service.
Why Implement CloudFlare and MaxCDN Together?
To begin with, CloudFlare is a free service that acts as a proxy between your visitors and our server.
By acting as a proxy, CloudFlare caches content for your site, which lowers the number of requests to your web server while still allowing your visitors to access your site.
There have been many instances where my web server was down (which happens very often while you are with a shared hosting, right?) and my visitors were able to access my website. That’s because CloudFlare had my back!
CloudFlare enhances your website security by its very nature. In addition, it also adds to your bandwidth usage savings with MaxCDN. Why will you not use a service that helps you save bandwidth while adding to your website security at the same time?
MaxCDN acts as a reverse proxy that caches all your static content and serves them to your website visitors from servers spread across the globe. That lowers the number of requests sent to your servers to zero at any given moment as long as the cached files are neither expired nor purged from the network.
When these two technologies are implemented correctly on your WordPress website, you have the security in place along with a website that loads at a blazing speed.
CloudFlare and MaxCDN complement each other and I am extremely happy to have them both implemented on my site.
Steps To Setup MaxCDN With CloudFlare Together On Your WordPress Website
If you choose to implement these two services on your website, here are two incredible step by step guides that I highly recommend you go through.
If you follow the steps recommended in these articles, you will have your website powered by MaxCDN and CloudFlare in no time.
If you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to post them in the comments section and we can discuss it:
1. How Cloudflare Supercharges Your Website Security And Performance
This is an article I wrote as my first article in this series. In this article, I have shared what some of the major benefits of using CloudFlare are and how you can set it up on your website.
I did not face any challenge implementing on any of my websites or on any of my clients websites. However, I do realize it’s just a technology and some of your websites or plugins might give you some challenges.
But, if you persevere and work with their customer support to resolve your issues, you will be pleased with what this service has to offer.
2. How to Install and Setup WordPress CDN Solution – MaxCDN on your Site
This article is helpful even when you just want to implement only MaxCDN. And if you decide to go for CloudFlare as well, then this article is going to help you understand MaxCDN aspect of the whole implementation.
3. Activating Ludicrous Speed: Combine CloudFlare With a CDN on Your Blog
This is the article that puts both the pieces together for you. The author, Thomas Frank really has provided all the steps neatly along with screenshots at each step. You can never get confused if you follow the steps to configure your website.
Your Thoughts On Website Performance?
How long generally do you wait before you feel annoyed with a slow loading website? As an entrepreneur and a blogger, do you think investing money to improve the website performance is a good idea?
Please respond in the comments by clicking here. Thank you kindly.
Thank you Mr. Kumar for your testimonial and the full details on using Cloudclare and CDN together. My client has been complaining about his website loading speed for a few weeks and I think I am going to try this. If it works, all credit to you!!!
Awesome, Michael. I am glad this was helpful. Thanks for leaving your feedback.
I also use MaxCDN / NetDNA on my WordPress site. Definitely recommended as it speeds up your site by delivering static content to your users from servers that are located near them.
Lorenzo,
Thank you for taking time to share your experience. Appreciate you adding value.
Regards,
Kumar
How does an SSL relationship work between the two? Cloudflare doesn’t offer SSL with it’s free account. However, MaxCDN provides an SSL.
Good work but still I still not fully understand how to use them together…
Hi,
I am planning to host my website on VPS/Cloud Hosting. If I use MaxCDN along with my Cloud Hosting, would that make my site more faster?
Thanks!
Yes Farzana, it most definitely will.
MAXCDN gives you trial period and CloudFlare is FREE. You should try them and see the performance for yourself. It is pretty significant when you think about people from different corners of the world trying to access your website.
“Hosted on a shared server with GoDaddy prior”
Is that even a valid comparison ? Any optimisation on GoDaddy should give you a “HUGE” gain.
Even on quality shared hosting wordpress blog should not take more than 10 seconds to load even if you have loads of stuff on the page.
Correct me, if I am wrong.
No, you are not wrong but 10 seconds is a long time for a visitor to wait for your pages to load. These days, if your site doesn’t load in 2-3 seconds, you are going to lose visitors and traffic both.
I am using Cloudfare on my site.It Significantly boosts speed of initial page load.I want to know sir ‘Is their a good Free alternative to MaxCDN’ as I don’t want to spend money ?
Sudhakar,
Unfortunately, there is no free alternative to CDN. In that case, CloudFlare is the CDN to you 🙂 MaxCDN isn’t that costly with 39 dollars for a whole year. Think about it. About 3 and half dollars a month isn’t that bad.
Hello Gaurav, brilliant article as always, but I think now you need to update he price of MaxCDN since it’s no more cheap. There plans are now changed two times since this article has been written. 🙂
Pranjal, Hey, I am not sure if that is true. Can you tell me where did their plan change? And also, the prices I’ve mentioned in my post are those I paid (and pay). However, I would still like to know what are the changes you are talking about? Can you throw some light?
Hii need to ask does Maxcdn as well cloudflare could be somewhat slow down the site as first the content which already cache by both service come from one source to another then to the visitor in this period of time site takes a lot to load fully.I have applied this and site take 7 second to load fully.But using Maxcdn only it 1-3 seconds.
Hi Mayank,
I have both implemented on my site and as you can see, mine does load around a second.
I don’t think MAXCDN can replace Cloudflare or vice versa. Also, Cloudflare is more about security while MAXCDN is more about delivery of images and CSS files efficiently.
-Kumar
Good info on MAXCDN and CLOUDFARE Kumar. Few are happy to wait for even a few extra seconds for a slow loading site even though not so very long ago we might have to leave our location and go to the library . Higher speed and extra security sounds like a winning combination.
I have noticed my website is getting rather slow of late so I appreciate the advice here.
Hey Kumar, I’ve read many benefits of using these two features to decrease page load time but what if I don’t use? Also let me know that at which traffic mark using these two becomes really important. Like the threshold limit of traffic. Thanks 🙂
Hi Priya,
I wouldn’t say that you must use these because there are many friends I have who are doing okay without any of these. It depends on how bad is your loading time.
I also wouldn’t benchmark your website’s security based on traffic. As soon as you think that it’s your asset on the internet which you want to protect, security becomes important. But then, Cloudflare isn’t the only way. There are other ways as well. For example, you could very well be hosted by a Managed WordPress hosting (such as http://www.kwwhost.com) and your security is taken care of to a large extent by your hosting company.
So, it’s a matter or making a decision rather than marking it as a need 🙂
Hope it helps?
-Kumar
I use a VPS server and though I don’t think it’s slow (hahaha) some of the online tests I have run tell me that it is. This could be the answer? I am always so hesitant to try something new…afraid I’ll muck it all up
I don’t think your site is slow from US. It might be the case that it is slow from locations that are farther from your server’s location. At any rate, CloudFlare is free and worth a shot. Especially their RocketLoader feature rocks! I would suggest it is worth a try 🙂
Do let me know if you need any help.
Regards,
Kumar
Thanks Gauraw for your feedback. I had one query that is the service also supporting the blogger platform websites.
Happy Holi Kumar!! 🙂
Once again, my friend, you’ve been ultra-thorough on explaining the use and importance of the combination of MaxCDN and Cloudflare. I’m actually very happy with the way KrishnaWW Host looks after things for me.
Do have a great week of celebration. Color me grateful.
Bill
Thank you Bill. Appreciate your friendship and yes, you are in good hands. Relax from technical side knowing that you are being taken care of.
Now, you can focus on your writing, creativity while we are watching your back 🙂
Have a glorious new week!
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Kumar,
Oops, Never mind Kumar, Please, delete the above. Don’t know what happened, but my comment was totally different.
So I was saying this is a great tutorial, even though a bit above my head.
As a matter of fact, yesterday I was on the phone with Donna and David Merrill and they were telling me about your excellent hosting service.
As I think you know, I have 3 blogs and even though everything is triple for me, for now I’ve managed to have at least hosting for the three blogs under the same hat, however, because of the fact that the guy who sold me my Thesis BlogSkin (which I still have on two of my blogs) turned out the be the most unprofessional person I know on line, so I’m basically on my own now if anything goes wrong due to my theme.
So, as Donna and David were telling me about your service I was really considering it for a near future.
Thanks for this great tutorial and sorry for that mishap up there. Please, just delete it.
Hi Sylviane,
I am grateful to Donna & David for their words of appreciation. However I also understand why you might have been left with a bad taste dealing with the other person. It happens a lot. It happened to me. In fact, the guys who sold me this very theme closed the company and walked out on me and thousands of others who loved Standard Theme. I took over and my team is able to take care of the theme going forward.
It’s life and I guess that is why it is so interesting 🙂
But then, that’s the main focus of my business. I do not want clients if I can’t service well and that is the motto of my Krishna World Wide Team. Glad to know our clients are so happy so far that they are able to talk good about us when we are not there. That’s a great achievement. Thank you for telling me about it 🙂
Well, if I can be of any service to you, please always feel free to send me a quick email. We can discuss your options and provide my recommendations based on your needs.
Thank you for stopping by and have a great day!
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Kumar,
Yes, I was on the phone with Sylviane and she is going though so much trouble. So are many of my other friends. This is why I just love Krishna WW!
This post is way over my head too. Yet another reason why I love your company. Last week when you were a guest on my blog, you mentioned how themes have to be updated. I never knew that, and my theme was 4 years old.
That’s why David and I immediately got in touch with you and now you are creating a whole new theme for both of us. Our blogs are so important to us. I don’t want to keep on learning all the how to’s to keep it going. This is why KrishnaWW is awesome! The fact that your motto: ” I do not want clients if I can’t service well” is why I suggest you all the time. It takes all the pain away from people like me, who want a good service. Plus that’s my motto too!
-Donna
Thank you very much for the love Donna. Everybody should have customers like you 🙂
You are so awesome!
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Kumar, I can definitely understand the benefits of using these services together. I tried CloudFlare once but it didn’t work with my blog. I used WP3 though which is helpful. Great explanation that will help many people!
Thank you for sharing your experience Carolyn. When implementing technologies, sometimes a few settings need some adjustments and sometimes, those things need some professional help.
I am not sure if you tried to contact their customer service before giving up on them?
Hey Kumar,
I know that speed with our sites is very important and I remember you writing about this previously. I still feel the same way though and am not looking to go this direction. At least not yet.
I have someone working on my blog that knows the ins and outs on how I can speed it up some and now that I’m on a VPS service I’m happy with the load time. I’m sure there is always something that will need some attention so it’s getting the much needed attention it deserves.
Maybe some day when I get so much traffic I have to do something differently but until then I think I’ll stick with what I have. Thanks though for this update because it’s an area a LOT of people are interested in.
Have a great week.
~Adrienne
Hi Adrienne,
Yeah, I remember your previous comment about on a different thread as well 🙂
You had a pretty good loading speed then and you have the same even now. However, people like me who are image heavy, need some outside help such as these services. So, I have it live on my sites. And since I am enjoying, I think it’s my responsibility to tell you how to do it if (and when) you decide to implement these technologies you see.
Thiking forward 🙂
Have a great new week you too!
Regards,
Kumar
Once again this is very good and detailed information. Thanks for sharing and keep the great work.
I do get annoyed when sites are slow to load. I take the time to make sure it isn’t my server or my too full desktop before I stomp off in annoyance though!
Hi Beth,
Tell me about it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t leave my own site when it used to load in like 27 seconds when I was hosted with GoDaddy shared server and didn’t have any of these things implemented. It was awful.
Now, here I am sharing my experience because now I know how bad it can be or how great it can be – both 🙂
Thank you for dropping by.
Regards,
Kumar
Kumar,
sharing your vast professional experience here, is truly helpful for all of us,
I never understood much of the different hosting plans, what I knew was simple, someone offer you a plan and you decide who you go with.
Well, learning from you got me to go deeper and now I am more aware and as we already discussed before.. if the time come I am more prepared.
Thanks so much again for sharing your expertise and experiences..
_nickc
Absolutely Nick! I know you are making progress and in fact, we all are making progress every day.
Thank you for dropping by and sharing your words of appreciation. Whenever you are ready, we will begin taking action 🙂
Have a wonderful week Nick! Look forward to learning from you.
Regards,
Kumar
Hey Kumar
Very helpful posts indeed.
I am seriously considering going down this path in the near future and this will help a lot.
I have tried Cloudfare before but a missing www (or redirect) seemed to cause issues I had no time to resolve.
And Max CDN in place of new hosting is not a bad idea and something else to consider to give my site that extra boost.
Appreciate the posts
ashley
You are very welcome Ashley! Glad to be of help 🙂
Do let me know how it goes when you do implement any of these two or both 🙂
Have a great day my friend!
Hi Kumar, I just started with the CDN earlier this year on the advice of Mayura for the speed of my site and it sure did make a wonderful difference! I did not know much about it so thanks for sharing with us what exactly it is and why we should be using it.( I’m not sure on the Cloudflare portion of it, something I have to double check on.)
Hi Lisa,
So glad to hear from you and also the testimonial that CDN did help you increase your website’s performance! That is wonderful!
Cloudflare adds up to the whole setup with its additional rocket loader to further improve the performance.
When you try, do let me know how it goes.
Have a great day!
Regards,
Kumar
Good suggestions for speeding up your website. Have neither tried Cloudflare nor MaxCDN. Have put it on my to do list,.
Hi Kumar,
I’m using CloudFlare for the last one year, and it has really drastically reduced my blog’s load times and made it more secure. I’m very happy about it.
Now, I don’t want to spoil your party, because I didn’t have good experience with MaxCDN, but maybe it was only me. About half an year ago, I also decided to use MaxCDN to supplement CloudFlare. Actually I read a lot those days that you should use the three in conjunction – W3TC+CloudFlare+MaxCDN. I had great expectations from MaxCDN, however, the results I found are not that encouraging. I thought using the CDN would reduce my site load times drastically, but it didn’t, and I’m not sure if I’d renew it for the next year.
I contacted MaxCDN support and they aren’t able to help me either. They say my load times on Pingdom is great, and that’s true, it’s under 3 sec there and sometimes even less. But the speed sucks on GTMetrix, Webpagetest.org, and Google Analytics site speed stats itself, where it sadly varies from 10 sec to even 20 sec!
I guess the only alternative for me is to change my homepage, which really is heavy, of about 1.6 MB. I know speed matter a lot since Google considers it one of its ranking factors, and I feel bad that MaxCDN couldn’t drastically reduce my site load times. having said that, I’m sure it works for you and others, and I guess it just varies from site to site or server to server.
Also, I noticed that its prices have increased now, as I got 1TB for $40 a year when I purchased it. Thanks for your review and I’d greatly suggest people to at least go for W3TC+CloudFlare combination, that really works great. Try Max CDN too, it may work for you!
Thanks Kumar and do have a great day ahead! 🙂
Hi Harleena,
Well, you can’t spoil my party and I know when you are saying something, you are trying to add value. So, I am happy to hear about your experience. But here is what I found when I looked at your website’s data:
1. You have a Javascript and image heavy home page. Especially Javascript is known to slow down any site when used above the fold.
2. Your slider is adding to the load (which is obvious, right?)
MaxCDN is supposed to only deliver the content which I think is happening because neither webpagetest nor GTMetrix shows that your images are causing the delay. Finally, for a 1.6 MB pagesize, less than 3 seconds is not bad espoecially when you are on a shared server with first byte time taking about half a second.
So, I wouldn’t blame it on CDN alone for your troubles 🙂
If I can be of any help, please let me know.
Regards,
Kumar
Kumar, you may be right that I can’t blame CDN for my site speed problems. Well, as a lay person, I just depend on the CDN thinking it’ll do the magic for me. But you’re right that there might be other technical aspects to look into.
I tried GT Metrix with and without the slider, and there’s not much difference in the load times. But yes, Google Page Speed gives me this suggestion > Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content, and GT Metrix has this one > Defer parsing of JavaScript.
So, I guess you’re right that the issue might be due to the Javascript on the home page. Well, presently my GTMetrix stat shows load times of about 6 sec, so may be it can be reduced. I know since may be this is not due to CDN, it’s not the business of those people to sort it out for me.
Thanks for pointing out the problem and probably MaxCDN is still good. 🙂
Hey Kumar,
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Whadya think, worth installing on Dear Blogger .org?
Cheers,
Greg
Yes Greg,
You definitely need Cloudflare and another thing you need is, you need to pay attention to your website’s security. You are pretty unsecure at the moment.
Good luck to you 🙂 And if you need some help, let me know.
Cheers!
Kumar
Hey Kumar,
Once again you’ve done a great job in explaining technology. I know for a lot of us it can be confusing, even for us IT people ;)… but i can definitely relate this to what I do here in IT when it comes to memory and servers.
It’s very tempting to go ahead and purchase this, but i believe my site isn’t getting enough traffic to do both right now. But at least i have a great idea of how they work and why I should consider this combo! Thanks Kumar for sharing and you have a great rest of the week!
Sherman,
Good to hear from you. But did you notice Cloudflare is FREE to use?
Sometimes, we have to relax and believe that good things are also possible for free 🙂
Regards,
Kumar
I've read just a bit about CDN's and have wondered how much it would help my site's speed, or if it's as good as it gets with a basic BlueHost package.
Hello Jery,
It doesn’t matter which hosting package you are on. It is more of a decision based on the number of images and javascripts you are using on your pages. From what I see, you have an image heavy website as well. So, yes, a CDN will be a good thing to happen for your website.
Please let me know if you need any help.
Regards,
Kumar
According to Google Analytics, my site is slowing down AND I have to change my theme because the one I started with is no longer supported &#$*Q#&*! I keep saying I’m going to do it when I feel caught up with everything else, but it’s pretty clear that that day will never come. So, thanks for the push.
You are very welcome Suzanne!
Glad to know you found this post good enough to push you in the direction of your next move 🙂
Have a great day!
Hey again,
Couldn’t find our thread, but does MaxCDN cover WordPress security too? If not, best solution? How much moola are we talking 😉
Thx bud,
G
Hi Greg,
No, MAXCDN doesn’t provide security service although Cliudflare does some work.
You can visit a guest post I recently wrote at DonnaMerrillTribe.com about WordPress security. From there you will learn about a plugin that will help you secure your site to a good level for free. Check that out 🙂
If you have more questions, let me know.
Cheers!
Kumar
It’s so funny that you should post about this now. My web guy and I are currently in the process of discussing what i should do and what paid service I should use to improve my website’s speed. It has become very apparent to both of us that now is the time. I am forwarding this to him to include in our conversation in the coming week. 🙂
Wow, thank you so much for this post! I was debating whether to sign up with CloudFlare of MaxCDN and didn’t know I could use both (thankfully this was one of the results on Google)!
Question – I don’t know when this post was written but are you still using the two together? I can see that you’re still using CloudFlare but what about MaxCDN?
Hi Pat,
At the bottom of the post, you should be able to see the post date.
However, yes! I do use Cliudflare and MAXCDN both on my site and they work great!
As you can see, I have an image heavy website and my home page is more than 1.2 MB size overal and yet it loads in about 1 second from all locations of Pingdom most of the time.
You should certainly give Cliudflare and MaxCDN a shot! You will love it!
Good luck!
I am facing issues using cloudflare. I also feel that my site is getting slow. Shall I remove it. I am not sure what is to be done about it. According to google page speed service my speed has decreased. Looking for a solution.
Thanks so much Kumar to publish such a ultimate post. I never knew properly about CloudFlare and MaxCDN but this post helped me. I found this through Google and sharing with my friends.
Hi Kumar Gauraw,
I am using cloudflare but w3 total cache plugin seems not working with cloudflare setting, I have downloaded cloudflare plugin for WordPress and configured it, it’s working perfectly.
I have been using cloudflare on almost all of my blogs, it’s really prevent spam and bad bots attack to blogs. Thanks for the great post.
Thanks Kumar Gauraw for sharing such useful information with us. Good suggestions for speeding up your website.
I have been using free CloudFlare service. It’s good and gives a little boost to the website, but I think I should give a try to MaxCDN. Thank you for the honest testimonial
MaxCDN is good. Thanks for sharing your reviews. Love to read it 🙂