Networking & Delivery
CDN
A network of servers spread around the world that caches your content close to users, cutting load times and origin bandwidth.
A CDN stores copies of your static content, images, scripts, video, on servers in dozens or hundreds of locations worldwide. When someone loads your site, they're served from the nearest edge location instead of your origin server halfway across the planet. Pages load faster, and your origin handles a fraction of the traffic because the CDN absorbs the rest.
The pricing here ranges from free to per-gigabyte. Cloudflare's free tier is one of the best deals in hosting, giving unlimited-bandwidth caching on a massive edge network at no cost. Bunny CDN charges by region, as low as a cent per GB in Europe and North America. Gcore and the hyperscalers play at the higher, feature-rich end.
Beyond speed, a CDN shields your origin from traffic spikes and absorbs some attacks. For any site with a global audience or heavy static assets, it's close to mandatory, and the free options make it hard to justify skipping.
Go deeper
- Static Site Hosting: When Free Is Actually FinePortfolios, docs, and marketing sites can host for $0 legitimately. Where the free tiers genuinely differ, and the three situations where paying becomes worth it.